Linux Kernel 4.11 ‘Fearless Coyote’ Released

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May 2, 2017

Linus Torvalds has returned to an animal-themed nickname for Kernel 4.11. After 4.10 was named “Happy Anniversary” for a brief time in its development cycle, 4.11 is Fearless Coyote, a name carried over from version 4.10-rc6.

And, after spending an extra week on rc8, Torvalds remarked how the last leg of the development of 4.11 “contained smaller fixes […] but nothing that made me go “hmm…”” — which is the way he likes the last week to go.

That doesn’t mean the rest of the cycle has been uneventful, quite the contrary.

For example, along with a bunch of improvements to video drivers, this kernel comes with drivers that implement the last link to get a fully functional DisplayPort MST support (to wit, audio) on Intel video cards. DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport (DP MST for short) is a technology that allows you to daisy-chain together several monitors. You only need one cable running from your output video port on your computer to a monitor, and then another cable running from the first monitor to a second monitor, and then another to the next, and so on. This means that, even with only one video port, in theory you could have any number of monitors hooked up to your machine. The new drivers now allow you to pipe audio to monitors decked out with loudspeakers. Decidedly cool.

Continuing with Intel-based hardware, work has started on drivers to support graphic acceleration on the new Gemini Lake SoCs coming out later next year. This means that, by the time machines start shipping with Gemini Lake, hopefully, there will be mature drivers for Linux.

Speaking of partially supported platforms, the Lego Mindstorms EV3 gets some love in 4.11. Currently working is pin muxing, pinconf, the GPIOs, the MicroSD card reader, the UART on input port 1, the buttons, the LEDs, poweroff/reset, the flash memory, EEPROM, the USB host port and the USB peripheral port. Stuff that is still being worked on includes the speaker, the A/DC chip, the display, Bluetooth, the input and output ports, and the battery indication.

Other things to look forward to in 4.11

The ever-so-useful perf tool, used to analyze the performance on your machine, gets an ftrace function and function_graph trace. This will allow you to trace practically every function in the kernel, which is great for debugging or just to learn from watching the kernel working live.
As usual, a fair number of ARM architectures are now supported by the kernel — the HiSilicon Kirin960/Hi3660 and HiKey960 development board, for one. The Banana Pi M64, powered by an Allwinner A64 is another, as is the NXP LS1012a SoC, along with three developer boards using this hardware.
Also supported are devices that adhere to the Opal Storage Specification. These are data storage devices (read “disk drives“) that self-encrypt their contents and can only be de-encrypted by the owner of the device.

For a full list of changes, some in-depth explanations, and links to the commits, take a look at this entry on the Kernel Newbies website.

Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.

Disruptive Collaboration: The Next Generation of Network Software and Hardware

By

Dawn Foster

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May 2, 2017

About 10 years ago, mobile networks began experiencing massive increases in demand with the launch of the iPhone and the introduction of other smart phones. In a keynote at the Open Networking Summit, Andre Fuetsch, President AT&T Labs and CTO, AT&T says that the demand increased over 250,000% in the past 10 years. What AT&T quickly realized was the hardware-centric approach they’d been taking for decades wasn’t going to be enough, and they believed that shifting to software was their best bet to meet this accelerating demand. However, individual companies working alone tend to build similar solutions and duplicate effort, so AT&T isn’t doing this alone. They are collaborating together with other companies in a consolidated effort around ONAP, Open Network Automation Platform.

So far, AT&T has shifted more than 30 percent of their network functions to Software Defined Networking (SDN) with the goal of reaching over 55 percent this year, according to John Donovan, Chief Strategy Officer and Group President – AT&T Technology and Operations. He went on to point out that reaching this goal of becoming more software-defined than not, means that they need to figure out how to capitalize on this new software-defined network. What they’re architecting today is an abstraction layer, Indigo, designed to evolve and accelerate over time as part of what they are calling Network 3.0, a data-powered network.

When they began down this journey of shifting to SDN, there wasn’t any existing software that met their needs, so Fuetsch says that they decided to build ECOMP, a modular, scalable, and secure network operating system for SDN automation that has been in production for over two and a half years. However, over the past year, they realized that there is an opportunity to align the industry on a single consolidated effort by open sourcing ECOMP and combining it with the OPEN-O project to create ONAP, a Linux Foundation project. ”ONAP will become the global standard for service providers to introduce and operate and manage SDN,” Fuetsch predicts.

He closed by pointing out that “networking is really going to change the world. It’s more than just making SDN better. This is about connecting lives, creating new opportunities, and helping make life easier and happier around the world.”

Watch the video of this Open Networking Summit keynote to get more details about AT&T’s approach to using software and hardware to evolve their network:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-QjVrVe9Lo?list=PLbzoR-pLrL6p01ZHHvEeSozpGeVFkFBQZ

Interested in open source SDN? The “Software Defined Networking Fundamentals” training course from The Linux Foundation provides system and network administrators and engineers with the skills to maintain an SDN deployment in a virtual networking environment. Download the sample chapter today!

Check back with Open Networking Summit for upcoming news on ONS 2018.

Red Hat Launches OpenShift.io, an Online IDE for Building Container-Based Applications

By

TechCrunch

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May 2, 2017

Red Hat is launching OpenShift.io today, its first major foray into offering cloud-based developer tools. As the name implies, OpenShift.io sits on top of the company’s Kubernetes-based OpenShift container management platform and provides developers with the tools they need to build cloud-native, container-based apps. That includes team collaboration services, Agile planning tools, developer workspace management, an IDE for coding and testing, as well as monitoring and — of course — continuous integration and delivery services.

While its focus is somewhat different, this does look a lot like Red Hat’s version of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team Services. What Red Hat has done here, though, is tie together a number of existing open source projects like fabric8, Jenkins, Eclipse Che and, of course, OpenShift into a free service that provides developers with a similar experience, but with a strong focus on container-based applications.

Nine Ways to Compare Files on Unix

By

ComputerWorld

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May 2, 2017

Sometimes you want to know if some files are different. Sometimes you want to how they’re different. Sometimes you might want to compare files that are compressed and sometimes you might want to compare executables. And, regardless of what you want to compare, you probably want to select the most convenient way to see those differences. The good news is that you have a lot more options than you probably imagine when you need to focus on file differences.

First: diff

The command most likely to come to mind for this task is diff. The diff command will show you the differences between two text files or tell you if two binaries are different, but it also has quite a few very useful options.

Uptime: Cloud Gives Many Enterprise Data Centers New Lease on Life

By

Data Center Knowledge

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May 2, 2017

The volume of corporate software workloads being deployed in the cloud is quickly growing, but that does not mean on-premise enterprise data center footprint is shrinking at a similar rate. While they’re not investing in new data centers to expand capacity – cloud and colocation providers satisfy that need – many enterprises are spending money to upgrade their existing facilities, extending their useful life for many years to come.

That’s according to the latest survey of enterprise data center operators by The 451 Group’s Uptime Institute. Uptime surveys senior executives, IT, and facilities managers who operate data centers for traditional enterprise companies, such as banks, retailers, manufacturers, etc.

The percentage of respondents who said they were planning to build new data centers was also notably high: 30 percent.

Here’s What Comes Next in the Fight to Save Net Neutrality

By

Wired

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May 2, 2017

THE GOP-LED FEDERAL Communications Commission this week released the first details of its long-anticipated plan to roll-back Obama-era net neutrality protections. The good news for net neutrality advocates: You can already voice your official displeasure on the FCC’s proposal. The bad news: It’s quite possible no one will listen. The FCC’s Republican commissioners never supported the net neutrality rules, and they’re not likely to change their minds. Still, the fight to save net neutrality isn’t over.

Technically, nothing has been formally proposed. What FCC chair Ajit Pai has filed is what’s called a “notice of proposed rulemaking”—basically, a call for feedback from experts and the public about what the FCC should actually do. Before the notice is even formal, the FCC must approve it.

Installing Google TensorFlow Neural Network Software for CPU and GPU on Ubuntu 16.04

By

Falko Timme

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May 2, 2017

TensorFlow is an open source software for performing machine learning tasks. Google, its creator wanted to expose a powerful tool to help developers explore and build machine learning based applications and so they released this as an open source project. TensorFlow is an extremely powerful tool specializing in a type of neural network called the deep neural network.

Run Google Chrome on Raspberry Pi

By

Dmitry Polonsky

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May 2, 2017

Google Chrome is one of the most popular browsers all over the world. And Raspberry Pi is the most popular mini-PC device. But unfortunately, they can’t meet together – there is no Chrome build for Raspberry Pi (and for any other ARM-based PC except Chromebook). You can use a number of other browsers (such as Epiphany, IceWeasel or even Lynx), but will face a lack of functionality. Many Pi-world enthusiasts use the open source version of Chrome – Chromium browser. But this isn’t a full replacement.

Chrome includes a number of proprietary libraries and in some cases, you need to use authentic Google software. For example, you can watch videos on Netflix or Amazon Prime with Chrome and can’t with Chromium. Good news that there is a simple solution to override this issue. Using Exagear Desktop allows you to get full x86 Linux environment. And this means that you can launch any application available in x86 Linux world, including Google Chrome!

In the previous versions of Exagear Desktop you could launch Chrome but it was running not very fast. The reason is that Raspberry Pi has lower performance comparing to modern PCs. That’s why we are making our best effort to optimize Exagear Desktop to run Chrome more smoothly. We recommend using Exagear Desktop 1.5 and higher to achieve reasonable performance.

Here is a simple instruction on how to install and run Google Chrome on your RPi 3 device.

P.S.: you might also be interested in how to set up VPN on your Raspberry Pi to protect your privacy while surfing the Internet.

Raspberry Pi test stand configuration

Model	Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
Frequency	1200 MHz
Memory	1 GB RAM
Operating System	Raspbian Jessie from May 2016
Software	Google Chrome for Linux Eltechs ExaGear Desktop for Raspberry Pi 3 v1.5

Google Chrome installation instruction

Configure Raspbian

1. Google Chrome is CPU intensive application, therefore, we recommend to increase swap space. Open configuration file in Terminal (command line) using the following command:

$ sudo nano /etc/dphys-swapfile

Raspbian has 100MB of swap by default. You should change it to 2048MB in the configuration file. So you will have to find this line:

CONF_SWAPSIZE=100

And then change it into:

CONF_SWAPSIZE=2048

Press F3 key to save changes and F2 to close the file. Then restart dphys-swapfile to apply changes:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile stop

$ sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile start

Install ExaGear Desktop

2. Download ExaGear Desktop archive with installation packages and license key. Unpack the downloaded archive by entering the following command in Terminal:

$ tar -xvzpf exagear-desktop-rpi3.tar.gz

3. Install and activate ExaGear on your RPi by running install-exagear.sh script in a directory with deb packages and one license key:

$ sudo ./install-exagear.sh

Launch guest x86 system

4. Enter the guest x86 system by using the following command:

$ exagear

Starting the shell in the guest image /opt/exagear/images/debian-8

5. Now you are in the x86 environment that can be checked by running the ‘arch’ command:

$ arch

i686

6. It is recommended to update apt-get repositories on the first launch of the guest system:

$ sudo apt-get update

Install Chrome

7. Download Google Chrome:

$ wget http://mirror.retrosnub.co.uk/apt/google/pool/main/g/google-chrome-stable/google-chrome-stable_48.0.2564.116-1_i386.deb

8. Install Chrome:

$ sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_48.0.2564.116-1_i386.deb

$ sudo apt-get install -f

Run Chrome

Final notes

We hope that every owner of Raspberry Pi will now enjoy using Google Chrome on his/her device!

Also, it is worth noting that with ExaGear Desktop you can run other x86 apps on Raspberry Pi and more ARM-based devices such as Odroid, Banana Pi, Beagleboard, Cubox, Jetson, Cubieboard etc. Get my ExaGear Desktop

New Linux Foundation White Paper: Harmonizing Open Source and Standards in SDN

By

Marc Cohn

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May 1, 2017

At the recent Open Networking Summit, the SDN/NFV community convened in Santa Clara to share, learn, collaborate, and network about one of the most pervasive industry transformations of our time.

This year’s theme at ONS was “Harmonize, Harness, and Consume,” representing a significant turning point as network operators spanning telecommunications, cable, enterprise, cloud, and the research community renew their efforts to redefine the network architecture.

Widespread new technology adoption takes years to succeed, and requires close collaboration among those producing network technology and those consuming it. Traditionally, standards development organizations (SDOs) have played a critical role in offering a forum for discussion and debate, and well-established processes for systematically standardizing and verifying new technologies.

Introduction of largely software (vs. hardware) functionality necessitates a rethinking of the conventional technology adoption lifecycle. In a software driven world, it is infeasible to define a priori complex reference architectures and software platforms without a more iterative approach. As a result, industry has been increasingly turning to open source communities for implementation expertise and feedback.

In this new world order, closer collaboration among the SDOs, industry groups, and open source projects is needed to capitalize upon each constituent’s strengths:

SDOs provide operational expertise and well-defined processes for technology definition, standardization, and validation
Industry groups offer innovative partnerships between network operators and their vendors to establish open reference architectures that are guiding the future of the industry
Open source projects provide technology development expertise and infrastructure that are guided by end-user use cases, priorities, and requirements

Traditionally each of these groups operates relatively autonomously, liaising formally and informally primarily for knowledge sharing.

Moving ahead, close coordination is essential to better align individual organizations objectives, priorities, and plans. SDN/NFV are far too pervasive for any single group to own or drive. As a result, the goal is to capitalize upon the unique strengths of each to accelerate technology adoption.

It is in the spirit of such harmonization that The Linux Foundation is pleased to unveil an industry-wide call to action to achieve this goal.

As a first step, we are issuing a white paper, “Harmonizing Open Source and Standards in the Telecom World,” to outline the key concepts, and invite an unprecedented collaboration among the SDOs, open source projects, and industry groups that each play a vital role in the establishment of a sustainable ecosystem which is essential for success.

The introduction of The Linux Foundation Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) is a tangible step in the direction of harmonization, not only merging OPEN-O and the open source ECOMP communities, but also establishing a platform that by its nature as an orchestration and automation platform, must inherently integrate with a diverse set of standards, open source projects, and reference architectures.

We invite all in the community to participate in the process, in a neutral environment, where the incentives for all are to work together vs. pursue their own paths.

Join us to usher in a new era of collaboration and convergence to reshape the future.

Download the white paper here.

Join The Linux Foundation at OSCON for Booth Swag, Project Updates, and More

By

The Linux Foundation

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May 1, 2017

Going to OSCON on May 10-11 in Austin? While you’re there, be sure stop by The Linux Foundation training booth for fun giveaways and a chance to win a Raspberry Pi 3 Starter kit.

Giveaways include The Linux Foundation branded webcam covers, The Linux Foundation projects’ stickers, Tux stickers, Linux.com stickers, as well as two free ebooks: Open Source in the Enterprise and SysAdmin’s Essential Guide to Linux Workstation Security.

You can also enter the raffle for a chance to win a Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kit. The winners will be announced May 11 at 3:40pm CT at The Linux Foundation Training booth.

And, be sure to check out some featured conference presentations, including a project update from Cloud Foundry, an overview of how open source and blockchain can help build trust, and best practices for attracting and retaining developers.

Session Highlights

By every need necessary: A Cloud Foundry roadmap update — Chip Childers (Cloud Foundry Foundation)

Rebuilding trust through blockchains and open source — Brian Behlendorf (The Hyperledger Project at the Linux Foundation)

Attracting, retaining, and developing new contributors in open source — Nithya Ruff (Comcast), Rupa

Transforming telecommunications through open source software — William Snow (Open Networking Lab)

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Cloud Foundry will also have booths at OSCON. Get a free Expo Hall pass and stop by to learn more. The discount code for unlimited free Expo Hall Plus passes is OSCON17XPO.