1) Microsoft’s PowerShell scripting language and command-line shell has been released as open source, meaning that Windows and Azure’s management tools will have a greater reach.
PowerShell is Microsoft’s latest open source release, coming to Linux, OS X– Ars Technica
2) Open source has come so far over the last few decades and perceptions of it have changed in the business world
What People Don’t Get About Open Source– Light Reading
3) Swapnil Bhartiya considers the new Google OSS announcement from this week.
Why Google’s New Linux-Less Fuchsia Operating System is a Huge Deal– CIO
4) The Linux Foundation has taken steps to mitigate Linux security flaw
1.4 Billion Android Devices Affected by Linux TCP Flaw– Softpedia
5) The Linux Foundation’s latest open source project is focused on the “architecture, implementation and support of digital networks.”
Linux Foundation Touts Open-Source PNDA for Network Analytics– Silicon Angle
Ahmed Alkabary is a recent graduate of the University of Regina in Canada, where he earned degrees in computer science and mathematics as an international student from Egypt. He was one of 14 aspiring IT professionals to receive a 2016 Linux Foundation Training (LiFT) scholarship, announced this week.
Now that he has finished his studies, Ahmed hopes to secure a job as a Linux system administrator. The scholarship will help him achieve his career goals by providing him with the additional training and certification he needs to land a position, he says.
Linux.com: Why do you want to be a Linux sysadmin?
Ahmed Alkabary: For me, I don’t just appreciate the Linux operating system but I also feel like it has become my life. Whenever I’m on a Linux based computer I feel like I’m at home. You can say it is a passion that has taken many years of cultivating to become integrated in my life the way it is today.
In 2011 I was eager to purchase a brand new computer, but to my dismay the shop had only one computer that met my requirements. Although unbeknownst to me the computer had a specific operating system that I was unfamiliar with. The operating system was pre-installed with Linux, specifically openSuse. I was so hesitant to purchase the computer but proceeded anyway. I hoped to change the operating system once I got home, but I was unsure of what came over me to keep Linux. But to this day I feel I have yet to make a decision that would have a greater impact on my life then the day I decided to keep Linux.
Right away I started to notice the efficiency of Linux and how all my needs were met in an instant. I started to teach myself the command line and I became very proficient at it. Then I began to understand why it was developed and how it was created. This sparked a flame inside me to learn more and to research more. I was engulfed in Linux so that it started to become something that I just wanted to do for the rest of my life. This passion that I have for Linux gave me the idea to pursue a career as a Linux sysadmin.
Linux.com: What have you done so far to achieve that goal? How will the LiFT scholarship help?
Ahmed: I took many online Linux courses. I took Introduction to Linux on EdX made by The Linux Foundation. I also took Essentials of Linux System Administration on EdX. I also read many different books on Linux. I am preparing to take my LFCS certification exam next month and after that I would like to learn about the Linux kernel and how to contribute to the kernel project.
The LiFT scholarship will help cover the cost of the LFD420 Linux Kernel Internals and Development course. I want to be a Linux system administrator who has a full understanding of every aspect of Linux. Learning the Linux kernel would guarantee me that. I would also like to be a part of the open source community knowing very well about all the contributions they make to Linux. The kernel community is very supportive and knowledgeable and to become a part of that community would be an honor. In the long run, I even want to be able to write my own operating system!
Linux.com: How did you develop the Linux course on Udemy?
Ahmed: After a few years of using and learning about Linux, I began to notice that there are not so many online courses or resources presented in an approachable manner to newbies. People who want to migrate towards Linux but are afraid to make the move. That’s when it came to my mind to construct a course on Udemy explaining the basics of the Linux command line. I wanted to break the fear that newbies have towards Linux. Most users don’t understand the value and usefulness of the command line interface.
I wanted to explain everything in a simpler manner. I even added animations and graphics so users don’t get discouraged while learning. I decide to make the course completely free because Linux is free to begin with and it would go against my beliefs to charge for something that was free. My aim was never to deter people from Linux but to attract a massive audience all over the world to learn Linux and appreciate its versatility. I also realized that a majority of my students could not afford to pay for an online course.
Linux.com: What have you learned in teaching the course?
Ahmed: Making a course on Udemy and seeing all the messages that I get from the students thanking me for making the course and how I changed their lives motivates me on a daily basis. Whenever I feel like giving up and I get a positive review or a message from a student, It simply makes my day! One thing I learned also is that I am not a bad teacher after all!
Linux.com: You’re a recent graduate, what are you doing now?
Ahmed: Currently I am working as a part-time online instructor at Robertson College in Canada. I teach several computer science courses including introduction to Linux. I basically got this job because of my course on Udemy. Also I am preparing for my LFCS as I mentioned and also working on getting few other certifications (RHCSA , CCNA) to be able to get my dream job as a Linux system administrator. I have gotten numerous interviews for other jobs but I want to keep hunting for my dream to become a Linux sysadmin. I also believe that the LiFT scholarship would enormously help on achieving my dream on becoming a Linux sysadmin.
Interested in learning more about starting your IT career with Linux? Check out our free ebook “A Brief Guide To Starting Your IT Career In Linux.”
As with any aspect of Linux, there are myriad ways to do a single task. Everything from your desktop GUI, running a web server, checking logs, and backing up your system. Finding how to do a task that best suits your need can sometimes be a drawn-out process. But, when you’re looking for a tool to handle a bare metal backup, your quest might very well begin and end with the dd command.
The dd command is actually a reference to the DD statement from IBM’s Job Control Language and means Data Description. The primary purpose of dd is to convert and copy files. With dd you can easily copy a partition or an entire drive.
The feature list includes:
Backup and restore a partition or entire drive
Copy regions of raw device files
Convert data formats
Creating files with fixed sizes
Most importantly, however, the dd command is the oldest disk imaging tool still in use. Why is it still around? Because it’s powerful, reliable, and (most importantly) simple to use.
I will walk you through the process of using dd to create a clone of a drive so that you can then restore that drive from the written image.
The first thing you absolutely must know is that reversing the arguments within a dd command can lead to erasing all of your precious data. To that end, you must use caution when working with this tool. Make sure to know the location and names of both your source and your target.
You will also want to run the dd command from within a live Linux distribution. The dd command copies every byte (even unused space), so it’s an intensive process. Working with dd while booted into a production machine could cause data corruption (which is why we run it from a live disk). This means downloading your favorite distribution ISO, burning it to either a DVD or USB drive.
With those warnings in place, let’s get up to speed with dd.
Another very important issue is that the target drive must be either of identical size to the drive being cloned or larger. The dd command will copy both used and unused space from the target. Say, for example, you have Linux installed on a 250GB drive and it is currently only using 100GB of space. The dd command will not discern between the used and unused space, so the image will be of the full drive: 250GB. You can help yourself out with this by creating a compressed image (more on that in a bit).
The first thing you need to do is boot into your live distribution. It won’t matter which distribution you are using, because almost every flavor of Linux includes the dd command. I’ll be demonstrating from a beta release of Elementary OS Loki. Boot into that live distribution and then attach your external drive. The external drive you attach should not have any necessary data (as the dd command will overwrite it). Best to use an empty, formatted drive for this purpose.
Open up a terminal window (from within the live instance) and check to make sure the drive to be cloned is, in fact, labeled sda. I do this with the command grep sda /var/log/syslog. The output (Figure 1), should indicate that /dev/sda is the location of your source to be copied.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume our source is /dev/sda and our target is is /dev/sdb1. You could copy a single partition from that drive (say, /dev/sda1), but we want to copy the entire drive. To clone sda to sdb1, we’ll issue the command:
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb1 bs=64K conv=noerror,sync
The arguments above are as follows.
bs: Set the block size for copy (the default is 512 bytes but doesn’t work well for larger drives)
noerror: Instructs dd to continue operation, ignoring all read errors
sync: Instruct dd to fill input blocks with zeroes if there were any read errors
Once you issue the command, step away from the computer, as this will take quite some time to accomplish. As the command works, you will see nothing printed on the screen; your prompt will seem to have locked. If you’d prefer to see the status of the command as it works, you can include the status=progress argument like so:
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb1 bs=64K conv=noerror,sync status=progress
The above addition will keep you informed as to how much has copied, in real time.
You can also opt to clone the disk to an image file. This can make the restoration process a bit easier and create a much smaller file on your target drive. To create an image, we’ll use the dd command like so:
sudo dd if=/dev/sda conv=sync,noerror bs=64K | gzip -c > /PATH/TO/DRIVE/backup_image.img.gz
Where /PATH/TO/DRIVE/ is the actual path (on my example, it would be /media/elementary/TOSHIBA/). The above command will create a compressed image of your drive.
My preference is to always clone to an image, as opposed to making a bit-by-bit copy and simply dumping to another drive. One of the benefits of this is the ability to move that image file to wherever you need it. If you are only planning on cloning a target to a source and then using the source as a replacement drive, then you don’t have to bother creating an image file. If, however, you want to backup your drive to an image that can then be used to create multiple copies or need to transport the image (for whatever reason), the latter process will be better suited for the task. Another benefit is that, by creating an image, the empty space will compress very nicely, so the end result will be a much smaller file.
I’ll demonstrate how to restore with dd using an image file. As with the copying process, this must be done while booted into a live distribution. I’ll assume the target drive has been installed into the machine, you’ve attached the USB drive (containing the backup image), and you’ve booted into a live distribution.
Once the above dd command completes, you’ll have a file called backup_image.img.gz, located on your external drive. To restore that image to a new drive (we’ll restore it to new drive sda, one that is the exact same size as the original), you first must gain su privileges. If you’re running a Ubuntu-based distribution, first issue the command sudo su, type your sudo password, hit Enter, and then run the restore command like so:
gunzip -c /PATH/TO/DRIVE/backup_image.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sda
Where /PATH/TO/DRIVE is the exact path to your backup_image.img.gz file located on the external device.
NOTE: If you are running a distribution that doesn’t make use of sudo (such as Fedora or openSUSE), you will gain administrator privileges with the command su. Type your administrator password and hit Enter. You can then run the restore command as shown above.
Once again, step away, because this process will take quite some time. When it does finish, you should now have a perfectly bootable drive that is an exact copy of the the original. Reboot, remove the live disk image, and fire up your cloned system.
You now have a working understanding of how to make use of the dd command to clone a drive. There is quite a lot more that dd can do. To get the most out of dd, make sure to read the man page by issuing the command man dd.
Learn more about backups and system management through the Essentials of System Administration course from The Linux Foundation.