Monitoring helps you troubleshoot common issues when scaling IT automation to meet your organization’s needs.
Read More at Enable Sysadmin
3 ways to optimize Ansible Automation Platform for scale and performance
Try these settings to optimize performance with Ansible Automation Platform on a massive scale.
Read More at Enable Sysadmin
How to customize VM and cloud images with guestfish
Need to tweak your cloud and virtual machine images to comply with company policies or other requirements? Give guestfish a try.
Read More at Enable Sysadmin
In 2021, The Linux Foundation Became a Trusted Resource for Public Health and Industry Partners, and OpenTreatments Tackled Rare Diseases
Linux Foundation Public Health is Still Making Strides in 2021
Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH) hosts, supports and nurtures open source technology to benefit public health initiatives.
Since its founding a little over a year ago, the organization has become a go-to resource for governments and industry partners to get advice on the latest technologies coming to market. Over 50 jurisdictions worldwide have come to trust LFPH for unbiased, clear guidance on how to take advantage of technologies within our program areas of exposure notification and COVID credentials. National and global institutions such as the WHO, CDC, UN, and GAO have also invited LFPH to present at meetings, contribute to reports, and assist them in their own understanding of this technology.
Meanwhile, LFPH projects and initiatives continue to grow. The Global COVID Certificate Network and standard developments happening at the COVID-19 Credentials Initiative are becoming some of the leading groups solving the challenges of interoperability between divergent systems and standards emerging around the world. The organization’s leadership role in the Good Health Pass Collaborative has established LFPH’s voice as one of the leads in the ethical, privacy-first design of public health software. With the addition of Herald, Cardea, and MedCreds, the foundation’s projects are now used in over a dozen states, provinces, and countries worldwide to help fight COVID-19 and safely reopen borders.
While COVID is not going anywhere, LFPH is charting a path forward beyond pandemic response. The pandemic has highlighted the need to overhaul public health infrastructure worldwide to create better ways to share data within and across borders. Open source software will be a crucial piece of solving that puzzle worldwide.
OpenTreatments & Rarecamp: Addressing Rare Diseases
In March of 2021, the Linux Foundation announced that it would be hosting RareCamp and the OpenTreatments Foundation. RareCamp enables treatments for rare genetic diseases regardless of rarity and geography.
Four hundred million patients worldwide are affected by more than 7,000 rare diseases, yet treatments for rare genetic disorders are underserved. More than 95 percent of rare diseases do not have an approved treatment, and new treatments are estimated to cost more than $1 billion.
The RareCamp open source project provides open governance for the software and scientific community to collaborate and create the software tools to aid in creating treatments for rare diseases. The community includes software engineers, UX designers, content writers, and scientists who are collaborating now to build the software that will power the OpenTreatments platform. The project uses the open source Javascript framework NextJS for frontend and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Serverless stack – including AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB – to power the backend. The project uses the open source toolchain Serverless Framework to develop and deploy the software and is licensed under Apache 2.0 and available for anyone to use.
The project is supported by individual contributors and collaborations from companies that include Baylor College of Medicine, Castle IRB, Charles River, Columbus Children’s Foundation, GlobalGenes, Odylia Therapeutics, RARE-X, and Turing.com.
These efforts are made possible by the dozens of enterprises that support the LFPH and OpenTreatments foundations.
To learn how your organization can get involved with LFPH, click here
To learn how your organization can get involved with OpenTreatments, click here
The post In 2021, The Linux Foundation Became a Trusted Resource for Public Health and Industry Partners, and OpenTreatments Tackled Rare Diseases appeared first on Linux Foundation.
The Linux Foundation Meets Its Biggest Challenge Yet: Saving the Planet
The transition from centralized fossil-fuel generation to renewable and distributed energy resources will mark the most significant reimagining of power systems in over 140 years, and it will fundamentally transform our economies. Approximately 75% of carbon emissions can be mitigated through the electrification of energy, transportation, and the built environment. By adopting an open source strategy that maximizes flexibility, agility, and interoperability, we can innovate at the speed of the urgency needed to decarbonize and save our planet.
Since nearly all aspects of life on Earth will be touched, our future rests on cooperation that will enable the evolution of the marketplace, driven by competition and innovation. Collaboration is central to finding a path to decarbonization, which is the fundamental and existential paradigm shift facing humanity. Collaboration is also at the heart of why over the next 30 years, the Linux Foundation will play an increasingly important role as the planet negotiates the transformation of the world’s largest machine — the electrical power grid — and the economies and societies that depend on it.
The Linux Foundation has the opportunity to take a proactive position and tremendous potential to help address the critical global challenges stemming from climate change which, if left unabated, guarantee catastrophic disruptions in our physical and emotional worlds. The LF shows a path forward that is open and collaborative so that companies, countries, even continents can work together versus the often uncoordinated and piecemeal efforts in place so far that, if left unchecked, will fall short.
The threat is real
Undoubtedly, worldwide climate change is the greatest existential threat facing humanity since asteroids caused the 5th extinction 65 million years ago.
And it is now locked in, with climate change driving the planet’s health past tipping points that we cannot reverse. We are now in a battle of staving off our own demise, and we must transition whole economies off fossil fuels to renewables without tanking those economies and unleashing chaos.
Since the mid-1800s, three charts reveal a lock-step progression of fossil fuel, GDP, and carbon parts per million — the pollution that contributes to a warming world. The externalities that have driven the economic expansion of the last 150 years are now forcing a reconciliation. We are at the last possible moment.
Climate solutions at the Linux Foundation
Several Linux Foundation projects are already working on various climate solutions.
LF Energy is accelerating the decarbonization of the global economy through the transformation of power system networks and delivering a full interoperability stack for EVs and vehicles to grid (V2G) to onboard intermittent and renewable energy at scale.
2021 was a pivotal year for LF Energy in its mission to lead the energy transition through global open source collaboration. Highlights include:
Increasing the size of the effort to 20 open source projects, Stretching to 44 members, adding Microsoft and Hitachi ABB Adding new entrants into the energy sector like Savoir-Faire Linux.
LF Energy software projects in development are innovating on substations and multi-protocol gateways, electrifying transportation, improving grid automation, reducing grid congestion, creating flexible markets, enabling avoided energy markets, increasing grid resilience, improving data monitoring and analysis, and optimizing network operations.
Via the collaboration that forums like LF Energy provide, innovative technologies can get to market faster. As LF Energy members grow to include traditional utility OEMs like GE and Hitachi ABB, those technologies are more likely to be adopted and spread faster throughout the energy ecosystem.
OS-Climate is developing a platform of data and analytics to close the $1.2 Trillion gap in financing and investment required to achieve Paris Climate Accord goals. Avoiding catastrophic global warming levels and ensuring resilience to climate impacts requires rapidly closing the $1.2 trillion gap in investment for climate solutions each year. But pension funds, asset managers, banks, corporations, and regulators lack the data and analytics required to reallocate financing toward decarbonization.
Related:
BNY Mellon Joins Linux Foundation to DriveGLEIF, OS-Climate & Amazon Drive Broader and Faster Development of Climate-Aligned Financial ApplicationsLinux Foundation’s Open Source Climate Welcomes Airbus, EY, and Red Hat
At COP-26 in Glasgow this week, OS-Climate rolled out its prototype Data Commons and AI-enhanced tools for climate-alignment and physical risk analysis of portfolios — key for transitioning the global economy to Net Zero emissions and a sustainable future. In the last year, membership and number of active contributors have grown by more than 300% and more than 600%.respectively.
In May of 2021, the Linux Foundation, with Joint Development Foundation Projects LLC, along with its partners Accenture, GitHub, and Microsoft, announced the formation of the Green Software Foundation to build a trusted ecosystem of people, standards tooling, and leading practices for building green software.
As we think about the software industry’s future, we believe we have a responsibility to help build a better future – a more sustainable future – both internally at our organizations and in partnership with industry leaders around the globe. With data centers worldwide accounting for 1% of global electricity demand, and projections to consume 3-8% in the next decade, we must address this as an industry.
The Green Software Foundation was born out of a mutual desire to collaborate across the software industry. Organizations with a shared commitment to sustainability and an interest in green software development principles are encouraged to join the Foundation to help grow the field of green software engineering, contribute to standards for the industry, and work together to reduce the carbon emissions of software.
The rest of the Linux Foundation ecosystem can play a substantial role going forward by enabling that power quality and power consumption — so that one day, every device running Linux or embedded Linux on the edge which draws energy from power networks can provide arbitrage to the grid by accepting a price signal.
On that day, every project at the Linux Foundation will address some part of the decarbonization of the global economy. Linux helped build the world we see today; The Linux Foundation will be central to transforming the world so that future power systems will enable our grandchildren’s children to inherit a healthier planet.
These efforts are made possible by the dozens of enterprises that support the LF Energy, OS-Climate, and Green Software Foundation projects.
To learn how your organization can help transform and decarbonize our power system networks while accelerating the transition to electric mobility from fossil fuels, get involved with LF Energy by clicking here
To learn how your organization can get involved with OS-Climate, click here
To learn how your organization can get involved with Green Software Foundation, click here
The post The Linux Foundation Meets Its Biggest Challenge Yet: Saving the Planet appeared first on Linux Foundation.
How to replace Docker with Podman on a Mac, revisited
Want to use Podman on macOS? There’s a new way with podman machine. Here’s what you need to know.
Read More at Enable Sysadmin
Live Debugging Techniques for the Linux Kernel, Part 3 of 3
Final of a three part series, where Alex
Click to Read More at Oracle Linux Kernel Development
In Case You Missed It: State of the Open Mainframe 2021
Authors: John Mertic, Maemalynn Meanor, Jason Perlow
The mainframe is a foundational technology that has powered industries for decades, including government, financial, healthcare, and transportation. With the help of surrounding communities, the technologies built around this platform have paved the way for the emergence of a new set of technologies we see deployed today. Notably, a significant number of mainframe technologies are profoundly embracing open source.
Linux comes to the mainframe
As Linux began to take the world by storm in the 1990s, a small group of mainframe enthusiasts started experimenting with Linux on IBM System 390 (a previously current generation of mainframe hardware). Over the last 20 years, others like Hitachi and Fujitsu also invested in enabling open source and Linux on their mainframe platforms. Linux on mainframe marked its official start on December 18, 1999, with IBM publishing a collection of patches and additions to the Linux 2.2.13 kernel.
The year 2000 brought momentum to Linux on the mainframe. The first true “Linux distribution” for these systems came in early 2000 as a collaboration between Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Think Blue Linux by Millenux in Germany. By October of that year, SUSE became the first vendor-supported Linux Distribution, in the first release of what’s now known as SUSE Enterprise Linux. SUSE’s first s390x distro represented an early example of the mainframe leading the way in the evolution of computing technology.
Today, nine known Linux distributions currently provide an s390x architecture variant: Alpine, ClefOS, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, RHEL, SUSE, and Ubuntu.
The expansion of the mainframe as a platform for Linux continues to be nurtured in the Open Mainframe Project, with key projects outlined below helping Linux on the mainframe continue to be a platform used by Fortune 100 companies worldwide.
Feilong, which provides an interface between z/VM (the primary hypervisor for mainframe, is directly based on technology and concepts dating back to the 1960s) and modern cloud stack systems such as OpenStack, is jointly developed by IBM, SUSE, and others.Tessia is a tool that automates and simplifies the installation, configuration, and testing of Linux systems running on the Z platform.
Developments in COBOL
COBOL, which stands for “Common Business-Oriented Language,” is a compiled, English-like computer programming language developed for use as a business applications language. Its roots go back to the 1950s, and COBOL is still frequently used in many industries for key applications.
The COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020 put high levels of stress on various government services due to the unprecedented number of unemployment applications and other similar needs. This put the spotlight on COBOL, as it was then the predominant technology used for these systems. This also highlighted the perceived lack of talent to support these systems, which have code going back to the 1960s.
The vast COBOL and mainframe communities quickly addressed this need and made several efforts to provide a sustainable home for COBOL.
Calling all COBOL Programmers Forum – an Open Mainframe Project forum where developers and programmers who would like to volunteer can post their profiles or are available for hire. Whether they are actively looking for employment, retired skilled veterans looking to stay involved, students who have completed COBOL courses, or are professionals wanting to volunteer, the forum offers the opportunity for job seekers to specify their level of expertise and availability to assist. Employers can then connect with these individuals as needed.
COBOL Technical Forum – a new forum created specifically to address COBOL technical questions in which experienced COBOL programmers monitor activity. The forum allows all programmers to quickly learn new techniques and draw from a broad range of community expertise to address common questions and challenges exacerbated during this unprecedented time. Open Source COBOL Training – the Open Mainframe Project Technical Advisory Council has approved hosting a new open source project that will lead collaborative efforts to create training materials on COBOL. The courseware was contributed by IBM based on its work with clients and institutions for higher education and is provided under an open source license.
These initiatives were followed by a formal COBOL Working Group established later in 2020 to address the long-term challenges in building a sustainable COBOL ecosystem.
In early 2021, attention turned to the tooling ecosystem for COBOL developers with the launch of the COBOL Check project. This initiative enables test-driven development (TDD) practices for COBOL by providing a unit testing framework.
Zowe brings together the industry leaders to drive the future development paradigms of the mainframe
Traditionally, organizations have been challenged by integrating mainframe applications and data with the other systems that power their enterprise. This integration task further created a talent development challenge, as the paradigms between mainframe and other enterprise computing systems differed enough to make skills not easily transferable.
Broadcom, IBM, and Rocket Software saw this challenge and independently developed various frameworks to close this gap with the mainframe development experience. These include:
An API Mediation Layer for standardizing the API experience for mainframe applications and servicesA CLI tool that could be run on a developer’s laptop or other non-mainframe systems and used for DevOps tooling integration.A Web Desktop interface to make it easier to develop web-based applications that leverage mainframe services and data using common development toolkits.
These components came together in August 2018 in Zowe, which was the first open source project launched that targeted the z/OS operating system (the predominant operating system on mainframe systems). The intention of bringing this project into the vendor-neutral Open Mainframe Project was to establish Zowe as the dominant development and integration tool for mainframe systems, aligning the mainframe community around Zowe.
After Zowe 1.0 was released in February 2019, the project quickly turned to enable a downstream ecosystem of vendor offerings to flourish by establishing the Zowe Conformance Program in August 2019. To date, there are more than 50 Zowe Conformant offerings from 6 different vendors in the mainframe industry.
In addition, Zowe has brought new projects into its scope, with the following incubator projects as of August 2021:
ZEBRA, which provides re-usable and industry compliant JSON formatted RMF/SMF data records so that many other ISV SW and users can exploit them using open-source SW in many ways (contributed by Vicom Infinity).Workflow WiZard helps developers and systems programmers simplify the generation and management of z/OSMF workflows (contributed by BMC).
Zowe boasts more than 300 contributors with more than 34,000 contributions as of August 2021.
Mentorship to support the mainframes of tomorrow
Open Mainframe Project has experienced record growth in contributions this year, with more than 105.31 Million Lines of Code written and over 9,600 commits submitted by Open Mainframe Project communities to date— a 100 percent increase across 20 projects and working groups. These numbers will only increase as Open Mainframe continues to be the cornerstone of governance and innovation for modernizing the mainframe and its path to IoT, Cloud, and Edge Computing.
But the mainframe workforce is aging — in fact, many organizations employ mainframers who half or more of their staff will be eligible for retirement soon. The aging workforce will be a global issue as many schools have shifted from teaching mainframe skills and important languages like COBOL and assembler. Some students don’t even know what a mainframe is or aren’t aware they use one each day.
The mainframe isn’t going away, so that means we need to get younger mainframers on board.
That’s why the Linux Foundation chose to help close the skills gap through education and training. Through the Open Mainframe Project’s Mentorship program, the project offered a hands-on experience in an open source environment with leaders from member companies such as BMC/Compuware, Broadcom, IBM, Micro Focus, Rocket Software, and many others.
This year, the mentorship program welcomed its largest mentee class from around the globe that worked on popular projects such as ATOM, COBOL Programming Course, COBOL Working Group, Mainframe Open Education, Polycephaly, Software Discovery Tool, and Zowe. Through one-on-one conversations, collaborative community meetings, technical development, and accessibility to mainframe technology, Open Mainframe helped lay the groundwork for the next generation of mainframers.
Additionally, as COBOL continues to be on-demand this year, Open Mainframe continued to enhance resources:
The COBOL Programming Course, which also became the first Open Mainframe project to complete the lifecycle and graduate to become a mature active project, went through an extensive overhaul to provide more detailed content for a better experience and deeper understanding for students and developers looking for a refresher course.COBOL Check launched in March to improve the design, understandability, maintainability, and longevity of core business applications. It supports IBM’s mainframe modernization program by enabling restructuring of existing applications of APIs. COBOL Check will complement the COBOL Programming Course and will leverage the support of the COBOL Working Group.
The future is bright for the mainframe
The mainframe has seen a resurgence in the past five years, with the launch of the Open Mainframe Project and the industry coming together in key open source projects in the COBOL, Linux on System Z, and z/OS ecosystems. The Open Mainframe Project hosts more than 20 projects and working groups supported by over 45 organizations as of August 2021, with no signs of slowing anytime soon.
Open Mainframe Summit 2021
For the second consecutive year, Open Mainframe Project hosted its flagship event virtually on September 22-23.
The theme of this year’s Open Mainframe Summit expanded beyond the mainframe to highlight influencers with strengths in the areas supporting or leveraging the technology like continuous delivery, edge computing, financial services, and open source. Keynote speakers for the event included Gabriele Columbro, Executive Director of Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS); Jason Shepherd, Vice President of Ecosystem at ZEDEDA and Chair of the LF Edge Governing Board; Jono Bacon, a leading community and collaboration speaker and founder of Jono Bacon Consulting; Steve Winslow, Vice President of Compliance and Legal at The Linux Foundation; Tracy Ragan, CEO and Co-Founder of DeployHub and Continuous Delivery Foundation Board Member, and more.
The event also highlighted projects, diversity, and business topics that offered seasoned professionals, developers, students, and leaders an opportunity to share best practices and network with like-minded individuals.
Open Mainframe Summit ended with 219 registered attendees that represented 83 companies. During the conference, there were 167 unique users on the platform, a 77% attendance rate, which is a slight increase when compared to last year.
The conference videos are available on the Open Mainframe Project Youtube Channel. Click here for the complete playlist.
These efforts are made possible by the dozens of enterprises that support the Open Mainframe Project. To learn how your organization can get involved, click here
The post In Case You Missed It: State of the Open Mainframe 2021 appeared first on Linux Foundation.
12 tutorials for building Linux labs
Want to create a home lab environment to test out new Linux skills? These how-tos will help ease your journey.
Read More at Enable Sysadmin
Try ‘labs as a service’ to learn Linux in the cloud
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Skills Workshops offer a way to learn more about Linux without building and maintaining your own lab environment.
Read More at Enable Sysadmin