● 03.15.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 16/3/2022: Norbert Preining Interviewed, Go 1.18 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 9:22 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Instructionals/Technical

• OTRS is a very powerful open-source ticketing help desk solution that any business would be smart to consider. I recently walked you through the installation of OTRS and now it’s time to dive in and start getting the system ready for work.

• I gave an example of flattening in an earlier BASHing data post, but in that case I ignored blank data items, i.e. unfilled spaces in the data table. The following code replaces blanks with “nodata” and again uses pipes as separators in its output. It assumes the table has tab-separated fields, i.e. the table is a TSV. See that earlier BASHing data post for an explanation of how the AWK command works.

• Today we are looking at how to install TupiTube Desk on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

• Using AWS Secrets manager you can store, retrieve, rotate and manage secrets such as database credentials, API keys and other sensitive information used by your application.

• Infrastructure as Code is used to maintain Terraform-created cloud resources. IaC is supposed to be used for all resource adjustments, installation, and deletion. Manual updates via the web console are strictly followed by teams who’ve already used Terraform for infrastructure management.

• In this post, you’ll learn how to handle the deletion of Terraform-managed cloud infrastructure resources as well as how to avoid some frequent issues.

• Keeping everything in the same file when dealing with a big number of variables might be difficult. As a result, it’s typical to isolate your variables into their own file.

Games

• The Atari VCS is an interesting piece of hardware that will likely appeal to older players who remember the company fondly, but a somewhat obtuse menu system and overall lack of exclusive, exciting content make it more of a niche (and expensive) purchase than other available consoles. The retro video game classics on display are just as enjoyable as they have always been (especially with the traditional Atari Joystick) but, apart from providing a concise way to own a preserved form of those original 2600 and Atari Arcade titles, the Atari VCS doesn’t offer much that isn’t available elsewhere.

• The Atari VCS isn’t just a gaming console, it also functions as a mini PC and streaming device. Netflix, Hulu, and other services are all readily available, and players can even utilize the VCS to play games through services like Google Stadia and Amazon Luna. In PC Mode, the Atari VCS allows players to access their existing game libraries, use emulators, and can even run different kinds of PC operating systems like Windows and Ubuntu. The console itself comes with an AMD Ryzen R1606G processor and includes an open M.2 SSD socket for users who want to increase the Atari VCS’ internal storage and memory.

Distributions

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

• I spoke with Paul Cormier, CEO of Red Hat, about how open source’s innovation enables edge computing, and why hybrid cloud is now the operative model going forward.

• At Red Hat, we believe that good ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, regardless of job title or hierarchy. Diversity fuels our inclusive culture by bringing in many perspectives and ideas, challenging our assumptions, and inspiring innovation. With 105+ offices in 40+ countries, plus many Red Hatters working remotely, we work collaboratively in globally distributed teams. Our projects benefit from having many different cultures and perspectives represented. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential as we strive to best understand and serve our customers around the world.

• Pierre-Yves Chibon posted a proposal to centos-devel about making GitLab available to CentOS SIGs. People involved with Special Interest Groups are encouraged to read the proposal and respond with questions or details of whether this proposal would help their SIG.

• [...]

• Sadly, we did not attract new volunteers to contribute to the SIGs purposes, but at the same time, we didn’t lose any.

Debian Family

• A developer who had more than two decades of service in the Debian GNU/Linux project was stripped of his status in December leading to him deciding to leave the project.

• Norbert Preining told iTWire in response to a query he decided that having been graded down to Debian maintainer was not something he wanted after all these years. He has now joined the Arch Linux project.

• “The teams and colleagues I have actively worked with, in particular the TeX team and the Qt/KDE team, have been excellent and welcoming, and I will miss working with them,” he said.

• “Only the ‘political’ side of Debian is, unfortunately, creating such a toxic atmosphere.”

• Asked if the situation that led to his demotion was around political correctness, Preining said: “Yes, more or less. I will not go into details here, since I have decided that I [will] let it rest and will write a long blog about the events including complete quotes from debian-private and DAM argumentation later on. I want to be sure that I don’t write in anger but from a settled and relaxed distance.”

• Debian-private is a mailing list only for developers; DAM is the Debian account manager team which can decide who is a member of the project and can take subsequent actions such as approving and expelling project members.

• A developer who had more than two decades of service in the Debian GNU/Linux project was stripped of his status in December leading to him deciding to leave the project. Norbert Preining told iTWire in response to a query he decided that having been graded down to Debian maintainer was not something he wanted after all these years. He has now joined the Arch Linux project.

• Preining said what basically happened was that the [Debian account manager (DAM) team] thought he was bullying members of the project. “I guess they are referring to my run-in with Martina Ferrari where she called me out in very strange and unfounded ways, which started a long lasting disagreement between her and me, and the blog post about Lars [Wirzenius, a project member] which was nothing more than a selection of quotes from Lars’ own blogs,” he added.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• It is an introduction to doing Internet transfers using libcurl, may 30-35 minutes presentation followed by a Q&A session where I can answer all and any questions you may have.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• The pgAdmin Development Team is pleased to announce pgAdmin 4 version 6.7. This release of pgAdmin 4 includes 4 bug fixes. For more details please see the release notes.

• pgAdmin is the leading Open Source graphical management tool for PostgreSQL. For more information, please see the website.

• The pgAdmin Development Team is pleased to announce pgAdmin 4 version 6.6. This release of pgAdmin 4 includes 13 bug fixes and new features. For more details please see the release notes.

• pgAdmin is the leading Open Source graphical management tool for PostgreSQL. For more information, please see the website.

• PostgreSQL Anonymizer is an extension that hides or replaces personally identifiable information (PII) or commercially sensitive data from a PostgreSQL database.

• The extension supports 3 different anonymization strategies: Dynamic Masking, Static Masking and Anonymous Dumps. It also offers a large choice of Masking Functions such as Substitution, Randomization, Faking, Pseudonymization, Partial Scrambling, Shuffling, Noise Addition and Generalization.

• pg_dumpbinary is a program used to dump a PostgreSQL database with data dumped in binary format. The resulting dump must be restored using pg_restorebinary that is provided with this tool.

Programming/Development

• Today the Go team is thrilled to release Go 1.18, which you can get by visiting the download page.

• Go 1.18 is a massive release that includes new features, performance improvements, and our biggest change ever to the language. It isn’t a stretch to say that the design for parts of Go 1.18 started over a decade ago when we first released Go.

• The latest Go release, version 1.18, is a significant release, including changes to the language, implementation of the toolchain, runtime, and libraries. Go 1.18 arrives seven months after Go 1.17. As always, the release maintains the Go 1 promise of compatibility. We expect almost all Go programs to continue to compile and run as before.

• Last night I built EasyOS 3.4.2 and uploaded it …woke up this morning and decided to test it a bit more before announcing. Aaaargh! …the Dunfell desktop in a container doesn’t work!

Perl/Raku

Leftovers

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Pseudo-Open Source

Privatisation/Privateering

Linux Foundation

• The Linux Foundation and Harvard Lab have released the second in a series of studies of the most commonly used and most critical software packages in the regular operations of Linux servers. This second study focuses on what open source software is most commonly deployed in both private and public organizations, with an eye toward better evaluating potential vulnerabilities and where security support should be concentrated.

Security

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

• A recently discovered botnet under active development targets Linux systems, attempting to ensnare them into an army of bots ready to steal sensitive info, installing rootkits, creating reverse shells, and acting as web traffic proxies.

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