today's leftovers

• Kafka destination improved with template support in syslog-ng - Blog - syslog-ng Community - syslog-ng Community

  The C implementation of the Kafka destination in syslog-ng has been improved in version 3.30. Support for templates in topic names was added as a result of a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) project. The advantage of the new template support feature is that you no longer have to use a static topic name. For example, you can include the name of your host or the application sending the log in the topic name. From this blog you can learn about a minimal Kafka setup, configuring syslog-ng and testing syslog-ng with Kafka.

 

• Announcing Istio 1.8.2

  This release contains bug fixes to improve robustness. This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.8.1 and Istio 1.8.2

• 2.5-inch "Industrial Pi" Pico-ITX SBC offers PoE , mini DP++ port

  The company also provides a 15mm thick heat spreader for fanless operation, and support for Windows 10 IoT Enterprise (64-bit) and Linux operating systems.

  

• ZimaBoard Intel Apollo Lake SBC and micro server goes for $69.99 and up (Crowdfunding)

  The board is passively cooled by its enclosure acting as a heatsink, and ships with Linux by default, although we’re not being told which distribution, possibly Ubuntu 20.04.

      

• Algolia Search in Jekyll

  I am relieved and delighted to have finally managed the Algolia search setup for Unix Tutorial. I’ve been looking to upgrade search for a long time but had not enough JavaScript and CSS knownledge to replace the default search with Algolia’s one. I’m going through a short technical course about Vue (JavaScript framework), so this must have put me into the right mindset.

 

• Partners Feel ‘Betrayed,’ ‘Taken Aback’ By Microsoft’s Direct Calls To Customers

  A California MSP learned a lesson years ago when a software vendor tried to go direct with his end users. So when Microsoft demanded contact information for his customers, he gave them an email address that went directly to him instead. Earlier this week that email account, which was set up about 18 months ago in the hopes that it would not be used, received a message from a Microsoft business development specialist offering his customer “free training.” “That’s exactly what I would do if I was trying to steal someone else’s business,” said the MSP, who asked not to be named because he fears retribution from Microsoft for speaking out. “It’s just wrong. It’s just wrong. Plain and simple.”

 

• Windows 10 bug corrupts your hard drive on seeing this file's icon

  In August 2020, October 2020, and finally this week, infosec researcher Jonas L drew attention to an NTFS vulnerability impacting Windows 10 that has not been fixed. When exploited, this vulnerability can be triggered by a single-line command to instantly corrupt an NTFS-formatted hard drive, with Windows prompting the user to restart their computer to repair the corrupted disk records. The researcher told BleepingComputer that the flaw became exploitable starting around Windows 10 build 1803, the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, and continues to work in the latest version. What's worse is, the vulnerability can be triggered by standard and low privileged user accounts on Windows 10 systems.

• The Linux Foundation launches 7-part open source management training program

• Open source software security in an ICT context – benefits, risks, and safeguards

  In a recent report, contributors to free and open source software (FOSS) claimed they spent only 2.27 percent of their contribution time on security. In our latest blog post, we delve into open source software security, and discuss why it’s key for building robust and open interoperable networks. [...] Is open source software better than proprietary software when it comes to security vulnerabilities? Elias Levy, the person behind the infamous (vulnerability) full disclosure mailing list, Bugtraq, said two decades ago: “No. Open Source Software certainly does have the potential to be more secure than its closed source counterpart. But make no mistake, simply being open source is no guarantee of security”. Building and delivering complex system software without security vulnerabilities requires investment and due diligence, regardless if the code is open sourced or proprietary (see figure 1, below). As the Mozilla Foundation states: “Security is a process. To have substantial and lasting benefit, we need to invest in education, best practices, and a host of other areas”. Tools and resources are available. With safeguards in place, OSS can be used effectively at low risk to realize its intended benefits. ICT products relying on OSS must be developed using methodologies and safeguards that ensure the expected level of security is met. OSS can accelerate innovation, reduce the development timeline, speed time to market, realize cost savings, and be secure. ICT vendors must take responsibility and practice a higher level of due diligence when using OSS components.

• Email is the messenger you should migrate to

  But the most important thing: Delta Chat allows you to communicate even with people who don’t use Delta Chat at all, all you need is an email address! If you write to someone without Delta Chat, they will just get a normal email. I would argue that even beats Matrix or XMPP.

  Conclusion: If you are concerned about security when chatting and would rather use a decentralized messenger (no silo), you are in good hands with email and Delta Chat.

• IMAPS specialisations – call for participation in the public review of LIMAPS, OIMAPS, SIMAPS and TIMAPS!

  The objective of this public consultation is to produce updated releases of the IMAPS specialisations, which will provide insights on specific interoperability viewpoints of the digital public service, i.e. the legal, organisational, technical and semantic interoperability viewpoints. Both IMAPS and its specialisations assess the various areas of a digital public service in terms of behavioural interoperability specifications, capabilities and manifestations. The update of the releases of the IMAPS specialisations will be based on change requests coming from stakeholders interested in the solutions.

today's howtos

• How to Install IonCube Loader on Ubuntu - Cloudbooklet

  How to Install IonCube Loader on Ubuntu. IonCube Loader is a PHP extension used when you are using a PHP script that is encrypted using ionCube. IonCube needs to be installed in your webserver and made accessible to your PHP to use it. In this guide you are going to learn how to install ionCube loader on Ubuntu or Debian and configure your PHP or PHP-FPM and PHP-CLI to use it.

• How to Setup CentOS Stream from AWS Marketplace

  In the current trend of IT Infrastructure, Cloud Computing occupies a tremendous role. Most of the top companies are looking for Cloud Providers to have their Infrastructure. As per our requirement, we can provision our servers at any time. According to the server configuration, we will be charged per usage. Amazon Marketplace is the place where you can find software from qualified third-party vendors. It is like an online software store where you can buy software and use it as per your need. In this article, we will see the detailed steps to launch CentOS-Stream from AWS Marketplace.

• Create a MAN page for your own program or script with Pandoc - PragmaticLinux

  A MAN page is documentation for a software program or script, created in the groff typesetting system. Ever tried writing a MAN page? I bet you thought to yourself: “Yeez, there’s got to be an easier way to do this”. Luckily, there is. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to write a MAN page comfortably in Markdown. Then we’ll use Pandoc to create the actual MAN page for your program or script, properly formatted in the groff typesetting system.

• Looking into Linux user logins with lslogins

  One convenient way to list details about user logins on a Linux system is to use the lslogins command. You'll get a very useful and nicely formatted display that includes quite a few important details. On my system and likely most others, user accounts will start with UID 1000. To list just these accounts rather than include all of the service accounts like daemon, mail and syslog, add the -u option as shown in the example below.

Programming Leftovers

• Coming in glibc 2.33: Reloadable nsswitch.conf

  In my previous article about nsswitch.conf I talked about how simple, perhaps too simple, this config file is to use. What I didn’t cover then was how simplistic its internal implementation is. Specifically, an application only loads this file once—the first time it’s needed. So, what do you do when nsswitch.conf needs to change? How do you update all of the running applications? You don’t! The only way to force a reload is to stop the application and restart it. That is not always an option, especially for critical applications that might take a long time to restart. Recent work behind the scenes in the GNU C library will change all of this. As of glibc version 2.33, this config file now reloads and reparses each time it changes, and only the configuration is reloaded. If the configuration calls for an external shared library to be loaded, that object is only ever loaded once. It may be called in a different sequence, or not called at all, but it is never unloaded. This behavior avoids a whole class of problems related to unloading shared objects that might still be in use.

• SEGGER's Complete J-Link Software Now Available for Linux on ARM

  SEGGER’s entire portfolio of J-Link software is now available for Linux on ARM, for both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. This includes both the command-line programs and GUI tools such as J-Flash, J-Flash SPI, J-Scope, the J-Link Configurator, and the GUI version of the GDB Server. “J-Link can now be used on Raspberry Pi and other ARM-based machines, without any limitations,” says Alex Grüner, CTO at SEGGER. “Small single-board ARM computers now offer the same functionality as x86 powered machines. The inexpensive Raspberry Pi and similar boards are now viable options, especially in test farms and production environments.”

• Bootstrappable builds

  The idea of Reproducible Builds—being able to recreate bit-for-bit identical binaries using the same source code—has gained momentum over the last few years. Reproducible builds provide some safeguards against bad actors in the software supply chain. But building software depends on the tools used to construct the binary, including compilers and build-automation tools, many of which depend on pre-existing binaries. Minimizing the reliance on opaque binaries for building our software ecosystem is the goal of the Bootstrappable Builds project. For example, GCC is written in C and C++, which means that it requires compilers for those two languages in order to be built from source. In practice, that generally means a distribution would use its existing binary executables of those tools to build a new GCC version, which would then be released to users. One of the concerns with that approach is described in Unix inventor Ken Thompson's Turing Award lecture "Reflections on Trusting Trust" [PDF]. In a nutshell, Thompson said that trusting the output of a binary compiler is an act of faith that someone has not tampered with the creation of that binary—even if the source code is available. The Bootstrappable Builds project was started as an offshoot of the Reproducible Builds project during the latter's 2016 summit in Berlin. A bootstrappable build takes the idea of reproducibility one step further, in some sense. The build of a target binary can be reproduced alongside the build of the tools required to do so. It is, conceptually, almost like building a house from a large collection of atoms of different elements.

• Parasoft Accelerates CI/CD Pipeline Through Partnership With IAR Systems

  IAR Build Tools for Linux uses the leading build tools from IAR Embedded Workbench and empowers software developers who build safety-critical applications to work directly on the Linux host environment, eliminating toolchain version management.

• Josef Strzibny: Working with decimals in Elixir

  Integers are not enough, and floats are flawed? Decimals to the rescue! A short guide of what’s important when working with decimals in Elixir. This post is about the Decimal 2.0 module from decimal Hex package. As with every module in Elixir, running h Module and Module.module_info in IEx is a good place to start.

• Swift Deploys: Dealing with Anti-Patterns and Unresolved Issues

  In a long end-of-the-year blog post, Charity Majors, co-founder and CTO of honeycomb.io, discussed lead time to deploy, or “the interval encompassing the time from when the code gets written and when it’s been deployed to production.”

• Perl weekly challenge 95

  You are given a number $N. Write a script to figure out if the given number is Palindrome. Print 1 if true otherwise 0.

• Perl Weekly Challenge 95: Palindrome Numbers and Demo Stack

• Learn awk by coding a "guess the number" game | Opensource.com

  Once you understand these concepts, you can start figuring the rest out. For example, most languages have a "way of doing things" supported by their design, and those ways can be quite different from one program to another. These ways include modularity (grouping related functionality together), declarative vs. imperative, object-orientation, low- vs. high-level syntactic features, and so on. An example familiar to many programmers is "ceremony," that is, the amount of work required to set the scene before tackling the problem. The Java programming language is said to have a significant ceremony requirement, stemming from its design, which requires all code to be defined within a class.

• The terminal, the console and the shell - what are they?

  The other day, as I was going through some of my old notes, I stumbled upon something I had written about the console, the terminal and the shell on Unix-like operating systems. I have decided to rewrite these notes in order to share them here on my website. So without further ado we will now stroll down memory lane and take a quick look at the origins of the Unix terminal and shell. And I will also give my advice to new users on Linux or BSD regarding the choice of terminal emulator and shell.