March 03, 2015

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

The Fridge: DMB [Developer Membership Board] election results

The DMB election results are now in: http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_7ce24ee3e589e440

Those have been reviewd by the DMB and accepted during our latest meeting.

This results in Benjamin Drung leaving the board and Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre taking his seat.

Scott Kitterman, Iain Lane and myself get to stand on the board for another 2 years term.

With my TB hat on, I’ll now take care of implementing the required changes (Launchpad, mailing-list and IRC ACLs).

The DMB would like to thank Benjamin for all these years of good service to the DMB and welcome Mathieu as its latest member!

Originally posted to the technical-board mailing list on Mon Mar 2 19:35:52 UTC 2015 by Stéphane Graber

03 March, 2015 02:50AM

The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 406

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #406 for the week February 23 – March 1, 2015, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Paul White
  • Ian Nicholson
  • Elizabeth K. Joseph
  • Mary Frances Hull
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

03 March, 2015 02:33AM

hackergotchi for Xanadu developers

Xanadu developers

esto es una #prueba

ignore este mensaje


Archivado en: Mozilla

03 March, 2015 12:46AM by sinfallas

March 02, 2015

hackergotchi for Whonix

Whonix

First Bounty! 3.000 $ – Build Debian Packages from Source Code

For Task Details see:
https://www.bountysource.com/issues/9115540-build-debian-packages-from-source-code

Bounty too low? How to apply?

1) Go to https://www.bountysource.com/issues/9115540-build-debian-packages-from-source-code
2) Click on “Developers”
3) Click on “Get Started”
4) Select Status “Bounty too low”
5) Enter your offer and press “Save”.

The bounty may then be increased by if realistic and sustainable.

If you have any questions, please get in contact.

The post First Bounty! 3.000 $ – Build Debian Packages from Source Code appeared first on Whonix.

02 March, 2015 06:05PM by Patrick Schleizer

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Lubuntu Blog: [Poll] Community wallpapers 15.04

The poll is up!

Cast your vote by choosing your 5 favourite wallpapers.

The poll will be up until 9th March, and the top five contributions will be included in Lubuntu 15.04 and packaged into the Ubuntu repositories.

We would like to remind everyone participating in the contest that your submissions must adhere to the Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0 license. We have sent you a reminder on Flickr with instructions how to change your licenses on Flickr. Please change the license before 9th March, otherwise we are not allowed to use your wallpaper and must therefore disqualify your submission.

Please feel free to share the word and good luck to all contestants!

02 March, 2015 03:38PM by frankbooth (noreply@blogger.com)

hackergotchi for Cumulus Linux

Cumulus Linux

Guest Blog: REST API for Cumulus Linux ACLs

Cumulus Linux: REST API for Cumulus Linux ACLs

RESTful control of Cumulus Linux ACLs included a proof of concept script that demonstrated how to remotely control iptables entries in Cumulus Linux.  Cumulus Linux in turn converts the standard Linux iptables rules into the hardware ACLs implemented by merchant silicon switch ASICs to deliver line rate filtering.

Previous blog posts demonstrated how remote control of Cumulus Linux ACLs can be used for DDoS mitigationand Large “Elephant” flow marking.

A more advanced version of the script is now available on GitHub

The new script adds the following features:

  1. It now runs as a daemon.
  2. Exceptions generated by cl-acltool are caught and handled
  3. Rules are compiled asynchronously, reducing response time of REST calls
  4. Updates are batched, supporting hundreds of operations per second

The script doesn’t provide any security, which may be acceptable if access to the REST API is limited to the management port, but is generally unacceptable for production deployments.

Fortunately, Cumulus Linux is a open Linux distribution that allows additional software components to be installed. Rather than being forced to add authentication and encryption to the script, it is possible to install additional software and leverage the capabilities of a mature web server such as Apache. The operational steps needed to secure access to Apache are well understood and the large Apache community ensures that security issues are quickly identified and addressed.

This article will demonstrate how Apache can be used to proxy REST operations for the acl_server script, allowing familiar Apache features to be applied to secure access to the ACL service.

Download the acl_server script from GitHub

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pphaal/acl_server/master/acl_server

Change the following line to limit access to requests made by other processes on the switch:

server = HTTPServer(('',8080), ACLRequestHandler)

Limiting access to localhost, 127.0.0.1:

server = HTTPServer(('127.0.0.1',8080), ACLRequestHandler)

Next, install the script on the switch:

sudo mv acl_server /etc/init.d/
sudo chown root:root /etc/init.d/acl_server
sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/acl_server
sudo service acl_server start
sudo update-rc.d acl_server start

Now install Apache:

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian  wheezy main contrib' \
>>/etc/apt/sources.list.d/deb.list"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apache2

Next enable the Apache proxy module:

sudo a2enmod proxy proxy_http

Create an Apache configuration file /etc/apache2/conf.d/acl_server with the following contents:

<ifmodule mod_proxy.c>
  ProxyRequests off
  ProxyVia off
  ProxyPass        /acl/ http://127.0.0.1:8080/acl/
  ProxyPassReverse /acl/ http://127.0.0.1:8080/acl/
</ifmodule>

Make any additional changes to the Apache configuration to encrypt and authenticate requests.

Finally, restart Apache:

sudo service apache2 restart

These above steps are easily automated using tools like Puppet or Ansible that are available for Cumulus Linux.

The following examples demonstrate the REST API.

Create an ACL

curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -X PUT --data '["[iptables]","-A FORWARD --in-interface swp+ -d 10.10.100.10 -p udp --sport 53 -j DROP"]' http://10.0.0.233/acl/ddos1

ACLs are sent as a JSON encoded array of strings. Each string will be written as a line in a file stored under/etc/cumulus/acl/policy.d/ – See Cumulus Linux: Netfilter – ACLs. For example, the rule above will be written to the file 50rest-ddos1.rules with the following content:

[iptables]
-A FORWARD --in-interface swp+ -d 10.10.100.10 -p udp --sport 53 -j DROP

This iptables rule blocks all traffic from UDP port 53 (DNS) to host 10.10.100.10. This is the type of rule that might be inserted to block a DNS amplification attack.

Retrieve an ACL

curl http://10.0.0.233/acl/ddos1

Returns the result:

["[iptables]", "-A FORWARD --in-interface swp+ -d 10.10.100.10 -p udp --sport 53 -j DROP"]

List ACLs

curl http://10.0.0.233/acl/

Returns the result:

["ddos1"]

Delete an ACL

curl -X DELETE http://10.0.0.233/acl/ddos1

Delete all ACLs

curl -X DELETE http://10.0.0.233/acl/

Note this doesn’t delete all the ACLs, just the ones created using the REST API. All default ACLs or manually created ACLs are inaccessible through the REST API.

The acl_server batches and compiles changes after the HTTP requests complete. Batching has the benefit of increasing throughput and reducing request latency, but makes it difficult to track compilation errors since they are reported later. The acl_server catches the output and status when running cl-acltool and attaches an HTTP Warning header to subsequent requests to indicate that the last compilation failed:

HTTP/1.0 204 No Content
Server: BaseHTTP/0.3 Python/2.7.3
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2015 05:31:06 GMT
Accept: application/json
Content-Type: application/json
Warning: 199 - "check lasterror"

The output of cl-acltool can be retrieved:

curl http://10.0.0.233/acl/lasterror

returns the result:

{"returncode": 255, "lines": [...]}

The REST API is intended to be used by automation systems and so syntax problems with the ACLs they generate should be rare and are the result of a software bug. A controller using this API should check responses for the presence of the last error Warning, log the lasterror information so that the problem can be debugged, and finally delete all the rules created through the REST API to restore the system to its default state.

While this REST API could be used as a convenient way to manually push an ACL to a switch, the API is intended to be part of automation solutions that combine real-time traffic analytics with automated control. Cumulus Linux includes standard sFlow measurement support, delivering real-time network wide visibility to drive solutions that include: DDoS mitigation, enforcing black lists, marking large flows, ECMP load balancing, packet brokers etc.

Guest Contributor: Peter Phaal, President, InMon

A co-founder, Peter has ten years experience in the field of network management. Before InMon, Peter worked at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. He is the original inventor of Hewlett-Packard’s Extended RMON technology. His book , “LAN Traffic Management,” describes the techniques of monitoring and managing traffic on local area networks. More recently Peter invented key technologies in use in Hewlett-Packard’s Web Quality of Service (WebQoS) products.

The post Guest Blog: REST API for Cumulus Linux ACLs appeared first on Cumulus Networks Blog.

02 March, 2015 03:00PM by Peter Phaal

hackergotchi for Xanadu developers

Xanadu developers

Como hacer shrink (compactar) al disco de una maquina virtual de KVM o Virtualbox que contenga un GNU/Linux

Cuando utilizamos maquinas virtuales con discos dinámicos estos inevitablemente crecen y aunque eliminemos archivos dentro de ellas este espacio se mantendrá marcado como ocupado y a la hora de manipular las imágenes de disco este espacio adicional puede causar algunos inconvenientes.

Para reclamar dicho espacio primero debemos abrir un terminal como root y ejecutar el siguiente comando.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=0bits bs=20M; rm 0bits

Este procedimiento puede tardar un poco, dependiendo del espacio a reclamar, luego apagamos la maquina virtual y abrimos un terminal en la maquina host para ejecutar el comando correspondiente al hypervisor que utilicemos.

  • KVM
$ qemu-img convert -c -O qcow2 imagen.qcow2 imagen2.qcow2
  • Virtualbox
$ VBoxManage modifyhd --compact imagen.vdi

Al finalizar podemos comprobar que las imágenes de disco son mas pequeñas que antes y se nos hará mas fácil realizar algunas tareas como respaldar, copia vía ssh, etc.

Espero que esta información les sea útil, saludos…


Archivado en: Uncategorized Tagged: disco, kvm, shrink, virtualbox

02 March, 2015 02:30PM by sinfallas

hackergotchi for SparkyLinux

SparkyLinux

SparkyLinux 3.6-dev3 LXQt

 

A new testing version of SparkyLinux 3.6-dev3 LXQt is out.

New iso image provides some bugs fixing and new features which make deep changes in the system. Most of them will be implemented to the next Sparky live/install images.
Please, test the live system, the installation process and the system installed on a hard drive as well.

Sparky 3.6-dev3 LXQt main keys:
– packages updated from Debian testing repository as of 2015/03/01
– LXQt 0.9
– two windows managers: Openbox (default) and Kwin
– fully system’s rebranding
– improved windows look of sparky and other applications which work with root privileges
– fixed issues with x-terminal-emulator used in sparky apps, on some desktops
– updated live-installer

If you find any problem – report it on SparkyLinux forums
If you’d like to rebrand your current Sparky installation – read the quick guide.
Testing iso images can be downloaded from the page http://sparkylinux.org/download/testing

 

SparkyLinux 3.6 LXQt

 

02 March, 2015 01:38PM by pavroo

hackergotchi for TurnKey Linux

TurnKey Linux

Basic self-documenting ReStructured Text example

For a few years now I've been using ReStructured Text for nearly all of my documentation needs and I'm loving it.

It was originally invented for Python documentation which is how I originally discovered it. As devoted fans we use it for pretty much everything. Documentation, e-mails, even legal documents!

In fact, most of our blog posts, including this one was originally written as e-mails in ReStructured text which can be automatically converted into HTML.

So when I decided it was time to hack an e-mail reply handling interface to the TurnKey forums I naturally chose ReStructured Text as the text markup format. It's close enough to regular plain text that most first-time users should be able to write up an e-mail reply and it will just work.

Unfortunately ReStructured Text is not completely freestyle so it is still possible for a user, especially one that wants to add a little bit of structure to their text to make a formatting mistake.

In that case case I wanted to return to sender something more useful than a cryptic error message, so I wrote up a basic self-documenting ReStructured Text example:

Basic self-documenting ReStructured Text example
================================================

Don't let the name scare you. RST (ReStructured Text) is merely a very
simple yet clever human readable plain text format which can be
automatically converted into HTML (and other formats). This
explanation of RST formatting also doubles as an example.

To see this example in HTML go to:

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/rst-example.html

Paragraphs
----------

Paragraphs are just regular plain text paragraphs. Nothing special
about them. The only rule is that paragraphs are separated by an empty
line.

This is a new paragraph.

Links
-----

Several link formats are available.

A naked link: http://www.example.com/

A link to `My favorite search engine <http://www.google.com>`_.

Another link to Ubuntu_ in a different format.

.. _Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/

Headlines
---------

We decide something is a headline when it looks like it in plain text.

Technically this means the next line has a row of characters (e.g., -
= ~) of equal length. You've already seen four headline examples
above. It doesn't matter which characters you use so long as they are
not alphanumerics (letters A-Z or numbers 0-9). To signify a deeper
headline level, just use different underline character.

Preformatted text
-----------------

Notice the indentation of the text below and the double colon (I.e.,
::) at the end of this line::

    Preformatted text
    preserves formatting of
    newlines

    Great for code,
    poetry,
    or command line output...

    $ ps

      PID TTY          TIME CMD
      551 ttyp9    00:00:00 bash
    28452 ttyp9    00:00:00 ps

Lists
-----

An *ordered* list of items:

1) A short list item.

2) One great long item with no newlines or whitespace. Garbage
   filler: Proin ac sem. Sed massa. Phasellus bibendum dui eget
   ligula.  Vivamus quam quam, adipiscing convallis, pellentesque
   ut, porta quis, magna.

3) A long item, formatted so that all new lines align with the first.
   Garbage filler: Nam dapibus, neque quis feugiat fringilla, nunc
   magna ultrices leo, vitae sagittis augue quam vel nibh.  Praesent
   vulputate volutpat ligula. Aenean facilisis massa nec nibh.

An *unordered* list of items:

* A list item formatted as one long line. Garbage filler: Lorem
  ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse
  risus quam, semper sit amet, posuere et, porttitor in, urna.

* A list item formatted as several lines aligned with the first.
  Garbage filler: Vivamus tincidunt. Etiam quis est sit amet velit
  rutrum viverra.  Curabitur fringilla. Etiam id erat. Etiam posuere
  lobortis augue.

Emphasis
--------

You emphasize a word or phase by putting stars around it. Like *this*.

Single stars provide *weak* emphasis, usually rendered in italics.

Double stars provide **strong** emphasis, usually rendered in bold.

The above example converted to HTML:

Basic self-documenting ReStructured Text example

Don't let the name scare you. RST (ReStructured Text) is merely a very simple yet clever human readable plain text format which can be automatically converted into HTML (and other formats). This explanation of RST formatting also doubles as an example.

To see this example in HTML go to:

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/rst-example.html

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are just regular plain text paragraphs. Nothing special about them. The only rule is that paragraphs are separated by an empty line.

This is a new paragraph.

Headlines

We decide something is a headline when it looks like it in plain text.

Technically this means the next line has a row of characters (e.g., - = ~) of equal length. You've already seen four headline examples above. It doesn't matter which characters you use so long as they are not alphanumerics (letters A-Z or numbers 0-9). To signify a deeper headline level, just use different underline character.

Preformatted text

Notice the indentation of the text below and the double colon (I.e., ::) at the end of this line:

Preformatted text
preserves formatting of
newlines

Great for code,
poetry,
or command line output...

$ ps

  PID TTY          TIME CMD
  551 ttyp9    00:00:00 bash
28452 ttyp9    00:00:00 ps

Lists

An ordered list of items:

  1. A short list item.
  2. One great long item with no newlines or whitespace. Garbage filler: Proin ac sem. Sed massa. Phasellus bibendum dui eget ligula. Vivamus quam quam, adipiscing convallis, pellentesque ut, porta quis, magna.
  3. A long item, formatted so that all new lines align with the first. Garbage filler: Nam dapibus, neque quis feugiat fringilla, nunc magna ultrices leo, vitae sagittis augue quam vel nibh. Praesent vulputate volutpat ligula. Aenean facilisis massa nec nibh.

An unordered list of items:

  • A list item formatted as one long line. Garbage filler: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse risus quam, semper sit amet, posuere et, porttitor in, urna.
  • A list item formatted as several lines aligned with the first. Garbage filler: Vivamus tincidunt. Etiam quis est sit amet velit rutrum viverra. Curabitur fringilla. Etiam id erat. Etiam posuere lobortis augue.

Emphasis

You emphasize a word or phase by putting stars around it. Like this.

Single stars provide weak emphasis, usually rendered in italics.

Double stars provide strong emphasis, usually rendered in bold.

02 March, 2015 05:25AM by Liraz Siri

hackergotchi for Maemo developers

Maemo developers

Maemo Community e.V. - Invitation to the General Assembly 01/2015

########################## ## English ########################## Maemo Community e.V. - Invitation to the General Assembly 01/2015 Dear Member, our Annual General Meeting will be held on 29.03.2015 20:00UTC on IRC Freenode channel #maemo-meeting. The agenda includes the following topics:
  1. Welcome by the Chairman of the Board
  2. Determination of the proper convocation and the quorum of the General Assembly
  3. Acceptance of the annual report for the fiscal year and actions of the Executive
  4. Election of the Board
  5. Amendment of Articles of Association / Association Rules
  6. Any other business
Requests for additions to the agenda must be submitted to the Board in writing one week prior to the meeting (§ 9 para. 2 of the Statutes). Please note that TOP5 is omitted if no changes are requested. Yours sincerely Oksana Tkachenko Chair of the Maemo Community e.V. Council ########################## ## German ########################## Maemo Community e.V. - Einladung zur Mitgliederversammlung Sehr geehrtes Mitglied, dear Member, unsere diesjährige ordentliche Mitgliederversammlung findet am 29.03.2015 20:00UTC im IRC Freenode Channel #maemo-meeting statt. Auf der Tagesordnung stehen folgende Themen:
  1. Begrüßung durch die Vorsitzende des Vorstands
  2. Feststellung der ordnungsgemäßen Einberufung und der Beschlussfähigkeit der Mitgliederversammlung
  3. Entgegennahme des Jahresberichts für das abgelaufene Geschäftsjahr und Entlastung des Vorstands
  4. Neuwahl des Vorstandes
  5. Änderung der Satzung/Vereinsordnung
  6. Verschiedenes
Anträge auf Ergänzungen der Tagesordnung müssen bis eine Woche vor der Versammlung schriftlich beim Vorstand eingereicht werden (§ 9 Abs. 2 der Satzung). TOP5 entfällt falls keine Änderungen beantragt werden. Mit freundlichen Grüßen Oksana Tkachenko Vorstandsratsvorsitzende des Maemo Community e.V.0 Add to favourites0 Bury

02 March, 2015 12:29AM by Oksana Tkachenko (oksana.a.tkachenko@gmail.com)

March 01, 2015

2015-02-24 Meeting Minutes

Meeting held 2015-02-24 on FreeNode, channel #maemo-meeting (logs)

Attending:
Alexander Kozhevnikov (MentalistTraceur), Peter Leinchen (peterleinchen), Oksana Tkachenko (Oksana/Wikiwide),

Gido Griese (Win7Mac)

Partial: Philippe Coval (RzR),
Martin Kolman (M4rtinK),

Absent: William McBee (gerbick), Jussi Ohenoja (juiceme)

Summary of topics (ordered by discussion):

  • Election system
  • eV: bank account
  • maemo trademarks

Topic (Election system):

Topic (eV: bank account):

  • Deutche Bank: hopefully all papers are accepted, they are being processed by the bank currently.
  • General Assembly meeting is expected at 29th of March, so invitation will be published soon, and members will be able to contribute to agenda of the meeting before 22nd of March.

Topic (maemo trademarks):

  • Maemo trademark will be renewed in the grace period (six months, beginning from February), to avoid double transfer of ownership (from Nokia to HiFo and from HiFo to MCeV) and to transfer ownership to MCeV directly, instead.
    It will also provide time to gather opinion of the community on which trademarks should be renewed (probably registered anew), and which ones can be allowed to expire.
  • Maemo Council and the Board are preparing a draft of the announcement on TMO, for trademark-registration-renewal fund-raiser, and to publish the information on trademark registration - a summary of email exchange with Roschier Brand Attorneys.
    Hopefully, the announcement will be ready by the time the bank account becomes open for donations.
    The announcement will likely be published in the same way as meeting minutes are: at maemo.org, at talk.maemo.org, and at maemo-community mailing list.

Action Items:
  • -- old items:
    • The selected Code of Conduct (KDE) still needs to be published on (T)MO.
    • Looking into automatic calculation of election results ...
    • Possible addition of personal voting link into email template in the DB of election system...
    • Contacting freemangordon and merlin1991 about auto-builder: CSSU-thumb target, GCC versions?
    • Contacting X-Fade, as well as Freenode staff directly, about the GC.
    • Getting maemo trademark registration (everywhere?) renewed (and transferred to MCeV) by the end of February (or within six months since expiry date).
    • archiving Ovi/Nokia store, especially for Harmattan.
  • -- new items:
0 Add to favourites0 Bury

01 March, 2015 11:14PM by Oksana Tkachenko (oksana.a.tkachenko@gmail.com)

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Milo Casagrande: Book Review: How Linux Works

Disclaimer: I received a free a copy of “How Linux Works 2nd Edition” to review from NoStarch Press.

How Linux Works CoverHow Linux Works 2n Edition book cover.

I enjoy doing these occasional reviews: it’s a good excuse to read a new book, learn something new (there’s always something to learn, every day) and to move my eyes aways from a light emitting digital device (yeah, apart from when I actually write the review…). And since I fully read the books, that’s why usually it takes some time to review them all.

I have to admit I love NoStarch books: lovely cover arts, a nice book form factor, well written and edited content, multiple formats to choose from (paper, digital DRM-free versions). And “How Linux Works” is no less.

The Review: How Linux Works by Brian Ward

17 chapters strong, the book opens with a general overview of a Linux system providing the reader with a really clean explanation of the differences between the kernel space and the user space, moving to a quick overview of the shell system.

From Chapter 3, the pace changes, and it’s here where the author starts diving into into the real Linux system. Devices, device types, sysfs and how they are implemented at the kernel level are an introduction to concepts that will be taken further in Chapter 4, where file systems, a generic overview on how they fit into the kernel, and the most used and common commands to work with partitions, are introduced.

I consider Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 to be the strength of the book: how the Linux boot process works, what GRUB is, does and how to configure it, all clearly explained with detailed steps of the overall boot process. And then, as a natural consequence after the boot phase, the init systems are introduced and the reader is taken further into the user space land.

Chapter 6 covers basically everything that is needed nowadays to understand the init process: systemd, upstart and sys-v are all explained in their glory details (although the latter is the less detailed): how they are configured, where their configurations are located and the different terminologies each adopts are easy to understand.

From here on, the book covers all that is necessary: logging, users, /etc and login methods with a focus on PAM (Chapter 7); processes, resources, CPU & I/O and all the commands to help you in performance diagnosis (Chapter 8); network, network configuration, a concise but exhaustive introduction to the network layers, the kernel routing table and internet/network user space applications (Chapter 9, 10).

Chapter 11 takes us back to the shell with an extensive coverage of its most useful and used commands, that will lead as to know all the file sharing programs available at our fingertips (Chapter 12).

The remaining chapters cover the user space environment: startup files, desktop environment and window manager, D-Bus, CUPS; development tools (compilers, debuggers) and how to compile software.

Of all the book, I found these last chapters (counting also Chapter 12) to be the less interesting: probably because most of the concepts described were already known, or they were covering not (that) much interesting subjects to me.

In the End…

The book is really well organized, technically accurate and up-to-date with the recent modern Linux technologies. A really great Linux power-user book that doesn’t spend too much time in a graphical environment, but concentrates on command line tools and the depths of how a Linux system is glued together. Read it if you want to expand and deepen your Linux knowledge.

The post Book Review: How Linux Works appeared first on Milo Casagrande.

01 March, 2015 05:32PM

Sujeevan Vijayakumaran: Ubuntu Phone: A deep look into the bq Aquaris E4.5

Two years ago Canonical announced the project "Ubuntu Touch". A few weeks back they released the first phone which is running Ubuntu pre-installed. This article focuses on both: the hardware and the software.

The last time I have used an Ubuntu Phone is roughly 1.5 years ago on a Nexus 4. Since then many things regarding the system has changed.

The Software

Using Ubuntu on your phone is quite different from using any other mobile operating system like Android or iOS. The biggest difference is the big use of gestures which you can use from every edge of the display.

Scopes

If you turn on the phone for the first time you get a quick introduction how to use the Ubuntu Phone. Everyone who never used an Ubuntu Phone should not skip this introduction, because it really helps you to use the phone. After that introduction you can set a password or a PIN to lock your device.

If you press the power button, then you see the Welcome-Screen. There you see different information of your usage of your phone. That includes the number of sent and received short messages, number of calls and the number of taken photos and videos. You can swipe the Welcome-Screen to both sides to unlock the phone. If you have set up a lock mechanism, it will be shown there.

What are scopes?

After you unlocked the device, you see one of the scopes. Scopes are one of the special features of Ubuntu Phone. There are two types of scopes: aggregated and branded scopes. Both type of scopes show different information to the users. Branded scopes have an app-like experience. Aggregation scopes on the other side are bringing content from different sources to the screen. It's like a good summary of different sources.

Ubuntu Phone uses a different approach compared to other mobile operating systems. On Android or iOS you mainly have app icons and a few widgets in grids, while you have different scopes on Ubuntu Phone. The benefit is that the user does not have to go through all those apps if there are suitable scopes which are bringing the content easily to the screen.

Pre-installed scopes

If you unlock the device the first time, you see the Today-Scope. This scope shows you a couple of information of the current day. These are the current date, today's weather divided into morning, evening and afternoon including the temperature. Additionally, it shows today's appointments, the next holiday and a list of the last calls and messages.

After a swipe to the left, you reach the NearBy-Scope. This scopes aggregates different information from your current location. The scope shows the weather of your current position and a couple of other interesting information. It mainly uses yelp to gather the information. In the default setting it shows places of interest, restaurants or schools. This all depends on your current location. Additionally, it shows a couple of photos from Flickr and Wikipedia articles of your current place. A rather cool feature is that you can set your current mood. Depending on that, the scope shows different content. You can choose between "I'm Bored", "On The Move", "I'm Hungry", "I'm Thirsty" and "I'm Stressed". If you are currently on the move, you can set it to "On The Move" and it will show the next bus stop and railway station. If you click on one of those, it will launch HERE Maps and shows the way to it. Funnily the option "I'm stressed" displays shoe and fashion stores. On the other side "I'm Hungry" shows you a couple of restaurants right next to you.

The third scope is simple. It's just the app launcher where you find all apps in a grid. The apps are divided into two groups: commonly used apps and all the other apps. The commonly used apps are fixed: Telephone, Messaging, Contacts, Camera, Browser and the Clock. Using the drop down menu you can filter the apps using categories like Games, Social Networking or Productivity.

The fourth scope is the news scope. It displays news from different news pages like BBC, Engadget or Euronews. You can actuall configure the sources, but sadly you can only disable the given sources.

There are a couple of other pre-installed and pre activated scopes like the music, video and photo scope. All three scopes presents local content and content from the internet. For example, if you shot a few photos and videos and copied some music songs to your device, they will be shown on the scope. Furthermore, it shows different content from YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Instagram. That all depends on the specific scope and accounts.

All described scopes are pre-installed and are activated when you turn on the device for the first time. There are still plenty of other scopes which you can activate when you swipe up from the bottom edge. There you see the names of all scopes in a list. You can activate or deactivate scopes by pressing the star on each scope.

There are many scopes which just cover different websites like BBC, cnet, Amazon, ebay, Reddit and many more. All these scopes are aligned to those specific websites. Consequently, you can search the website using the scope's searchbar. For example you get a few results if you search for items on the ebay or Amazon scope. The only thing is that you can't actually buy anything in the scope itself. It will just launch the browser.

Gestures

Next to the scopes, another noticeable thing are the system-wide gestures. On the right and on the left side of the screen you have two gestures which can be used globally in any app or scope. If you swipe from the left side, you can access the quick-app-launcher similar to the Unity app-launcher on the desktop. This can be opened when you do a short swipe. If you do a long swipe, you switch to your home scope. On the other edge of the display you can switch between the apps. Either you can do a short swipe, then you switch easily between two apps, or a long swipe brings you to a 3D overview of all opened apps. There you can close an app with another swipe or you can switch to the app by clicking on it.

On the top edge of the screen you can access the notifications and the quick-settings. In Ubuntu these are called indicators. The cool thing here is, that you can start swiping from a specific indicator. That means that you can swipe down from the battery indicator, which will show you the quick-settings of the battery. Same thing when you swipe down from the notification indicator. If you misplaced your finger you can simply switch to the other indicator by moving your finger to the right or left while swiping down.

The bottom edge of the screen does not have a global gesture. This gesture is based on the app you are currently using. The app developer can implement this gesture in their app.

Core- and System-Apps

There a several pre-installed apps which you need for your daily use of a smartphone. This includes the telephone app to place calls, the messaging app to send and receive SMS and MMS messages or the contacts app to organise your contacts. Additionally, there is obviously a camera app to take photos and videos. The camera doesn't have any special features but it can take HDR photos, tag your photos with your current GPS position or you can use the autotimer.

There is also a browser, which sadly doesn't have any settings. Therefore, you can only type in the URL of a web page, bookmark a web page and open and switch between tabs.

A pretty nice app is the gallery app to view your photos and videos on the device. The photos and videos are grouped by date. So you can scroll vertically to see the photos of different days and you can scroll horizontally on a specific date to see all thumbnails of the photos of that day. You also have the possibility to edit photos. This functionality is rather basic so you can cut details of a photo or you can automagically improve it.

The only available messaging app is Telegram. Other messengers like Google Hangouts, Threema, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger are not (yet) available. The Telegram app is working completely, you can send messages to individual persons or to groups.

There are a few other apps which I don't mention in detail here, like the Clock, Music, Weather and Todo app.

All named apps are native Ubuntu Phone apps. There are quite many other pre-installed apps which are mainly packaged WebApps. For example WebApps for Amazon, eBay, Facebook, GMail, Twitter or YouTube. Some of them supports hardware interfaces or notifications. Twitter notifies you for every Twitter-mention or DM, GMail notifies you for a new E-Mail.

In the system settings you find the same settings you can also change via the indicators, but here you have a few more options. For example you can add online accounts for services like Evernote, Soundcloud, Flickr, Facebook, Ubuntu One, Twitter, Fitbit, Instagram, Vimeo or Google. Additionally, you can set the Date and Time, Security and Privacy and you find the Update-Manager for apps and the systems.

Ubuntu Store

The Ubuntu Store is the place where you can find apps and scopes for your Ubuntu Phone. You can download scopes and apps for free or there are also a few paid apps. To enter the store you need to log in into your Ubuntu One account. Currently (March 1st) you find more than 800 apps. One guy developed an unofficial website where you can search and find all items in the store.

Many apps are only WebApps. The quality varies strongly. Anyway you find a few good apps, like the Terminal to use the command-line on the phone. You also find an E-Mail-Client named "Dekko" where you can set up your IMAP account. This app is still in beta, so there are still a few basic features missing. You can't actually receive push E-Mails and you can't automatically fetch your mails. You can only fetch the mails manually. Another app is the calendar which isn't pre-installed. Like the contacts app you only have the possibility to synchronise your appointments using Google Calendar. "Fahrplan" is a nice app, if you are a frequent user of public transportation. You can plan and check your trip using this app.

The hardware

The bq Aquaris E4.5 has a Quadcore-MediaTek-CPU with a clock rate of 1.3 GHz. The display has a size of 4.5" with a resolution of 540x960 pixels. It has 1 GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage which you can extend with extra 32GB by using a microSD card. The operating system is already using 2.5 GB of the internal storage.

The smartphone is 6.7 cm wide and 13,7 cm high. On the front side you have obviously the display, the ear cap, a front camera with 5 Megapixels and a notification LED. On the rear you find the 8 Megapixel Kamera with a Dual-LED-Flashlight.

The device is only 9 mm thin and weighs 123 gram. It is relatively light. On the bottom edge the device has the microUSB connection and the speakers. On the left side it has two microSIM slots and on the top you can insert the microSD card and you can connect your headphones.

The camera

The camera can take photos with a resolution of 8 Megapixel. If you take and view photos or videos on the device itself, it does look good, but if you view it on your computer then you see that the quality isn't really good. The colors are washy and even on pretty good lighting conditions the color reproduction isn't very well.

If you take photos on low light, you see many disadvantages of the camera. The photos do have a high image noise.

You should not forget that the phones price is only 170€, so you can't expect really good cameras in the phones in this price area. The quality of the photos is enough for some simple photos.

Haptics and Quality

The haptics of the phone is pretty good. The back cover is made of flat hard plastics with the disadvantage that it is a bit slippery. Also, the build quality is good, you can't hear any creaking when pressing the device on different spots.

I pretty much like the design. It looks like the phone is divided in two parts, because the front half is a bit smaller than the back half of the device. I'm using the device for three weeks now and the back cover doesn't have any scratches. Sadly the front does have some scratches. You can see and feel it on the border of the display. Even though the display itself does only have a few scratches, which you can only see when you have good eyes. Anyway you should avoid carrying the phone and your keys in the same pocket.

Overall impression

Ubuntu Phone as a system and the device are in a rather good shape with a few restrictions. You do need to learn to use the device which takes a while. But afterwards you might use the device easier and faster than other devices with another operating systems. At the start it's hard to use the correct gestures. Personally I managed to perform a gesture which I didn't want to do. Therefore, I often ended up in another app. For example this happened while swiping between all the scopes.

Basically the system is quite fast and doesn't have too many "minutes of silence". But the system does stutter a few times a day. It is extremely noticeable when swiping between different scopes and refreshing their content. Complete crashes of the full system don't really happen. There are mainly crashes when using scopes or apps.

I pretty much like all the Core apps which are in a good shape. As a developer, I see how native Ubuntu Phone apps should look and behave.

On a few spots you notice that the device or the system is rather slow. If you have taken a few photos and then you open the gallery app, it takes some seconds to display the overview. The gallery app slowly builds up the thumbnails and the overview. The same thing happens, when you are viewing the photos. Sometimes you have to wait up to five seconds to view a single photo.

Besides these issues there are many small other issues which you notice every day. Most of them can be fixed by upcoming software updates. The phone will get monthly updates. Even tough I already got two system updates in three weeks. One really annoying bug is the battery bug. The phone consumes a high amount of energy even if you don't use the phone. Therefore, the battery is empty quickly. The developers are currently working on a fix.

Conclusion

Canonical released the first Ubuntu Phone with bq. The hardware isn't too bad, even if the display doesn't have a high resolution. You'll get a device for 170€ from bq with a quite good build quality. The device and the system does have a few bugs, hick-ups and lags.

Anyway, I personally wouldn't recommend this device for end users because there are still many apps and scopes missing, to have a nice smarpthone operating system. This phone is mainly targeted for early-adopters, Ubuntu enthusiasts and developers. I hope the ecosystem around Ubuntu Phone will expand quickly. And anyway I'm really looking forward to the future improvements of Ubuntu Phone! Especially I'm waiting for the Meizu MX4 with Ubuntu pre-installed.

01 March, 2015 04:30PM

hackergotchi for Xanadu developers

Xanadu developers

Adyacente Posible o ¿Por qué no debemos creer en los libros de ciencia ficción futurista?

La expresión “adyacente posible” aplicado a la tecnología proviene del teórico de la biología Stuart Kauffman, según nos explica Peter H. Diamandis en su libro Abundancia. Steven Johnson también escribió sobre ello en Wall Street Journal:

La verdad extraña y hermosa sobre el adyacente posible es que sus fronteras se expanden a medida que las exploras. Cada nueva combinación abre la posibilidad de otras combinaciones nuevas. Piénsalo como si se tratara de una casa que se amplía mágicamente con cada puerta que abres. Empiezas en una habitación con cuatro puertas, cada una de ellas lleva a otra habitación en la que todavía no has estado. Cuando abres una de esas puertas y entras en la habitación, aparecen tres nuevas puertas, cada una de las cuales lleva a otra habitación completamente nueva a la que no podrías haber llegado desde el punto de partida original.

El adyacente posible es una idea que nos permite entender los limites y el potencial creativo de todo lo que existe en el universo, tanto lo natural como lo creado por el hombre.

La idea se vuelve más clara si pensamos en ella como todo aquello que yace en el terreno de las posibilidades y que espera un acto creativo que lo haga realidad. Es decir, el abanico de posibilidades y nuevos desarrollos que propicia un determinado desarrollo.

Por ejemplo, nadie podía imaginar el carro o el tren hasta que no se inventó la rueda. La invención de la rueda abrió un abanico enorme de nuevas posibilidades en forma de carreta, carruaje, carreteras, y otro millón de descendientes.

Una creación innovadora abrirá puertas que nos llevarán a terrenos inexplorados, sin embargo también habrá puertas que no podremos abrir hasta que otros actos creativos sucedan. Probablemente la principal característica del adyacente posible es que siempre está en expansión, cuando se abre una puerta aparecen otras tantas.

Otro ejemplo de esto es la telefonía móvil. Las generaciones nacidas después de 1990 en muchos países alrededor del mundo no conocen un mundo sin teléfonos celulares, sin embargo la telefonía personal, móvil  y masiva antes de 1980 era tan sólo una posibilidad que yacía en el mundo de las ideas, deseos y sueños de la humanidad.

El smartphone es el resultado de la expansión del adyacente posible y las puertas que la humanidad fue abriendo con el paso del tiempo. Los smartphones existen porque el ser humano fue capaz de crear la transmisión de datos, el telégrafo, el teléfono, los satélites, los microcircuitos, Internet, lenguajes de programación entre otros desarrollos tecnológicos, que también son resultado de la expansión de su propio adyacente posible.

Esa también la razón de que la prospectiva tecnológica se nos dé tan mal. Por ello no existen coches voladores como en “Back to the Future”. Y, en general, todas las películas sobre el futuro que hemos visto de niños se equivocaban. Nadie pudo preveer el nacimiento de Internet, y mucho menos cómo cambió el mundo.

La innovación en muchos casos es el resultado de explorar el adyacente posible en busca de las partes correctas para crear algo nuevo, que nos permita expandir las posibilidades y los limites del tiempo y espacio en que nos encontramos.

Kevin Kelly, fundador y director ejecutivo de la revista Wired, lo define de esta manera en su libro What Technology Wants:

Durante la mayor parte de la historia, la mezcla única de talentos, habilidades, conocimientos y experiencias de cada persona no tenía salida. Si tu padre era panadero, tú eras panadero. Conforme la tecnología expande el espacio de lo posible, también lo hace con las posibilidades que tiene alguien de encontrar una salida a sus atributos personales… Cuando ampliamos la variedad y alcance de la tecnología, aumentamos nuestras opciones, no solo para nosotros mismos y los demás seres vivos, sino para todas las generaciones venideras.


Archivado en: Uncategorized

01 March, 2015 04:00PM by sinfallas

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Riccardo Padovani: My opensource contributions in February 15

What a month for Ubuntu! First Ubuntu Phone has been announced and sales have started! Finally, after two years of work, we will have feedbacks from real consumers.

Also, on a personal level, it has been a great month. I went to London for the Ubuntu Phone launch. I did laser surgery to my right eye to correct myopia (I had 8 diopters), and in March I’ll do the left one. And I also had time to do some articles and a lot of code.

Stats

First of all, thanks to all you who follow me, this blog has a number of visitors I never expect. Without calculating who read articles on Ubuntu Planet or in a RSS Reader, this blog had 24,797 page views by 6,098 unique visitors in 28 days. Thanks to all! And I only wrote 4 articles!

Stats are calculated by CloudFare, I don’t have Analytics or others trackers on the site. It just counts the number of request it has.

Donations

More than visit, what astonished me is the number of donations: I had 3 donations for an amount of 30 euros! I’ll use them to buy a VPS, so thanks to all!

What I did

Now, it’s time to describe what I did in Feb. Considering the surgery, the uni and the journey to London for the Ubuntu Phone launch I’m quite satisfied for what I did.

Browser app

I started to work, with oSoMoN, on settings for the browser app. I haven’t a timeline for this, but we did some progress, and in next weeks we’ll land first branches.

This screenshot shows how the first version will appear when we’ll have implemented all features we want for the first land.

browser

Calculator Reboot

We’re working hard to replace the default calculator with the new one, news on this side will arrive in next weeks

Reviews

I spent a lot of time this month reviewing code of other guys, mainly for reminders and docviewer app. Reviews are really important for Ubuntu: every change to the code has to be approved by someone after a careful review: in this way we’re sure we have a good codebase and a good implementation of things. Reviews are very time consuming: you’ve to read and understand the code, then you have to test it and think how the change impacts the user experience.

Other than that, I did usual things: bug report, some code for ubuntu-it, promotion of Ubuntu on social networks, support on italian forum and on IRC and so on.

Have you ever thought about helping the Ubuntu development? There are a lot of things to do, and you don’t have to be a developer: we need translators, testers, promoters and so. Try to take a look here, and, if you have any doubt, write me. I’ll be more than happy to address you to the right place to start to contribute.

You know, I’m a student and I do all this in my free time. So, if you like my work and want to support me, just send me a Thank you! by email or offer me a coffee :-)

Ciao,
R.

01 March, 2015 01:00PM

February 28, 2015

hackergotchi for Blankon developers

Blankon developers

Sokhibi: Pre Order Buku Inkscape

Salam sejahtera untuk Anda semua pembaca setia tulisan saya, ini adalah update terbaru dari buku Inkscape yang saya tulis dan rencana terbitnya.. Alhamdulillah, setelah melalui perjuangan yang cukup melelahkan akhirnya buku Desain Grafis dengan Inkscape telah selesai proses editnya sehingga sudah layak terbit. Seperti rencana semula buku ini saya terbitkan secara mandiri mengingat jika

28 February, 2015 10:22PM by Istana Media (noreply@blogger.com)

hackergotchi for Parsix developers

Parsix developers

A new kernel based on Linux 3.14.34 has been released for Parsix GNU/Linux 7.0 (...

A new kernel based on Linux 3.14.34 has been released for Parsix GNU/Linux 7.0 (Nestor) and 7.5 (Rinaldo). Update your systems to install it.

28 February, 2015 06:28PM by Parsix GNU/Linux

Iceweasel (Firefox) 36.0 is now available for Nestor (7.0) and Rinaldo (7.5). Up...

Iceweasel (Firefox) 36.0 is now available for Nestor (7.0) and Rinaldo (7.5). Update your systems to install it.

28 February, 2015 06:27PM by Parsix GNU/Linux

New security updates are available for Parsix GNU/Linux 7.0 (Nestor) and 7.5 (Ri...

New security updates are available for Parsix GNU/Linux 7.0 (Nestor) and 7.5 (Rinaldo). Please see http://www.parsix.org/wiki/Security for details.

28 February, 2015 06:27PM by Parsix GNU/Linux

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Riccardo Padovani: Scopes are not widgets (they are better)

One of the thing I appreciate most on Ubuntu Phones are scopes: they are a totally new way to interact with contents. Unfortunately, after the presentation of the BQ Aquaris I’ve seen a lot of bloggers saying “Scopes aren’t innovative, Android has widgets for years”.

My first reaction was “C’mon, how could you say that? It’s obvious you haven’t tested them”. Then I understood that, yes, we have to blame bloggers because they talk about things they don’t know, but at the same time we weren’t good enough to explain why scopes are so cool, and why could be game changer (but they still need some work, as I’ll evidence at the end of the post).

Scopes

Ubuntu’s scopes are like individual home screens for different kinds of content, giving you access to everything from movies and music to local services and social media, without having to go through individual apps.

I don’t have a Youtube app, but I can see the best of Youtube without going on the browser.

youtube scope

Basically, they try to find the best result for your queries. This is one of the main differences with Android’s widgets: scopes have a search bar, and they update themself according to your search.

So I can see all Telegram messages I have about Ubuntu:

telegram scope

Also, sources of scopes (so where they take their informations) aren’t only installed apps, but could be anything: a website, a RSS feed, the scope itself, other scopes. Android’s widgets are only a quick link to their app.

Another interesting feature is department: if you want you can split a scope in departments, to have filters for informations. So, in the scope about near points of interesting, I can look for taxis, or restaurants, or so on:

poi scope

I hope it’s clear enough why scopes aren’t widgets. If we want to find a similarity in the Android world, scopes are like Google Now (but better).

Google Now

(I talk always about Android because I never tried a Windows Phone, or iOs)

Scopes are like Google Now because, without any query, they both try to provide us informations we need in that moment (on this side, Google Now is better because it has more informations about us).

home scope

But scopes will be better, because Google Now uses only one resource, Google, while scopes could use every resource on the web.

At the moment, scopes miss some things Google Now have, like flights search, but it misses some things scopes already provide.

What? One of the biggest company on Earth doesn’t have something a little company was able to provide in just a couple of years?

Yes. Because opensource always wins.

And scopes are opensource, and could use any source they want. Google Now is integrated with every Google app. Scopes are integrated with every app. So with a scope I can search my Telegram messages, or my Evernote notes (not yet, but we’re working on Evernote scope).

But scopes don’t win only about integration with apps. They win also on (some atm, all in a future) searches. I love beers, so let’s try to search for a good Orval:

orval

With a scope I have the result without having to open the browser.

Other than beers, I love to code. I don’t know everything, so sometimes I need some documentation; let’s try to find how print works in Python.

python

A link to the documentation, thanks Google, very useful. What about giving me the documentation itself, as Ubuntu scopes do?

And I can go on on this way for a lot of things.

Okay, I hope is clear my point here: the concept of scopes is the same of Google Now, but scopes are opensource and more powerful, now we only need developers to implement them. Luckily, it’s very easy to develop them, as Carla wrote on her blog.

What’s missing?

Scopes are amazing, but I think they need a couple of things to became a gamechanger in mobile world:

  • Voice search: voice search is critical nowadays: the less I have to look to the screen, the better is.
  • Scope of scopes: one thing I miss a lot is a scope using reply to my query by all scopes and returns me best results. At the moment I have to swype to choose the right scope (like, for beers, untappd): I prefer to do a search, without swiping, and have the best result.

But this is only the start of a great adventure. We have room for improvements.

Because, remember, on long run opensource wins. Always.

Ciao,
R.

I made this article (and other opensource contributions) in my spare time because I love what I’m doing. If you are enjoying it and you want to buy me a beer click here.

28 February, 2015 01:00PM

Lubuntu Blog: Lubuntu 15.04 Beta 1

We’re preparing Lubuntu 15.04, Vivid Vervet, for distribution in April 2015. With this Beta pre-release, we are now at the stage of being semi stable. However pre-releases are not suitable for a production environment.

Note: this is an beta pre-release. Lubuntu pre-releases are NOT recommended for:
  • regular users who are not aware of pre-release issues
  • anyone who needs a stable system
  • anyone uncomfortable running a possibly frequently broken system
  • anyone in a production environment with data or workflows that need to be reliable 

Lubuntu Pre-releases ARE recommended for:
  • regular users who want to help us test by finding, reporting, and/or fixing bugs
  • Lubuntu developers

Read the release notes before downloading.

28 February, 2015 12:47AM by Rafael Laguna (noreply@blogger.com)

hackergotchi for Grml developers

Grml developers

Frank Terbeck: U+1F596

Sadly, Leonard Nimoy passed away yesterday.

I wanted to use U+1F596 (🖖: “RAISED HAND WITH PART BETWEEN MIDDLE AND RING FINGERS”) in here. But as it turns out, my system doesn't support displaying that, yet (it's new in Unicode 7). Sadness all around. ☹

28 February, 2015 12:18AM

February 27, 2015

hackergotchi for Ubuntu

Ubuntu

Vivid Vervet Beta 1 Released

The first Beta of the Vivid Vervet (to become 15.04) has now been released!

Pre-releases of the Vivid Vervet are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu flavour developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting and fixing bugs as we work towards getting this release ready.

Beta 1 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs.

While these Beta 1 images have been tested and work, except as noted in the release notes, Ubuntu developers are continuing to improve the Vivid Vervet. In particular, once newer daily images are available, system installation bugs identified in the Beta 1 installer should be verified against the current daily image before being reported in Launchpad. Using an obsolete image to re-report bugs that have already been fixed wastes your time and the time of developers who are busy trying to make 15.04 the best Ubuntu release yet. Always ensure your system is up to date before reporting bugs.

This Beta features images for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, UbuntuKylin, Ubuntu Mate, Xubuntu and the Ubuntu Cloud images.

Kubuntu

Kubuntu uses KDE software and now features the new Plasma 5 desktop.

The Beta 1 images can be downloaded at:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/vivid/beta-1

More information on Kubuntu Beta 1 can be found here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VividVervet/Beta1/Kubuntu

Lubuntu

Lubuntu is a flavour of Ubuntu based on LXDE and focused on providing a very lightweight distribution.

The Beta 1 images can be downloaded at:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/vivid/beta-1

Ubuntu GNOME

Ubuntu GNOME is a flavour of Ubuntu featuring the GNOME desktop environment.Vivid Vervet Beta 1 Released

The Beta 1 images can be downloaded at:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-gnome/releases/vivid/beta-1

More information on Ubuntu GNOME Beta 1 can be found here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VividVervet/Beta1/UbuntuGNOME

UbuntuKylin

UbuntuKylin is a flavour of Ubuntu that is more suitable for Chinese users.

The Beta 1 images can be downloaded at:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/vivid/beta-1

More information on UbuntuKylin Beta 1 can be found here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VividVervet/Beta1/UbuntuKylin

Ubuntu Mate

Ubuntu Mate is a flavour of Ubuntu featuring the Mate desktop environment.

The Beta 1 images can be downloaded at:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/releases/vivid/beta-1

More information on Ubuntu Mate Beta 1 can be found here:

https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/ubuntu-mate-vivid-beta1/

Xubuntu

Xubuntu is a flavour of Ubuntu shipping with the XFCE desktop environment.

The Beta 1 images can be downloaded at:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/vivid/beta-1

More information on Xubuntu Beta-1 can be found here:

http://xubuntu.org/news/xubuntu-15-04-beta-1/

Ubuntu Cloud

Ubuntu Cloud images can be run on Amazon EC2, Openstack, SmartOS and many other clouds.

The Beta 1 images can be downloaded at:

http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/vivid/beta-1/

Regular daily images for Ubuntu can be found at:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop Vivid, we suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list. This is a low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes, alpha and beta releases and other interesting events.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

A big thank you to the developers and testers for their efforts to pull together this Beta release!

Originally posted to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list on Thu Feb 26 19:30:02 UTC 2015 by Elfy, on behalf of the Ubuntu release team.

27 February, 2015 11:10PM by lyz

hackergotchi for rescatux

rescatux

Improve grub detect loop (Super Grub2 Disk – Live Development)

This live development is about improving grub detect script so that it does not loop so much. We will also try to do other improvements.

I would have liked to announce it more in advance but that’s you what you get. Two days or so.

It will take about half an hour or an hour. Depending on it I might do an additional live development for Rescatux after it.

So if you want to join the conversation you need to join the #sgrub channel at freenode.

March 1, 2015  at 15:00 UTC Time.

Check the exact time for your country.

flattr this!

27 February, 2015 10:08PM by adrian15

hackergotchi for Whonix

Whonix

Unmaintained Notice! – Whonix inside KVM – Looking for contributor!

Since previous Whonix in KVM maintainer HulaHoop was last active on January 04, 2015, it’s safe to assume this person got lost. No idea why HulaHoop went inactive. There was no notice of departure, argument or whatsoever. I would like to thank HulaHoop for its work on support for running Whonix inside KVM. As of Whonix 9, the status was “testers-only” and would likely have changed to “stable” in Whonix 10. So most integration work is already done. A new contributor would be welcome to take over from there.

What does this mean for you as a user? No one from the Whonix team will keep KVM in mind. Any eventually upcoming security issues with KVM with respect to Whonix would go unnoticed. Questions in Whonix KVM sub forum will likely not be answered by anyone from the Whonix team. You are encouraged to move on to still supported platforms. The KVM wiki page has been updated accordingly to reflect this information.

Unfortunately, due to work generated by blessing a platform as supported, the current Whonix team cannot takeover HulaHoop’s task. A dedicated maintainer is required for that platform. This is partly because KVM is too support intensive. There are too many KVM’s installation issues from various distribution package sources. KVM’s non-helpful, cryptic error messages if the xml files are using a feature, that is is not available by the platform and because one ought to look over KVM changelogs and to think though if/how those affect Whonix.

The post Unmaintained Notice! – Whonix inside KVM – Looking for contributor! appeared first on Whonix.

27 February, 2015 08:52PM by Patrick Schleizer

Unmaintained Notice! – Whonix inside KVM – Looking for contributor!

Since previous Whonix in KVM maintainer HulaHoop was last active on January 04, 2015, it’s safe to assume this person got lost. No idea why HulaHoop went inactive. There was no notice of departure, argument or whatsoever. I would like to thank HulaHoop for its work on support for running Whonix inside KVM. As of Whonix 9, the status was “testers-only” and would likely have changed to “stable” in Whonix 10. So most integration work is already done. A new contributor would be welcome to take over from there.

What does this mean for you as a user? No one from the Whonix team will keep KVM in mind. Any eventually upcoming security issues with KVM with respect to Whonix would go unnoticed. Questions in Whonix KVM sub forum will likely not be answered by anyone from the Whonix team. You are encouraged to move on to still supported platforms. The KVM wiki page has been updated accordingly to reflect this information.

Unfortunately, due to work generated by blessing a platform as supported, the current Whonix team cannot takeover HulaHoop’s task. A dedicated maintainer is required for that platform. This is partly because KVM is too support intensive. There are too many KVM’s installation issues from various distribution package sources. KVM’s non-helpful, cryptic error messages if the xml files are using a feature, that is is not available by the platform and because one ought to look over KVM changelogs and to think though if/how those affect Whonix.

The post Unmaintained Notice! – Whonix inside KVM – Looking for contributor! appeared first on Whonix.

27 February, 2015 08:52PM by Patrick Schleizer

hackergotchi for SparkyLinux

SparkyLinux

Enlightenment 0.19.4

 

The Enlightenment team has announced the release of Enlightenment DR19 version 0.19.4.

New ‘deb’ packages of Enlightenment 0.19.4 have been built from the project’s git repository and are ready to install from Sparky repository now.

The latest e19 packages feature:
– Enlightenment 0.19.4 (0.19.99.19581) as of 2015/02/27
– EFL and Elementary 1.13.1
– Python-EFL 0.13.0
– Terminology 0.8

Sparky and Debian testing users can upgrade the their e19 installations via the package manager as following:
su
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
Check out:
apt-get install -f
Then reboot your machine.

You can use Sparky’s System-Upgrade tool or Synaptic instead of the command line as well.

 

27 February, 2015 08:41PM by pavroo

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Shane Fagan: Interesting discussion and a potential suggestion from Blizzard

Last week's post got a lot of interesting discussion on reddit and phoronix which is pretty cool. The reception was mixed but the thing that I felt a lot stronger about was risk and reward and the idea came up in a different way yesterday on a change.org petition for Blizzard to port their games. Here is the quote for the interesting part:

https://www.change.org/p/blizzard-entertainment-support-please-release-n...

"Rachel has taken the time to check out this petition and is putting in a request for others high up at Blizzard to also check out the petition. They may also look in to using Kickstarter as a means to help cover the cost of creating native Linux clients for us."

The prospect interested me, so I went to reddit and asked what they thought about it but the main issue people were talking about was not trusting Kickstarter projects in general because they lack the assurances that you will get what you paid for. But the thing that struck me more about the entire situation was I started off by thinking sure id throw 50 euro into the pot and get all my games that I already paid for ported but the thing I was left thinking going to bed later that night was why not poll their users about how many actually use Linux? If I already paid for the games and other people have paid for the games too you are setting kind of a bad precedent.

What I felt the best way of doing the Kickstarter would be this, aim much lower than the cost of the port intentionally because they already have sales even if they don't count them because we use either Windows in a dual boot or WINE to play the games. It would be fair to do it this way. And secondly the Kickstarter would be just to pay for the Linux devs not for buying any particular games. In that way you would be just donating to get all your games ported. Lastly it would have to be a 1 off thing IMO I wouldn't want this happening every few months and I wouldn't want every developer coming to us looking to Kickstart their ports. The only exceptions I'd put to that rule though would be the biggest of the AAA titles, so like this post is about Blizzard games, Ubisoft, EA...etc.

I wonder if they would send it to a porting company as well. They have the devs for Mac obviously and they could port it but I wonder would a revenue share for the Linux versions of their games along with the Kickstarter and a little bit on top to account for potential previous users like me. To put some context I've spent 400 Euro ish on Blizzard games since 2000 and given the outcry from people banned from D3's launch on Linux I'm definitely not the only Linux user they aren't supporting with their games. So they definitely should seriously consider every option to port the game even if it isn't lucrative.

Tags: 

27 February, 2015 08:35PM

Ronnie Tucker: Full Circle #94

This month:
* Command & Conquer
* How-To : Block Calls, LibreOffice, and Using i2P
* Graphics : Inkscape.
* Linux Labs: BTRFS
* Book Review: Practical Data Science Cookbook
* Ubuntu Games: War Thunder
plus: News, Arduino, Q&A, and soooo much more.

Get it while it’s hot!

http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-94/

27 February, 2015 08:21PM

Randall Ross: Watch Jono's "Ubuntu: The Past, Present, and Future."

I just watched Jono's talk from SCALE [1] entitled "Ubuntu: The Past, Present, and Future."

It's really quite an interesting talk, so I'm recommending it to you, my dear readers. I think he did a great job describing the key moments in Ubuntu's history. (Click image to view.)

Towards the end of the talk, Jono makes some startling predictions. Do you agree with them?

--

[1] Just why people insist on naming a conference after a kernel still baffles and disappoints me. Do we name car shows after carburetors? Didn't think so. ;)

27 February, 2015 06:12PM

hackergotchi for Xanadu developers

Xanadu developers

Realidad virtual en Firefox

Mozilla se suma al mundo de la realidad virtual, por lo que incorpora ahora a sus ediciones Nightly y Developer la capacidad para ejecutar funciones de realidad virtual en el propio navegador.

Anteriormente, los usuarios y creadores de contenido tenían que descargar un build separado de Firefox que a veces retrasaba las actualizaciones. A partir de ahora, las capacidades de la realidad virtual se desarrollarán junto con otras actualizaciones de Firefox.

Hasta el momento, la novedad solo funciona con las gafas de Oculus, las Oculus Rift, aunque Mozilla planea añadir pronto soporte para Linux, Android y Cardboard, de Google.

Mozilla está trabajando también con la API experimental WebVR, que facilita la conexión entre navegadores y dispositivos de realidad virtual, “mejorando, por ejemplo, el tiempo que transcurre desde que el usuario realiza un movimiento de cabeza hasta que lo que se ve en el navegador se corresponde con el mismo, eliminando así la sensación de simulación”.

Los pasos para experimentar el contenido WebVR con Firefox son los siguientes:

Gracias a Mozilla ahora los usuarios contamos con otra forma de visualizar contenido y los desarrolladores con una herramientas que facilitará la creación de aplicaciones.

Referencias:

 


Archivado en: Mozilla Tagged: firefox, oculus, rift, VR

27 February, 2015 02:40PM by sinfallas

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Kubuntu Wire: Very nice screenshot tour from softpedia

full-screen-wee

Softpedia showcases Kubuntu Vivid Beta 1 with a screenshot tour.

27 February, 2015 02:23PM

Daniel Holbach: Sometimes it’s so easy to help out

I already blogged about the help app I was working on a bit in the last time. I wanted to go into a bit more detail now that we reached a new milestone.

What’s the idea behind it?

In a conversation in the Community team we noticed that there’s a lot of knowledge we gathered in the course of having used Ubuntu on a phone for a long time and that it might make sense to share tips and tricks, FAQ, suggestions and lots more with new device users in a simple way.

The idea was to share things like “here’s how to use edge swipes to do X” (maybe an animated GIF?) and “if you want to do Y, install the Z app from the store” in an organised and clever fashion. Obviously we would want this to be easily editable (Markdown) and have easy translations (Launchpad), work well on the phone (Ubuntu HTML5 UI toolkit) and work well on the web (Ubuntu Design Web guidelines) too.

What’s the state of things now?

There’s not much content yet and it doesn’t look perfect, but we have all the infrastructure set up. You can now start contributing! :-)

screenshot of web editionscreenshot of web edition
screenshot of phone app editionscreenshot of phone app edition

 

What’s still left to be done?

  • We need HTML/CSS gurus who can help beautifying the themes.
  • We need people to share their tips and tricks and favourite bits of their Ubuntu devices experience.
  • We need hackers who can help in a few places.
  • We need translators.

What you need to do? For translations: you can do it in Launchpad easily. For everything else:

$ bzr branch lp:ubuntu-devices-help
$ cd ubuntu-devices-help
$ less HACKING

We’ve come a long way in the last week and with the easy of Markdown text and easy Launchpad translations, we should quickly be in a state where we can offer this in the Ubuntu software store and publish the content on the web as well.

If you want to write some content, translate, beautify or fix a few bugs, your help is going to be appreciated. Just ping myself, Nick Skaggs or David Planella on #ubuntu-app-devel.

27 February, 2015 10:53AM

February 26, 2015

Ubuntu GNOME: Vivid Vervet Beta 1 has been released

Hi,

Yet another successful milestone :)

Ubuntu GNOME Team is glad to announce the release of Beta 1 of Ubuntu GNOME Vivid Vervet (15.04).

What’s new and how to get it?

Please do read the release notes:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VividVervet/Beta1/UbuntuGNOME

As always, thanks a million to each and everyone who has helped, supported and contributed to make this yet another successful milestone!

We have great testers and without their endless support, we don’t think we can ever make it. Please, keep the great work up!

Thank you!

26 February, 2015 11:23PM

Daniel Pocock: PostBooks accounting and ERP suite coming to Fedora

PostBooks has been successful on Debian and Ubuntu for a while now and for all those who asked, it is finally coming to Fedora.

The review request has just been submitted and the spec files have also been submitted to xTuple as pull requests so future upstream releases can be used with rpmbuild to create packages.

Can you help?

A few small things outstanding:

  • Putting a launcher icon in the GNOME menus
  • Packaging the schemas - they are in separate packages on Debian/Ubuntu. Download them here and load the one you want into your PostgreSQL instance using the instructions from the Debian package.

Community support

The xTuple forum is a great place to ask any questions and get to know the community.

Screenshot

Here is a quick look at the login screen on a Fedora 19 host:

26 February, 2015 09:08PM

Xubuntu: Xubuntu 15.04 Beta 1

The Xubuntu team is pleased to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 15.04 Beta 1. This is the first beta towards the final release in April.

The first beta release also marks the end of the period to land new features in the form of Ubuntu Feature Freeze. This means any new updates to packages should be bug fixes only, the Xubuntu team is committed to fixing as many of the bugs as possible before the final release.

Please note the important install known issue below and at Bug 1425690: “New windows are created offscreen”

The Beta 1 release is available for download by torrents and direct downloads from
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/vivid/beta-1/

Highlights and known issues

New features and enhancements

  • LightDM GTK Greeter Settings tool added
  • development wallpaper introduced
  • xfce4-power-manager now handles light-locker’s settings in its “Security” tab
  • xfce4-panel now has an intelligent hiding mode
  • xfwm4 has window previews, better support for CSD and corner-tiling
  • the display dialog now has improved support for multiple monitors
  • the appearance dialog shows previews of themes’ palettes and icon-themes
  • Thunar now has improved keyboard navigation

Known Issues

Currently installing is only functioning correctly from the livesession install icon.

  • From either the boot screen OR the try/install dialogue – directly installing has windows created offscreen, this can be either the first install option screen, or where that works – the final Installation Complete dialogue goes offscreen. (1425690)
  • It is possible to move the offscreen windows, ensure that ubiqity is focused (alt+tab) then with alt+space+m and then Move the offscreen dialogues can be moved so they are visible.
  • If you boot to Try from the boot screen or from the Try/Install dialogue – tests have shown that these options function correctly.

Other Known Issues

  • wrapper bug on clean installs (1425401)
  • Mugshot camera does not initialize (1414443)

New application versions in the Xubuntu packageset

  • Thunar 1.6.5
  • Catfish 1.2.2.1
  • Xfwm4 4.11.3
  • xfce4-panel (4.11.2)
  • lightdm-gtk-greeter (2.0.0)
  • xfce4-settings (4.11.4)
  • xfce4-power-manager (1.4.2)
  • xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin (1.4.3)
  • Menulibre (2.0.6-1ubuntu1)
  • Mugshot (0.2.5.1)

Other changes

  • Albatross, Bluebird, and Orion are no longer installed by default

26 February, 2015 07:20PM

Kubuntu: Kubuntu Vivid Beta 1

The first Beta of Vivid (to become 15.04) has now been released!

The Beta-1 images can be downloaded from: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/vivid/beta-1/

More information on Kubuntu Beta-1 can be found here: https://wiki.kubuntu.org/VividVervet/Beta1/Kubuntu

26 February, 2015 06:14PM

February 25, 2015

Ben Howard: 12.04 Azure Cloud Images now using HWE kernel

Back when we announced that the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Cloud Images on Azure were using the Hardware Enablement Kernel (HWE), the immediate feedback was "what about 12.04?"

Well, the next Ubuntu 12.04 Cloud Images on Microsoft Azure will start using the HWE kernel. We have been working with Microsoft to validate using the 3.13 kernel on 12.04 and are pleased with the results and the stability. We spent a lot of time thinking about and testing this change, and in conference with the Ubuntu Kernel, Foundations and Cloud Image teams, feel this change will give the best experience on Microsoft Azure. 

By default, the HWE kernel is used on official images for Ubuntu 12.04 on VMware Air, Google Compute Engine, and now Microsoft Azure. 

Any 12.04 Image published to Azure with a serial later than 20140225 will default to the new HWE kernel. 

Users who want to upgrade their existing instance can simply run:
  • sudo apt-get update
  • sudo apt-get install linux-image-hwe-generic linux-cloud-tools-generic-lts-trusty
  • reboot

25 February, 2015 11:46PM by Ben Howard (noreply@blogger.com)

Stuart Langridge: Bad Voltage Live 2015

This week we did the first Bad Voltage live show, at the SCaLE conference in Los Angeles. It was the first time that Bryan, Jono, Jeremy, and I had actually all been in the same place. And it was a really good laugh.

We’d been planning this for some time, as you can imagine. The show normally has discussions about technical things, reviews, and amusing things, and the live show had that in spades. It also had hundreds of glowsticks, fifty rubber ducks, Bryan Lunduke dressed in a towel, Jeremy giving us all insects to eat (which we all did, apart from Jono who has still not eaten an insect because he is a little child), a very very young child saying that Jono and I are bobbins, a chap on a video calling Jono something considerably more offensive which we were forced to bleep out, a shower made from a tent, shots of Fireball rum, some Creme Eggs, a trivia quiz run by Jorge Castro, and competitions where audience members won a System76 Galago UltraPro laptop, a PogoLinux server, and a BananaPi from Owncloud. And lots of people liked it.

I rather enjoyed the discussions. We had two. The first was about the idea of having a “developer mode” for Linux desktops. This was actually a result of an idea posted to G+ by Sam Hewitt where he said

How controversial would a “developer mode” be for a Linux desktop environment? For instance it would hide things like the terminal, debug tools, etc. from an application overview/menu/launcher.



Now, I happen to think that this is a good idea. Bryan (and the SCaLE audience generally) do not. I have some reservations, and you can read about those on the G+ post and watch the discussion in the show video, but it’s a really interesting topic; it shows up how people think about their desktop, what assumptions we make about it, and how the mainstream think perhaps differently from some existing Ubuntu users.

We also discussed the recently-released Ubuntu phone. My detailed review is still being written, but this was a good chance to talk about the phone and whether it’s brilliant or bollocks.

So, watch the show! It’s available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k02EeD0rXYo and you should watch it; you’ll like it. Tell us about what you thought of the show on our forum at community.badvoltage.org. And next year, come to SCaLE. It’s a really great conference, and I for one would like to say a really big thank you to Ilan and Gareth, who were super-duper helpful and then were prepared to dress up in clown outfits for the show. Nice one, chaps. Couldn’t have done it without you.

I’d also like to personally thank Melissa Sealy, who is the most helpful member of hotel staff I have ever met. We were putting up posters that Jono designed around the hotel and she showed up (she’s some sort of all-powerful floor manager or something) and we expected the Mother Of All Bollockings for sticking the posters on the walls. And indeed, she said: don’t stick posters on my walls, you horrible reprobates. And then she said: but you can stick them on boards and put the boards on easels, no problem. And then found us eight easels. And then later on when we were sorting out the beer for the live event she sorted everything out. And she knew about the secret after-hours party in one of the conference rooms and found it amusing. Nice one, Melissa. Your bosses at the Hilton LAX ought to give you a pay rise or a big bunch of flowers or something.

Come to Bad Voltage Live when we do another one. And watch this one here.

25 February, 2015 09:39PM

Carla Sella: My first Ubuntu Touch Scope



Ubuntu IT scope
Ubuntu IT scope


























This time, instead of writing a review about  the BQ Aquaris 4.5 Ubuntu Phone,   I am going to tell you about  my first Ubuntu Touch Scope.
Yes, I made it! That's what's great about Ubuntu, you can be a "normal" user or you can hack on it and create your Apps and Scopes.
So, how did I do it? Well it's really easy, just follow what I did and you will be able to have your own scope on Ubuntu Touch too!

First of all you need to add a PPA for installing scopecreator, Scope-creator is a command line tool that can be used to get a scope running on your phone in a few minutes:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cwayne18/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install scopecreator


Now with Scope-creator installed,  let's create the scope:

scopecreator create [template] [package_name] [scope_name] 

template can be: youtube, twitter or rss
package_name is your package namespace  from developer.ubuntu.com
scope_name is the name of the scope you wish to create 

for instance, for my scope, I used:


$ scopecreator create youtube carla-sella ubuntuit


Now you cd to the directory created by scopecreator (remember to do this step, it's important) and launch:


$ scopecreator edit config


this way you will edit the manifest.json file for setting the configuration, this is what mine looks like:


{
    "name": "ubuntuit.carla-sella",
    "description": "Ubuntu IT scope",
    "framework": "ubuntu-sdk-14.10",
    "architecture": "armhf",
    "title": "Ubuntu IT",
    "hooks": {
        "ubuntuit": {
            "scope": "ubuntuit",
            "apparmor": "scope-security.json"
        }
    },
    "version": "0.1",
    "maintainer": "Carla Sella <carla.sella@gmail.com>"

}


Next you need to set up the branding with:


$ scopecreator edit branding 

and here is my .ini file:


[ScopeConfig]
DisplayName=Ubuntu IT
Description=Canale Youtube di Ubuntu IT
Author=Canonical Ltd.
Art=images/logo.png
Icon=images/logo.png
SearchHint=Cerca
LocationDataNeeded=true

[Appearance]
PageHeader.Background=color:///#FFFFFF
PageHeader.ForegroundColor=#000000
PreviewButtonColor=#000000
PageHeader.Logo=./images/logo.png



The appearance section contains colors and logos for you scope.


You need to replace the logo.png file under ubuntuit/images directory (in your case, it will be scope_name/images) with you logo for you scope.


Then you need to run:


$ scopecreator edit channels


for editing the channels.json file that contains the list of  playlists or channels that you will then find in the dropdown menu of the scope you are creating.


Here is my channels.json file:

{
    "maxResults": "20",
    "playlists": [
    {
        "id": "PLwAH7Zr7rsAz2wco0Xo3aJq0hudob02xU",
        "reminder": "Ubuntu-it Q&A"
    },
    {
        "id": "PLwAH7Zr7rsAyavUegFH9ePMHXfSrBxU2c",
        "reminder": "Ubuntu-it News"
    },
    {
        "id": "PLwAH7Zr7rsAwZ9HOKxw76Q4ymiE0QeiZV",
        "reminder": "#contribuiamo"
    },
    {
        "id": "PLwAH7Zr7rsAz5mfP1S7GTcp33Qy_-qJSl",
        "reminder": "Release Parties!"
    },
    {
        "id": "PLwAH7Zr7rsAwqGypJwh-3r1mFh1eO_1FL",
        "reminder": "Promozione Ubuntu"
    },
    {
        "id": "PLFA125E510B290777",
        "reminder": "Screencast"
    },
    {
        "id": "PL960786605FC8BA7C",
        "reminder": "Liberi di..."
    }
    ]

}



Ubuntu IT scope's dropdown menu



Finally, attach your ubuntu phone to your computer's USB port, and launch:


$ scopecreator build


This way scopecreator will install the scope on your phone so you can test it before asking to publish it in the Ubuntu Software Center.



Ubuntu IT scope in Ubuntu Software Center
Ubuntu IT scope in the Ubuntu Software Center































For publishing your scope you need to go to developer.ubuntu.com, log in or create an account and select "new application", fill in the required information and you're done!!

It's easy, so what are you waiting for ? go and create your scope :-D.



You can read more detailed information about creating scopes for Ubuntu here, I created my scope reading from here:

http://chrismwayne.com/?p=277
http://victorpalau.net/2015/02/16/make-a-scope-for-your-youtube-channel-in-5-minutes/




25 February, 2015 05:51PM by Carla Sella (noreply@blogger.com)

hackergotchi for Xanadu developers

Xanadu developers

hackergotchi for SparkyLinux

SparkyLinux

Sparky rebranding

Last week me and MoroS have been working on Sparky rebranding.
The job is done now so you can get all the changes on yours present Sparky installations.

What does the Sparky rebranding mean?
Sparky iso image installs the system based on Debian testing with Sparky tools, touch and some additional elements. But the system is detected as Debian so it can make misunderstanding for some users.

All the system’s key elements have been rebuilt/replaced with Sparky ones and added a few new packages to improve Sparky “touch”.

If you’d like to turn your existing Sparky installation (up to version 3.6) or Debian testing installation into rebranded Sparky, follow the steps:
su
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install -f
Then rebrand it:
apt-get install sparky-core
apt-get install -f
Then reboot:
reboot

SparkyLinux GRUB

To check it out, run:
lsb_release -a

If you find any problem, simply report it to our forums.

 
 
Back to -> FAQ main page
 

25 February, 2015 01:12PM by pavroo

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Thomas Ward: NGINX Stable and Mainline PPA: armhf packages are now available

After some minor debates with others, the NGINX Stable and Mainline PPAs have been updated to include builds for the armhf architecture. This means that individuals running Ubuntu Precise 12.04, Trusty 14.04, Utopic 14.10, or Vivid 15.04 (although I have no idea why you’d be using this version in production) on armv7 architecture (which is armhf architecture) will be able to add the PPA and install the NGINX packages as if they were on a standard 64bit or 32bit server.

Shoutout to William Grant for helping to get the two staging PPAs I use for building the packages set up with ARM builds. Didn’t take much to do, but each little bit of assistance to move the PPAs forward towards the modern era helps, so thanks, William Grant for your assistance in turning on ARM builds for the PPAs.

25 February, 2015 03:17AM

February 24, 2015

Ubuntu Kernel Team: Kernel Team Meeting Minutes – February 24, 2015

Meeting Minutes

IRC Log of the meeting.

Meeting minutes.

Agenda

20150224 Meeting Agenda


Release Metrics and Incoming Bugs

Release metrics and incoming bug data can be reviewed at the following link:

  • http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kt-meeting.txt


Status: Vivid Development Kernel

We are preparing to shove our 3.19 based kernel following beta freeze.
When it lands, please do test and let us know your results.
—–
Important upcoming dates:
Thurs Feb 26 – Beta 1 (~2 days away)
Thurs Mar 26 – Final Beta (~4 weeks away)
Thurs Apr 09 – Kernel Freeze (~6 weeks away)


Status: CVE’s

The current CVE status can be reviewed at the following link:

http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/ALL-linux.html


Status: Stable, Security, and Bugfix Kernel Updates – Utopic/Trusty/Precise/Lucid

Status for the main kernels, until today:

  • Lucid – Testing
  • Precise – Testing
  • Trusty – Testing
  • Utopic – Testing

    Current opened tracking bugs details:

  • http://kernel.ubuntu.com/sru/kernel-sru-workflow.html

    For SRUs, SRU report is a good source of information:

  • http://kernel.ubuntu.com/sru/sru-report.html

    Schedule:

    Current cycle had ended. Waiting for next cycle to start on Mar. 08.

    cycle: 06-Feb through 28-Feb
    ====================================================================
    06-Feb Last day for kernel commits for this cycle
    08-Feb – 14-Feb Kernel prep week.
    15-Feb – 28-Feb Bug verification; Regression testing; Release


Open Discussion or Questions? Raise your hand to be recognized

No open discussions.

24 February, 2015 06:04PM

Ubuntu App Developer Blog: Announcing the Ubuntu Porting guide 2.0

In the last few weeks, Ubuntu has reached a major milestone with the first flash sales of the BQ Aquarius - Ubuntu Edition. This is only the beginning of seeing Ubuntu on a wider selection of phones and tablets, and thanks to an incredibly enthusiast porting community, more devices have been part of that show. Some of these skilled porters have even set up their own image server to provide updates over-the-air!

To ease the porting process, the Porting Guide has been updated to reflect the current procedure of enabling new devices. From setting up your dev environment, to configuring the kernel and debugging AppArmor, it covers the main points of making a fully working port. Currently focusing on AOSP ports, it will be extended in due time to detail CyanogenMod-specific processes.

If you are interested in porting, please make sure you provide feedback on any issues and roadblocks that could arise, either on Launchpad or on the ubuntu-phone mailing-list.

Thank you and good work, fellow devices adventurers!

24 February, 2015 05:46PM by David Callé (david.calle@canonical.com)

hackergotchi for Tails

Tails

Tails 1.3 is out

Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 1.3, is out.

This release fixes numerous security issues and all users must upgrade as soon as possible.

Changes

New features

  • Electrum is an easy to use bitcoin wallet. You can use the Bitcoin Client persistence feature to store your Electrum configuration and wallet.

  • The Tor Browser has additional operating system and data security. This security restricts reads and writes to a limited number of folders. Learn how to manipulate files with the new Tor Browser.

  • The obfs4 pluggable transport is now available to connect to Tor bridges. Pluggable transports transform the Tor traffic between the client and the bridge to help disguise Tor traffic from censors.

  • Keyringer lets you manage and share secrets using OpenPGP and Git from the command line.

Upgrades and changes

  • The Mac and Linux manual installation processes no longer require the isohybrid command. Removing the isohybrid command simplifies the installation.
  • The tap-to-click and two-finger scrolling trackpad settings are now enabled by default. This should be more intuitive for Mac users.
  • The Ibus Vietnamese input method is now supported.
  • Improved support for OpenPGP smartcards through the installation of GnuPG 2.

There are numerous other changes that may not be apparent in the daily operation of a typical user. Technical details of all the changes are listed in the Changelog.

Known issues

  • The Tor Browser shipped in Tails 1.3 has NoScript version 2.6.9.14 instead of version 2.6.9.15, which is the version used in The Tor Project's own Tor Browser 4.0.4 release.

  • See the current list of known issues.

Download or upgrade

Go to the download page.

What's coming up?

The next Tails release is scheduled for April 7.

Have a look to our roadmap to see where we are heading to.

Do you want to help? There are many ways you can contribute to Tails. If you want to help, come talk to us!

24 February, 2015 11:34AM

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Ronnie Tucker: Cut the Rope Is the First Major Game Ported for Ubuntu Phones

ZeptoLab, the studio that made the famous “Cut the Rope” game a couple of years back, has officially ported the title for the Ubuntu platform and is now available in the store.

Cut the Rope is a game that reached peak fame a couple of years ago and it was all the rage, but now it’s the first major title to be ported for the Ubuntu platform. To be fair, a few other games have been made available until now, including 2048 and Flappy Bird. Cut the Rope is the first big caliber game to land in the Store and even if it’s an old one, it’s still an important milestone.

Source: http://linux.softpedia.com/blog/Cut-the-Rope-Is-the-First-Major-Game-Ported-for-Ubuntu-Phones-473303.shtml

Submitted by: Silviu Stahie

24 February, 2015 11:26AM

hackergotchi for Ubuntu

Ubuntu

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 405

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #405 for the week February 16 – 22, 2015, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Paul White
  • Chris Williams
  • Ian Nicholson
  • Elizabeth K. Joseph
  • Mary Frances Hull
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

24 February, 2015 03:41AM by lyz

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Stephen Michael Kellat: When Work Gets Messy

I hate getting anywhere close to asking for help.

In January I was required by work to step down from Xubuntu Team due to the nature of work duties. Missing too many IRC meetings for months and months makes membership in that body notional rather than actual. As quite a bit of LoCo Council work takes place during e-mail I can keep up there though my e-mails may come at odd hours of day.

Due to issues cropping up at a high executive level at work, my working season this year may be truncated compared to last year. While I had a working season I was covered by "unemployment compensation" through the remainder of the calendar year to keep food on the table. Certain requirements have to be met for said funding to be available, though.

As things currently stand, my teammates and I are at risk of being sent into an extended period of leave without pay in as little as 36 business days. We've only been back on the job for six weeks. Due to unusual instructions and operating cuts issued from a very high executive level, our time back on the job has been punctuated so far with strange changes where we're turning customers away and are effectively forcing customers to rely on self-help options whether they understand how to use them or not.

Right now is not the time to get worried and start fleshing out contingencies. Among my team at work we're expecting to start that at some point within the next two weeks but not immediately today. Management promises nothing and we expect no promises from management.

With as hamstrung as the local job market currently is and the amount of drag created by seeing my employer's name on my resume, I would likely have to start fundraising to be employed on a project. Though gofund.me and Patreon are put forward as options, they're not really oriented to funding the projects that I would be likely to work on. One local project needing attention is cleaning up Sunshine Law and Public Records compliance for a small special services district that would not be able to pay for such let alone deploy any F/LOSS for use by that agency such as LibreOffice. That would be a place for *buntu to shine. Another would be helping deploy self-hosted services for entities like local churches that frankly don't have much financially but could stash an RPi 2 running Snappy somewhere.

I still have to nail down fiscal agents. I still have to nail down figures. It is doable to lay the framework for raising cash. Whether or not anybody would support work is something I still have to consider. Then again, narrowing down the specifics of the work itself has to happen too. There is still time to do that though too much uncertainty in the mix coming from the current employer.

More may be written about this. As my mother would say to me growing up, nobody will know something is wrong unless you say something. At present the small-c canonical GnuPG key for contacting me is 9C4B2D87.

24 February, 2015 12:00AM

February 23, 2015

hackergotchi for rescatux

rescatux

Remove SG2D devices from search (Super Grub2 Disk – Live Development)

Last week I learnt (adrian15 speaking) about other people doing live streams while programming. It sound as something stupid you doing a live streaming when you develop but as I saw all the streamings most of them where in non open source languages or non open source projects. So I told myself that I had to do it too.

The other reason is that it might help other people who are doubtful about contributing to Super Grub2 Disk to finally begin to do so. Because, it’s not as difficult as it might seem.

So last weekend I performed a public live devopment streaming which I announced in Super Grub2 Disk chat channel.

As you might see there are two things to be improved in the video:

  • Sound quality (I need something to remove my laptop fan noise at runtime)
  • Video quality. I think I will record with my second screen at 1024×768 instead of squeezing my bigger screen to 1024×768. This might improve video quality.

So I promise I’ll try to announce the live development streamings with more time, probably three or fours days in advance so that you can join by the chat.

So, here there is the video about how I managed to remove Super Grub2 Disk devices from search by default. You can find its associated commit here.

flattr this!

23 February, 2015 11:33PM by adrian15

hackergotchi for Cumulus Linux

Cumulus Linux

Hyper-convergence and Open Networking: A Match Made in Cloudy Heaven

A lot of the early hype around cloud computing focused on grand visions related to there being only 5 or 6 extremely large cloud providers across the globe. While public clouds continue to grow at a breakneck pace, private clouds are also starting to see immense traction, especially in key verticals like financials, SaaS providers, and telecom service providers.

Over time and through extensive trial and error, the marketplace is realizing that there are two key requirements for successfully implementing cloud computing:

  • Simplicity: This primarily refers to breaking down silos that have plagued IT departments of all sizes, allowing for a unified framework across compute, storage and networking.
  • Infrastructure automation: Ranging from automated provisioning to full lifecycle of infrastructure, implemented in a software defined manner. Often referred to as Infrastructure as Code, or Idempotent IT.

Simplicity and infrastructure automation have been extensively covered by leading IT analysts and, along with application-level paradigms like Hadoop, have often been referenced as the way to achieve the extraordinary scale and success of Web scale IT shops like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

But until now, having the entire set of components and knowing how to assemble and automate them effectively still required open source wizardry and high integration and build times, or the need to heavily rely on vendor-provided pre-integrated solutions that come at significant added costs and still require lengthy deployment cycles.

Both hyper-convergence and open networking are gaining popularity together, perhaps because customers are looking to address the high upfront CapEx issue across compute, storage and network as they look to optimize their entire data center investment, typically when going through a data center refresh cycle.

Hyper-convergence and Open Networking

Here’s some analysis of how they have come together to provide a compelling cloud computing infrastructure strategy:

  • The last decade has witnessed high rates of adoption of virtualization across data centers.
  • Managing and scaling virtualized infrastructure led to growth in storage-based architectures where local diskless servers booted from storage systems like SAN/NAS.
  • As virtualization frameworks have evolved and subsumed a lot of these capabilities, the need for dedicated storage appliances with lots of storage management options is going away. This has also led to the decline of dedicated, expensive storage networking, a trend that enterprise customers have welcomed.
  • Hyper-converged infrastructure vendors are storage companies at heart that are putting a distributed storage tier back into compute nodes and pooling storage across a cluster of machines. This is the approach many Web scale companies have taken, though usually focused on large-scale data storage and processing frameworks like Hadoop and not on enterprise applications.
  • Web scale networking has similarly focused on lowering the price per port, eliminating proprietary technologies and focusing on delivering a scale-out fabric. It is similarly transforming data center networking economics and evolving the architecture to a scale-out, Clos fabric-based approach.

For obvious reasons around agility, simplicity and scalability, and ultimately to improve the customer’s experience, hyper-converged systems benefit from having a complimentary scale-out networking layer. Choosing Cumulus Linux and bare metal switching for the networking component achieves all of these goals along with significant savings in CapEx. These savings can translate into additional SSDs and therefore greater performance, or additional nodes that equate to more VMs, a better DR plan, or simply, an investment into a faster network.

Cloud computing economics is all about the price-per-VM, and no matter how you slice it, using a Cumulus Networks-based fabric will improve this metric.

Learn more on Feb 25 during Nutanix + Cumulus Networks webinar – Deploying True Hyper Convergence with Open Networking 

The post Hyper-convergence and Open Networking: A Match Made in Cloudy Heaven appeared first on Cumulus Networks Blog.

23 February, 2015 08:34PM by Shishir Garg

hackergotchi for Whonix

Whonix

Whonix Setup Wizard Feedback Required!

troubadour has created Whonix Setup Wizard, that will replace the terminal whonixsetup when running a graphical Whonix-Gateway or Whonix-Workstation. We need your feedback on whether our approach seems usable. Please leave feedback in the forums. Link to forum discussion:
https://www.whonix.org/forum/index.php/topic,974

Please keep discussion limited to usability and move technical discussion to the technical thread.

Have a look at the following screenshots.
Click to enlarge the screenshots.

At first boot, before starting KDE (if using KDE), “whonix-setup-wizard locale_settings” will be started. You will only see this little window and the rest will be black, because at this time no desktop is load yet. Mouse and keyboard will be available.

Language Selection 1
whonix-setup-wizard xinit 1
You can imagine a bit better how it would look like in the following screenshots.

Language selection. (Same menu as in KDE system settings.)
whonix-setup-wizard xinit 2

Keyboard layout selection. (Same menu as in KDE system settings.)

whonix-setup-wizard xinit 3
Language Selection End
whonix-setup-wizard xinit 4
After a desktop environment has been start, “whonix-setup-wizard setup” will be automatically started. It begins with the disclaimer.

Disclaimer Page 1/2

Disclaimer 2/2

Then goes on the the connection wizard.

Connection Wizard Page 1

Connection Wizard Page 1 Tooltip

Connection Wizard page 2
whonix-setup-wizard connection wizard 2
Connection Wizard End
whonix-setup-wizard connection wizard 3
On first boot, it will also additionally start “whonix-setup-wizard repository”.
whonix-setup-wizard connection wizard first boot
Whonix Repository Wizard Page 1
whonix-setup-wizard repository wizard 1
Whonix Repository Wizard Page 2
whonix-setup-wizard repository wizard 2

Whonix Repository Wizard Page End

whonix-setup-wizard repository wizard 3

Please leave feedback! Link to forum discussion:
https://www.whonix.org/forum/index.php/topic,974

Please keep discussion limited to usability and move technical discussion to the technical thread.

Other links:
– whonix-setup-wizard open tasks
– whonix-setup-wizard technical development discussion

The post Whonix Setup Wizard Feedback Required! appeared first on Whonix.

23 February, 2015 06:03PM by Patrick Schleizer

Whonix Setup Wizard Feedback Required!

troubadour has created Whonix Setup Wizard, that will replace the terminal whonixsetup when running a graphical Whonix-Gateway or Whonix-Workstation. We need your feedback on whether our approach seems usable. Please leave feedback in the forums. Link to forum discussion:
https://www.whonix.org/forum/index.php/topic,974

Please keep discussion limited to usability and move technical discussion to the technical thread.

Have a look at the following screenshots.
Click to enlarge the screenshots.

At first boot, before starting KDE (if using KDE), “whonix-setup-wizard locale_settings” will be started. You will only see this little window and the rest will be black, because at this time no desktop is load yet. Mouse and keyboard will be available.

Language Selection 1
whonix-setup-wizard xinit 1
You can imagine a bit better how it would look like in the following screenshots.

Language selection. (Same menu as in KDE system settings.)
whonix-setup-wizard xinit 2

Keyboard layout selection. (Same menu as in KDE system settings.)

whonix-setup-wizard xinit 3
Language Selection End
whonix-setup-wizard xinit 4
After a desktop environment has been start, “whonix-setup-wizard setup” will be automatically started. It begins with the disclaimer.

Disclaimer Page 1/2

Disclaimer 2/2

Then goes on the the connection wizard.

Connection Wizard Page 1

Connection Wizard Page 1 Tooltip

Connection Wizard page 2
whonix-setup-wizard connection wizard 2
Connection Wizard End
whonix-setup-wizard connection wizard 3
On first boot, it will also additionally start “whonix-setup-wizard repository”.
whonix-setup-wizard connection wizard first boot
Whonix Repository Wizard Page 1
whonix-setup-wizard repository wizard 1
Whonix Repository Wizard Page 2
whonix-setup-wizard repository wizard 2

Whonix Repository Wizard Page End

whonix-setup-wizard repository wizard 3

Please leave feedback! Link to forum discussion:
https://www.whonix.org/forum/index.php/topic,974

Please keep discussion limited to usability and move technical discussion to the technical thread.

Other links:
– whonix-setup-wizard open tasks
– whonix-setup-wizard technical development discussion

The post Whonix Setup Wizard Feedback Required! appeared first on Whonix.

23 February, 2015 06:03PM by Patrick Schleizer

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Colin King: fnotifystat - a tool to show file system activity

Over the past year or more I was focused on identifying power consuming processes on various mobile devices.  One of many strategies to reducing power is to remove unnecessary file system activity, such as extraneous logging, repeated file writes, unnecessary file re-reads and to reduce metadata updates.

Fnotifystat is a utility I wrote to help identify such file system activity. My desire was to make the tool as small as possible for small embedded devices and to be relatively flexible without the need of using perf just in case the target device did not have perf built into the kernel by default.

By default, fnotifystat will dump out every second any file system open/close/read/write operations across all mounted file systems, however, one can specify the delay in seconds and the number of times to dump out statistics.   fnotifystat uses the fanotify(7) interface to get file activity across the system, hence it needs to be run with CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability.

An open(2), read(2)/write(2) and close(2) sequence by a process can produce multiple events, so fnotifystat has a -m option to merge events and hence reduce the amount of output.  A verbose -v option will output all file events if one desires to see the full system activity.

If one desires to just monitor a specific collection of processes, one can specify a list of the process ID(s) or process names using the -p option, for example:

sudo fnotifystat -p firefox,thunderbird

fnotifystat catch events on all mounted file systems, but one can restrict that by specifying just path(s) one is interested in using the -i (include) option, for example:

sudo fnotifystat -i /proc

..and one can exclude paths using the -x option.

More information and examples can be found on the fnotifystat project page and the manual also contains more details and some examples too.

Fnotifystat 0.01.10 is available in Ubuntu Vivid Vervet 15.04 and can also be installed for older releases from my power management tools PPA.

23 February, 2015 05:28PM by Colin Ian King (noreply@blogger.com)

Serge Hallyn: Introducing lxcfs

Last year around this time, we were announcing the availability of cgmanager, a daemon allowing users and programs to easily administer and delegate cgroups over a dbus interface. It was key to supporting nested containers and unprivileged users.

While its dbus interface turned out to have tremendous benefits (I wasn’t sold at first), there are programs which want to continue using the cgroup file interface. To support use of these in a container with the same delegation benefits of cgmanager, there is now lxcfs.

Lxcfs is a fuse filesystem mainly designed for use by lxc containers. On a Ubuntu 15.04 system, it will be used by default to provide two things: first, a virtualized view of some /proc files; and secondly, filtered access to the host’s cgroup filesystems.

The proc files filtered by lxcfs are cpuinfo, meminfo, stat, and uptime. These are filtered using cgroup information to show only the cpus and memory which are available to the reading task. They can be seen on the host under /var/lib/lxcfs/proc, and containers by default will bind-mount the proc files over the container’s proc files. There have been several attempts to push this virtualization into /proc itself, but those have been rejected. The proposed alternative was to write a library which all userspace would use to get filtered /proc information. Unfortunately no such effort seems to be taking off, and if it took off now it wouldn’t help with legacy containers. In contrast, lxcfs works perfectly with 12.04 and 14.04 containers.

The cgroups are mounted per-host-mounted-hierarchy under /var/lib/lxcfs/cgroup/. When a container is started, each filtered hierarchy will be bind-mounted under /sys/fs/cgroup/* in the container. The container cannot see any information for ancestor cgroups, so for instance /var/lib/lxcfs/cgroup/freezer will contain only a directory called ‘lxc’ or ‘user.slice’.

Lxcfs was instrumental in allowing us to boot systemd containers, both privileged and unprivileged. It also, through its proc filtering, answers a frequent years-old request. We do hope that kernel support for cgroup namespaces will eventually allow us to drop the cgroup part of lxcfs. Since we’ll need to support LTS containers for some time, that will definitely require cgroup namespace support for non-unified hierarchies, but that’s not out of the realm of possibilities.

Lxcfs is packaged in ubuntu 15.04, the source is hosted at github.com/lxc/lxcfs, and news can be tracked at linuxcontainers.org/lxcfs.

In summary, on a 15.04 host, you can now create a container the usual way,

lxc-create -t download -n v1 — -d ubuntu -r vivid -a amd64

The resulting container will have “correct” results for uptime, top, etc.

root@v1:~# uptime
03:09:08 up 0 min, 0 users, load average: 0.02, 0.13, 0.12

It will get cgroup hierarchies under /sys/fs/cgroup:

root@v1:~# find /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice/user-1000.slice
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-1.scope
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-1.scope/v1
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-1.scope/v1/tasks
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-1.scope/v1/cgroup.procs
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-1.scope/v1/freezer.state
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-1.scope/v1/cgroup.clone_children
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-1.scope/v1/freezer.parent_freezing
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-1.scope/v1/notify_on_release
/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-1.scope/v1/freezer.self_freezing

And, it can run systemd as init.


23 February, 2015 04:24PM

hackergotchi for Xanadu developers

Xanadu developers

Convertir un disco físico en un disco virtual

Supongamos que tenemos una máquina con GNU/Linux y queremos convertirla en una maquina virtual, para lograr esto, lo que debemos hacer es trasladar el contenido del disco duro a una imagen alojada en un equipo remoto, para luego poder utilizar dicha imagen con algún hipervisor como KVM o Virtualbox.

Antes de realizar el procedimiento debemos asegurarnos de tener las siguientes herramientas:

  • Un LiveCD que contenga los siguientes programas: dd, netcat, bzip2.
  • Una máquina adicional con GNU/Linux instalado y las siguientes herramientas: dd, netcat, virtualbox o kvm, bzip2.

Para comenzar iniciamos con un LiveCD el equipo que deseamos clonar (en adelante lo llamaremos equipo A) y montamos el disco a clonar, luego abrimos una terminal como root, nos desplazamos a la raíz del disco y ejecutamos el siguiente comando.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=0bits bs=20M; rm 0bits

Este comando llena con ceros el espacio marcado como vacío en el disco, esto hará mas rápido el proceso de compresión de los datos durante la transmisión. Luego de realizar esto vamos al equipo donde almacenaremos la imagen (en adelante lo llamaremos equipo B) y ejecutamos lo siguiente.

# nc -l 12345|bzip2 -d|dd bs=16M of=/tmp/imagen.raw

Este comando le indica a netcat que debe escuchar en el puerto 12345 y que el tráfico entrante debe descomprimirse con bzip2 y luego volcarlo en el archivo imagen.raw con el comando dd.

Ahora regresamos al equipo A y hacemos lo siguiente (suponiendo que el disco que queremos clonar sea /dev/sda y la ip del equipo B sea 192.168.1.1).

# dd bs=16M if=/dev/sda|bzip2 -c|nc 192.168.1.1 12345

Esto inicia la transferencia de la información desde el equipo A hacia el equipo B, como se puede observar la transmisión se hace en bloques de 16 Mb que se comprimirán antes de enviarlos a B mediante netcat. La duración de este proceso dependerá del tamaño del disco que se quiere clonar, lo cual puede variar de pocos minutos a varias horas.

Hago la acotación de que durante este proceso no se mostrará ninguna información de progreso, solo devolverá el prompt al finalizar.

Luego de finalizado el proceso, podemos comprobar que toda la información se encuentra dentro de la imagen mediante los siguientes comandos.

# mkdir -p /tmp/prueba
# mount -o loop /tmp/imagen.raw /tmp/prueba
# cd /tmp/prueba
# ls
# cd ..
# umount /tmp/prueba

Bueno, ya tenemos nuestra imagen con la totalidad de la información del disco duro del equipo A, ahora debemos convertirla al formato de disco del hipervisor que vamos a utilizar y luego la compactaremos para hacerla más manejable.

En el caso de Virtualbox el procedimiento es el siguiente.

$ VBoxManage convertfromraw imagen.raw --format vdi imagen.vdi
$ VBoxManage modifyhd --compact imagen.vdi

Y en el caso de KVM este es el procedimiento.

$ qemu-img convert -f raw -O qcow2 imagen.raw imagen.qcow2
$ qemu-img convert -c -O qcow2 imagen.qcow2 imagen2.qcow2

Este procedimiento puede tomar bastante tiempo pero a la final nos permitirá tener un mayor control de nuestra información y ser mas eficientes con el uso de nuestros recursos, siendo esta la meta de todo administrador de sistemas.

Espero que esta información les sea útil, saludos…


Archivado en: Uncategorized Tagged: clonar, disco, kvm, netcat, virtualbox, virtualizacion

23 February, 2015 02:30PM by sinfallas

LMDE

Monthly News – February 2015

Spring is coming and so is “Betsy”. QA testing for the new version of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is starting today. If you want to follow our progress on this please visit http://community.linuxmint.com/iso and https://github.com/linuxmint/Roadmap.

Thanks to our partner eUKhost we’re doubling the capacity and performance of one of our main servers. Many Linux Mint services are involved but we’ll migrate them one by one and we don’t expect any downtime. Note that the package repositories are not affected by this upgrade.

A preview of some of the new features developed for Cinnamon was published on Segfault. Among other things, Cinnamon 2.6 will introduce search providers and support for multiple panels.

Multiple panels in Cinnamon 2.6

Multiple panels give users more flexibility and they will be useful for users with more than one monitor.

Search providers will be a core part of Cinnamon. Applets, desklets and the Cinnamon desktop itself will be able to query them to retrieve search results. This will allow us but also applet developers to make it easy for you to search for a variety of things (a movie on IMDB, one of your emails, a Firefox bookmark, a page you recently visited, or one of your files on the hard drive…etc).

Example of an applet using search providers in Cinnamon 2.6

Last month we received donations from 380 people. Together they raised a total of $9,036. Many thanks to all of you who contribute to our project, to the people who donated and to our sponsors and partners. Many thanks also to the many people who help other users in the forums and chat rooms, and special thanks this month to two of our developers: dalcde and glebihan, whose exciting work on Cinnamon 2.6 was featured above.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors:
Linux VPS Hosting
Silver Sponsors:
ThinkPenguin.com
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
7L Networks Toronto Colocation *
BayLibre
BGASoft Inc
compute.ch gmbh
David Salvo
Michael Sartain
Milton Security Group
Sysnova Information Systems		 Community Sponsors:

To become a sponsor or to see the full list of Linux Mint sponsors, please visit: http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

Donations:

A total of $9,036 was raised thanks to the generous contributions of 380 donors:

$200 (16th donation), Ralph Siegler aka “ziggy”
$200, Beth A.
$120 (2nd donation), Jan-erik Ö.
$119.19 (2nd donation), Ian L.
$119.19, Stephan S.
$119.19, Stefan A.
$119.19, Thomas Z.
$119.19, Martin Z.
$100 (8th donation), Ronald S.
$100 (5th donation), Peter D.
$100 (3rd donation), Kory W.
$100 (2nd donation), Glen A.
$100, Jerry C.
$100, Roger W.
$100, Terri O.
$100, Amanda B.
$100, Wesley H.
$100, Daniel B.
$100, Sai Vinoba
$100, Carl G.
$100, Ruben F.
$89.39, Martin G.
$71.51 (2nd donation), Fiorello F.
$60 (2nd donation), Brandon L.
$59.6, Ralf V.
$59.59 (13th donation), Philippe W.
$59.59 (3rd donation), Carlos M. S.
$59.59 (2nd donation), Markus M.
$59.59 (2nd donation), Javi Dieltron aka “ososoft”
$59.59, Jgb S.
$59.59, Tuomo aka “Happy Hacking Day”
$59.59, Yves M. A.
$59.59, Marc W.
$59.59, Volker P.
$50 (4th donation), jmro3006
$50 (2nd donation), Larwence P.
$50 (2nd donation), Mike H. aka “sloan”
$50, Andrew G.
$50, Jean-Christophe B.
$50, Forrest B.
$50, James P.
$50, Fred W.
$50, Douglas K.
$50, Stewart B.
$50, Marcin L.
$50, Paul D.
$50, Willy J.
$50, wilson.c
$47.67, Neil S.
$40, Pablo L. aka “LAFO”
$40, Jeffrey K.
$40, William S.
$40, TRC Technologies
$36 (59th donation), Olli K.
$35.75 (4th donation), Anne-christine U.
$35.75 (3rd donation), Pentti T.
$35.75 (2nd donation), José R. L. B.
$35.75, Maurizio C.
$35.75, Davud Evren
$35.75, Thomas B.
$35.75, Andreas W.
$35.75, Beat D.
$35.75, Lars-gunnar S.
$33, Raymond M.
$30 (4th donation), Gordon T.
$30 (2nd donation), Bill L.
$30, James P.
$30, Lonnie J.
$30, Mark F.
$30, David M.
$30, Itamar D. Z.
$30, Mark F.
$30, Max P.
$30, 500it aka “bOsO400″
$29.97, Bobby R.
$29.8 (3rd donation), Mark E.
$29.8, Shamana S.
$29.8, Enric P. R.
$29.79 (5th donation), Lars H.
$29.79 (3rd donation), Tony H. aka “TonyH1212″
$29.79, Berthold W. V. D. H.
$29.79, Eric L.
$29.79, Jan V. D. W.
$29.79, Jan B. L.
$29.79, Christof R.
$29.79, Ken J.
$29.79, Frits M.
$27.95, Armand V. D.
$26.9 (2nd donation), Marcin Ziółkowski aka Mario Nesta
$25 (40th donation), Ronald W.
$25 (12th donation), Robert H.
$25 (5th donation), Samson S. aka “Samtastic”
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$25 (2nd donation), Robert A.
$25 (2nd donation), Thomas Nielsen
$25 (2nd donation), Viktor V.
$25 (2nd donation), Raphael C.
$25, Michael M.
$25, Carmelo G.
$25, Max M.
$25, Gavin S.
$25, John L.
$25, David L.
$25, Grant M.
$25, Data H. I.
$25, Timothy L.
$25, Randy S. H.
$25, Tim M.
$25, Phillip G.
$25, Gerhard E.
$25, Thomas F.
$25, Brent G.
$25, Cindy P.
$25, Ty F.
$25, Jose T. G. T.
$25, Carmelo G.
$25, Carmelo G.
$25, Walter S.
$25, M. S.
$24 (2nd donation), Gabriele B.
$24, Stefan W.
$24, Daniel K.
$24, Toomas M.
$23.84 (2nd donation), Iain S.
$23.84, Adriano A.
$23.84, Bernhard S.
$23.84, Giovanni R.
$23.83 (14th donation), Orlando M. M.
$23.83 (7th donation), Kevin D.
$23.83 (6th donation), Alessandro P.
$23.83 (4th donation), Ross M.
$23.83 (3rd donation), Daniel P.
$23.83 (3rd donation), Paul G.
$23.83 (2nd donation), Gabriel S.
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$23.83 (2nd donation), Oliver G.
$23.83 (2nd donation), Jose Ayala V.
$23.83, Maximilian K.
$23.83, Marcus S.
$23.83, Alexander R.
$23.83, Roger B.
$23.83, Michael K.
$23.83, Rachel A.
$23.83, Joost S.
$23.83, Simone M.
$23.83, A W.
$23.83, Reijo H.
$22, Geraldo C.
$20.26 (12th donation), Ion B.
$20 (42th donation), Tsuguo S.
$20 (3rd donation), Leonardo Frazao aka “Liozek”
$20 (2nd donation), Matsufuji H.
$20 (2nd donation), Jon R.
$20 (2nd donation), Ivan R.
$20 (2nd donation), William N.
$20, Warren F.
$20, Peter S.
$20, Ernst L.
$20, Che H.
$20, Simon R.
$20, Larry K.
$20, Robert J.
$20, Marie B.
$20, Juan A. S. aka “okelet”
$20, Pierre T.
$20, Daniel A.
$20, Tony N.
$20, Doug E.
$20, Steve G.
$20, Michael M.
$20, Nicholas P.
$20, Reed W.
$20, Shaun T.
$20, Danny W.
$20, Charles H.
$20, Dane R.
$20, Geoff Ingram aka “jellybean”
$20, Skip H.
$20, Anders D.
$18, Florian U.
$17.88, Goran H.
$17.88, Renzo P.
$17.87 (3rd donation), Kevin O.
$17.87 (3rd donation), Anonymous
$17.87 (2nd donation), Gabriele B.
$17.87, Christoph Z.
$17.87, Emilio R. E.
$17.87, Luca Abbati
$16, Colin O.
$15 (3rd donation), Christopher D.
$15, Italo I.
$15, Harry E.
$15, Douglas M.
$15, Jesús H. M.
$15, Stan C.
$15, Ladislav M.
$15, Allan C.
$12 (3rd donation), Juan C. S. A.
$12 (2nd donation), Darek P.
$12 (2nd donation), Kevin C.
$12, Manfred B.
$12, Sinisa M.
$12, Stephen H.
$12, Marcelo G.
$12, Wsewolod W.
$12, Louis-Philippe L.
$12, A S.
$11.92 (6th donation), Dr. R. M.
$11.92 (2nd donation), Queenvictoria
$11.92, Kay K.
$11.92, Günther K.
$11.92, Jochim L.
$11.92, Philippe Dias aka “Philou”
$11.92, Sonoda H.
$11.92, Oliver H.
$11.91 (17th donation), Raymond E.
$11.91 (17th donation), Mark W.
$11.91 (6th donation), Nicolae Crefelean aka “kneekoo”
$11.91 (4th donation), Matúš L.
$11.91 (4th donation), Gabriel T.
$11.91 (3rd donation), Richard S.
$11.91 (2nd donation), Gerryt M.
$11.91 (2nd donation), Brian H.
$11.91 (2nd donation), Waldemar K.
$11.91 (2nd donation), Daniel W.
$11.91 (2nd donation), Lionel aka “Kinobi”
$11.91, Georg K.
$11.91, Frederic C.
$11.91, Moritz G.
$11.91, Milan K.
$11.91, Juan D. C. C.
$11.91, Franz D.
$11.91, Kilian U.
$11.91, P V. D. L.
$11.91, Filip Magnusson aka “FilleMang”
$11.91, Jan-albert D. L.
$11.91, Paul G.
$11.91, Ilmo P.
$11.91, F.D.P. Geurink
$11.91, Ivan S.
$11.91, Ilia D.
$11.91, Jakob B.
$11.91, Bo Simonsen
$11.91, Liviu B.
$11.91, Roberto R.
$11.91, Marcel M.
$11, Yalın A.
$10 (46th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
$10 (11th donation), Mark C.
$10 (10th donation), Mark C.
$10 (3rd donation), Alistair G.
$10 (3rd donation), Jeffrey T.
$10 (2nd donation), Jan O. A.
$10 (2nd donation), Neil B.
$10 (2nd donation), Arno S.
$10 (2nd donation), John C.
$10 (2nd donation), Ireneusz W.
$10, Alexander J.
$10, Люблев Н.
$10, Troy E.
$10, Randy D.
$10, Kenneth B.
$10, Sylvia R.
$10, Dave V.
$10, Aaron M.
$10, Alexander C. M.
$10, Brock C.
$10, Neil E.
$10, David G.
$10, Ramon O.
$10, Viktor Z.
$10, Gavin M.
$10, Ian H.
$10, Allen D.
$10, Uğur D. S.
$10, Anderson L. S. M.
$10, STEX Motorsports LLC
$10, 康 华.
$10, Reginaldo M. D. S.
$10, Barry L.
$10, William R.
$10, Limon Monte
$10, Thomas K.
$10, Gyurics L.
$8.34, Alexander B.
$8.34, alvfrias
$8, Wong H. Y.
$8, Felipe V. M.
$8, Ludek F.
$7.15 (5th donation), Hector Richart P.
$7.15, Nik K.
$7, Micha E.
$7, Jesús D. G.
$6.1 (3rd donation), Carpet Cleaning London aka “ParadiseCleaning”
$6 (7th donation), Nicholas S.
$6 (4th donation), Hector Richart P.
$6, Kai G.
$6, hostingreport.info
$6, Yvo T.
$5.95 (8th donation), Albert J. P.
$5.95 (4th donation), Stijn D.
$5.95, Christopher Reay aka “DAZY”
$5.95, Adam P.
$5.95, Christoph B.
$5.95, Tuomas K.
$5.95, Christoph K.
$5.95, Krisztián P.
$5.95, Yulian M.
$5.95, Adrián G. P.
$5.95, Carsten K.
$5.95, Miguel R.
$5.95, Marian V.
$5.95, Alberto Medici
$5.95, Marcel Schoenherr
$5.95, Rem
$5.95, Alfredo C.
$5 (15th donation), Carlos W.
$5 (11th donation), Randy R. aka “MonkeyMint”
$5 (10th donation), Randy R. aka “MonkeyMint”
$5 (4th donation), frisky
$5 (4th donation), William Menezes
$5 (3rd donation), Thedrish
$5 (3rd donation), Matthew L.
$5 (2nd donation), John M.
$5 (2nd donation), Murat Kutluer
$5, Robert M.
$5, Arif A.
$5, Devin K.
$5, Larry H.
$5, Toronto Maple Leafs Rumours
$5, Jiří J.
$5, Bernard B.
$5, Robert C. E.
$5, Luiz E. A. L.
$5, Юрий Л.
$5, Mojmír S.
$5, Leonard F.
$5, Radek H.
$5, Abraham P.
$5, Les R.
$5, Marcin Ziółkowski aka Mario Nesta
$4.76, Matteo T.
$4.66, Dimitri N.
$4.2, Edward F.
$4 (3rd donation), Donald H.
$4, Ali B.
$3.57 (2nd donation), Alberto B. C.
$3.57, SiriS Emanuel
$3.57, Luca F.
$3.5, Sinisa P.
$3 (2nd donation), Kouji Kobayashi
$3, Správa IT
$3, Frederic J.
$3, Scott L.
$3, Charles-david H.
$2.38 (5th donation), Guillaume G. aka “Tidusrose”
$2.38, George Navro
$28.23 from 22 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

Rankings:

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23 February, 2015 01:06PM by Clem

hackergotchi for Ubuntu developers

Ubuntu developers

Ronnie Tucker: Facebook, Stripe pledge funds for GnuPG development

Two companies, Stripe and Facebook, have pledged an annual donation of $US100,000 to aid in the development of GNU Privacy Guard, the encryption software that has been created by a single German developer.

Stripe, which provides a way for individuals and businesses to accept payments over the internet, made the announcement on Twitter on behalf of itself and Facebook.

The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative made a one-time donation of $US60,000. Other donations by individuals have also come in.

 

Source: http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/66886-facebook-stripe-pledge-funds-for-gnupg-development

Submitted by: Sam Varghese

23 February, 2015 09:25AM

hackergotchi for TurnKey Linux

TurnKey Linux

Negotiating payment as a contractor (issues, tips)

Last week I shared the advice I gave to a friend who was quitting his day job and wanted to do more freelance/contract work. This week I'll share a bit of practical wisdom on negotiating payment that I figured might be useful those of you who are just getting into contracting.

The problem: contracting clients will often ask you to quote fixed bids for contracts.

Potential issues:

  • The client doesn't really know in advance what they want.
  • After you agree to the terms they want to amend/change the specification of work that needs to be performed.
  • Client doesn't agree with you that you satisfied the contract, doesn't pay in full or at all.
  • The client knows what they want but you don't fully understand what it involved so your internal estimate of how long it will take is highly inaccurate and the fixed bid you provided reflects that. If it's much higher, your bid won't be competitive. If it's lower you just committed to a contract that will effectively pay you much less than you expected. You won't be happy due to the low pay and the client may not be happy because it takes longer than the implementation timeline you provided.
  • Trying to prevent these issues by doing more preliminary research increases your overhead before you even get the job. Reaching a workable understanding with a client that doesn't fully understand what they want or what it involves can require a significant amount of unpayed work, which on close inspection may not be so different from providing your pre-client what is essentially free consulting.

The ideal solution is very simple: you trust the client, the client trusts you, and you get payed your hourly rate for the work performed.

Unfortunately most contractors don't live in an ideal world, at least not before they establish a portfolio of good relationships with good clients.

So much for the problem. Here are the tips:

  • Add a mark-up (e.g., 20%) to the hourly fee. You want to leave room for negotiating. Often the person who you are negotiating with will have to report to his superior how much he managed to negotiate down your fees, and it's in your interests to help him look good.

    Also, the first price you quote subconsciously anchors the perception of quality. This is backed up by research and it seems to happen even to experienced negotiators that are aware of the anchoring effect. So a developer initially quoting $120/hour and then negotiated down to $100 is perceived as a better value for the money than a developer that initially quotes $100 and refuses to be negotiated down.

    It turns out how good people feel about the price they pay has more to do with the subjective perception of how much they save than with objective value they received. See groupon.

  • Hybrid hourly/fixed bid: you do your best to estimate how many hours the project will take. You'll get better at this with experience. Add a reasonable buffer (e.g., 20%) to account for the unexpected. If you finish early, you only charge for the hours worked, the client saves money and is delighted. If the project overruns by more than 15% of the budget you estimated, your rate drops to a third of the "regular" rate. This way you continue to get payed so you're not working free for projects that "go bloody" but the client knows you have a strong incentive not to run up your hours.

  • Advance payment, in installments: 25% of the estimate as an up front retainer, 25% for milestone A, 25% for milestone B, 25% for milestone C.

    This is sort of like breaking down the project into 4 smaller sub-projects, except it's a bit more efficient as you only have to understand the requirements and negotiate once.

23 February, 2015 05:20AM by Liraz Siri