Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

In this article, I will describe how you can monitor your CentOS 7 server with Munin and Monit. Munin produces nifty little graphics about nearly every aspect of your server (load average, memory usage, CPU usage, MySQL throughput, eth0 traffic, etc.) without much configuration, whereas Monit checks the availability of services like Apache, MySQL, Postfix and takes the appropriate action such as a restart if it finds a service is not behaving as expected. The combination of the two gives you full monitoring: graphics that lets you recognize current or upcoming problems (like "We need a bigger server soon, our load average is increasing rapidly."), and a watchdog that ensures the availability of the monitored services.

Erle Robotics has launched a six-legged Erle-Spider robot on Indiegogo, with an Erle-Brain 2 controller that runs Ubuntu Snappy and ROS on a Raspberry Pi 2. Spain’s Erle Robotics was the first company to create an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) using the Linux version of 3DR’s typically Arduino-based APM (ArduPilot Mega) drone autopilot platform. The company started with the Erle-Copter Ubuntu Edition quadrotor, and then shipped its almost identical Ubuntu Snappy based Erle-Copter Ubuntu Core Special Edition. Now, Erle Robotics has gone to Indiegogo to launch a six-legged “Erle-Spider” robot that similarly runs on Snappy Ubuntu Core and the Robot Operating System (ROS) open source robotics platform.

Over the last 10 years, OpenSSL has published advisories on over 100 vulnerabilities. Many more were likely silently fixed in the early days, but in the past year our goal has been to establish a clear public record. In September 2014, the team adopted a security policy that defines how we handle vulnerability reports. One year later, I'm very happy to conclude that our policy is enforced, and working well.

Intel debuted its 6th Gen Core (Skylake) processors, ranging from 4.5 Watt TDP SoCs with internal I/O hubs, to 45+ Watt honkers with external I/O hub chips. Intel bills the 6th Gen Intel Core as its “most scalable processor family ever.” After more than four years of development, Intel’s “Skylake” architecture is now breathing life into 48 processors organized in four sets — Y-series, U-series, H-series, and S-series — and ranging from 4.5 to 91 Watt TDPs.

When you start spending the majority of your time in front of a computer, natural questions start arising. Is this healthy? How can I diminish the strain on my eyes? Why is the sunlight burning me? Although active research is still going on to answer these questions, a lot of programmers have already adopted a few applications to make their daily habits a little healthier for their eyes. Among those applications, there are two which I found particularly interesting: Calise and Redshift.

After eight release candidates, Linux 4.2 is now available, marking one of the longer development cycles in the last few years. The longer cycle was likely only the result of an abundance of caution on Linus Torvalds' part and some travel (Linuxcon) too.

In the world of Linux, adoption of systemd has been a subject of heated controversy, and the debate between its proponents and critics is still going on. As of today, most major Linux distributions have adopted systemd as a default init system.

Perundurai is a small town in the district of Erode, located in the state of Tamilnadu in southern India. From Perundurai, it is a ~1 hour car ride west to a small, rural village called Sullippalayam. This is the town where I was born, grew up, and still live, with my family.

Advantech’s COM-like “MIO-3260? Pico-ITX SBC runs Linux on a Bay Trail SoC and offers a PCIe/mSATA slot, MI/O expansion, and optional -40 to 85°C operation. Like Advantech’s MIO-2263, which was announced in May, the MIO-3260 is a 100 x 72mm Pico-ITX board that supports a quad-core Intel Celeron or dual-core Intel Atom from the 22nm Bay Trail generation. Like the earlier, Atom Cedarview generation MIO-2262, the MIO-3260 lacks real-world ports, thereby acting as much like a computer-on-module as a single board computer.

Kids don't want to code. They want to solve problems us oldies can't perceive. “Grandpa is getting pretty old. Out there all alone on that farm, he has no one to look in on him, just to see if he’s ok. He’ll use the landline, but he’s beyond of the range of mobile, and he’s never been really great with computers. No Skype or emails. Grandpa does have internet. So I built this for him."

Be careful what you run. If you're using OS X Yosemite, watch out for malware exploiting a new way to take complete control of your Mac. A vulnerability has been found in Apple's operating system that allows ordinary software on the computer to gain all-powerful root privileges, allowing dodgy apps to install new programs, create users, delete users, trash the system, and so on, without the owner's permission.

Acnodes unveiled an under $500 “FES8685? computer with a dual-core Ivy Bridge CPU, plus SATA, serial, USB, GbE, HDMI, VGA, mini-PCIe, and optional WiFi. With the FES8685, Acnodes has taken a trip down memory lane, replacing the Intel 4th Gen Core “Haswell” CPUs of the FES8680 released earlier this year with a 3rd Gen “Ivy Bridge” Celeron 1047UE. The FES8685 runs Linux or Windows on the dual-core, 1.4GHz chip, which runs at a TDP of 17W. As a result, the computer is sold for about $175 less, at just $496 with 2GB of RAM.

Zemlin says that an impressive 64 million lines of code has been added to projects hosted by the Linux Foundation since they became collaborative projects. That's thousands of unique contributors creating billions of dollars of value, he says, and he isn't even including the Linux kernel in that code count.

Build and release is a complicated process. I really don’t need to tell anyone that…but I did anyway. But a rapid, precise feedback cycle that notifies whether the latest build of software passed successfully or not, and one that tells you WHAT failed specifically instead of just “operation failed,” can mean the difference between being able to quickly fix defects, or not discovering those defects until later in the project’s lifecycle, thereby increasing exponentially the cost and difficulty of fixing them. IncrediBuild has been addressing precisely this with Microsoft TFS for years, and is now reinventing their tool for Linux developers.

Through the years, Firefox has enjoyed a reputation as one of the most secure Web browsers on any platform, and it's the default browser for many Linux distros. However, a security exploit appeared this week that has shown users they can't afford to be complacent about security. Mozilla has rushed to patch the flaw, and a new release has closed the hole (39.0.3). But, plenty of users still haven't updated their browsers.

Nmap is a free and open source network discovery and security auditing utility that is widely used in the Linux users community as it is simple to use yet very powerful. Nmap works by sending data packets on a specific target (by IP) and by interpreting the incoming packets to determine what posts are open/closed, what services are running on the scanned system, whether firewalls or filters are set up and enabled, and finally what operation system is running.

Via announced a compact, rugged, fanless box-PC based on an unpublicized 1.2GHz quad-core Eden X4 CPU, with numerous I/O and wireless options, including 3G. At 151 x 110 x 48mm (5.9 x 4.3 x 1.9 inches), the “AMOS-3005? is nearly identical in size and appearance to the company’s earlier AMOS-850 system. But unlike the earlier model’s i.MX6 ARM core, the AMOS-3005 is built with Via’s new 1.2GHz Eden X4 CPU, a quad-core spin of the x86-compatible Eden X2. The AMOS-3005 supports a fairly wide operating temperature of -10 to 60°C, and can run from between 9 and 36V DC input.

Google’s Chromebooks are just over four year old and, while the hardware has done well in education, businesses and normal people haven’t been too keen. In response, the ad giant has teamed up with Dell to fix this with a line of Chromebooks for business. Rajen Sheth, director of product management for Android and Chrome for Business and Education, said that with businesses updating from Windows XP, there’s an opportunity for Google to pick up some market share.

In this article, I will describe how you can monitor your Debian 8 server with Munin and Monit. munin produces nifty little graphics about nearly every aspect of your server without much configuration, whereas Monit checks the availability of services like Apache, MySQL, Postfix and takes the appropriate action such as a restart if it finds a service is not behaving as expected. The combination of the two gives you full monitoring: graphics that let you recognize current or upcoming problems, and a watchdog that ensures the availability of the monitored services.

NI unveiled new CompactRIO and CompactDAQ controllers that run NI Linux Real-Time on quad-core Atom SoCs, and also upgraded its FlexRIO and RIO controllers. NI (National Instruments) has upgraded its line of industrial and data acquisition controllers, which run the company’s hardened NI Linux Real-Time Linux distribution and use its LabVIEW reconfigurable I/O (RIO) architecture. The new products replace last year’s CompactRIO control system, which combined a dual-core Intel Atom E3825 system-on-chip with a Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA, as well as the 2014 edition of the CompactDAQ data acquisition controller, which has the same Atom E3825, but lacks the FPGA.