Welcome to cron.weekly issue 25 for Sunday, April 24th, 2016.
It’s been a pretty busy week once again with the major release of Ubuntu 16.04, a new Long Term Support Ubuntu version.
There’s a lot of practical guides in this edition too that can help you get started with running IPv6 or introduce Access Control Lists in your Linux environment.
Enjoy!
News#
Red Hat doubles down on OpenStack #
The biggest open source company in the world is revealing more projects built on (and to support) OpenStack.
Count me as a systemd convert #
Not everything in systemd is bad, this author discovers. The post mostly covers a particular debug session in which systemd offered the right tools to troubleshoot and fix the problem.
Gentoo Linux on a Tesla #
If you’re driving a car that’s 99% computer, surely you can get Linux to run on it. Right? Well, turns out, running Gentoo inside your Tesla is perfectly possible.
A Look Back at One Year of Docker Security #
A nice flashback on the various security mechanismes Docker has introduced over the last year in its various releases. It also offers a comparison between Docker, LXC and CoreOS rkt – although since this blogpost comes from the creators of Docker, I’d take it with a grain of salt.
Staying up-to-date on open source announcements & security issues via Twitter #
We all know staging up-to-date on open source security issues or new versions isn’t easy. There are a lot of projects to follow and it can be intensive to stay informed. This newsletter (hopefully) helps, but can’t cover it all. That’s why I created the @oss_announce and @foss_security Twitter accounts that automated this whole process: they live-tweet whenever important releases or security announcements are made.
How I Hacked HackingTeam #
As sysadmins, it’s our job to keep our systems secure. Reading about how an attacker goes about exploring a target and eventually breaching its security, offers us insights into areas we need to focus extra attention to. This particular post highlights flaws in no-sql databases (MongoDB) and shows how an attacker goes about a complicated hack.
libressl – more vague promises #
A look back at how LibreSSL started, the promises made at the start of the project and the current state.
How Badlock Was Discovered and Fixed #
Some more background to how Badlock, the samba vulnerability revealed last week, got discovered and how the fix got distributed to several distributions.
Tools & Projects#
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) released #
The latest Long Term Support (LTS) for Ubuntu is out: 16.04 ‘s most prominent features are ZFS support, the 4.4 kernel, the Mitaka release (13) of OpenStack and a new “snappy” package manager.
Hitch 1.2 released #
Hitch is a high performant SSL/TLS proxy, created by the Varnish team that gave us the fast caching daemon and load balancer. Version 1.2 fixed a couple of bugs and offers more configuration options for the frontend (SSL, ciphers etc.).
Glot.io: an open source pastebin #
If you’ve ever wanted to run a service like Pastebin, which allows anyone to paste text and get a unique link to share it, now you can with Glot.io. If you’re looking for a Pastebin alternative for yourself or your organisation, have a look at Glot.io.
skydive #
Skydive is an open source real-time network topology and protocols analyzer. It aims to provide a comprehensive way of understanding what is happening in the network infrastructure. Skydive agents collect topology informations and flows and forward them to a central agent for further analysis. All the informations a stored in an Elasticsearch database.
Rperl 1.7 released #
Rperl is a “restricted perl”, a version of Perl with a select set of features included and optimised for pure performance. When used properly, rperl can be up to 100x faster as “regular” perl. Version 1.7 now offers support for stand-alone executable binaries.
Hex #
Hex is a package manager for the Erlang ecosystem.
DC/OS: the Datacenter Operating System #
DC/OS is an entirely open source software project based on Apache Mesos, Marathon and a whole lot more.
SSSD: System Security Services Daemon #
SSSD is a system daemon. Its primary function is to provide access to identity and authentication remote resource through a common framework that can provide caching and offline support to the system. It provides PAM and NSS modules.
Upside-Down-Ternet #
A clever hack to deal with WiFi-stealing neighbours: some iptables and perl scripts to automatically reverse all text on pages visited by unwanted WiFi guests.
Spash #
Spash is a command line tool for Big Data platforms that simulates a real Unix environment, providing most of the commands of a typical Bash shell on top of YARN, HDFS and Apache Spark.
ScyllaDB 1.0 #
Scylla is a NoSQL column store database, fully compatible with Apache Cassandra at 10x the throughput and jaw dropping low latency.
GoBGP #
A full BGP implementation for your network in a Go library. This could be the perfect corner stone if you’re building your own SDN (Software Defined Networking) solution.
Perfect: server-side Swift #
Apple open sourced Swift a couple of months ago, their new programming language for developing iOS applications. The “Perfect” project takes the Swift language to the server, allowing you to write server-side applications in that very same language.
Micro #
Micro is a terminal-based text editor that aims to be easy to use and intuitive, while also taking advantage of the full capabilities of modern terminals.
Shift: MySQL schema migrations #
shift is an application that makes it easy to run online schema migrations for MySQL databases
Guides & Tutorials#
How we found that the Linux nios2 memset() implementation had a bug #
Some more very low level Kernel specifics: if you’re into custom bootloaders, exotic CPU’s, strange process architectures and even more obscure memory bugs, have a go at this article.
The BSD family of operating systems #
If FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD all sound alike to you, this article can help shed light into the darkness that is BSD: the history and main direction of each *BSD project clearly explained.
Understanding and Hardening Linux Containers (PDF) #
A very extensive paper on the security aspects of containers: cgroups, network namespaces, mandatory access control, different attack surfaces, … If you’re deep into containers (LXC, Docker), grab a coffee and take your time for this 122 page read.
Redis Administration: practical tips #
A set of useful tips and configuration parameters when you’re just starting out with Redis. A couple of important kernel tweaks needed too, or you’ll quickly run into Redis issues along the way.
Detecting the use of “curl | bash” server side #
Some very clever timing techniques are used here to detect, from the webserver that’s hosting the scripts, whenever a user directly pipes the output of a curl command into bash.
Gimp – A fast overview #
Gimp is an open source photoshop alternative, this post highlights some if its biggest strengths.
19 Tips For Everyday Git Use #
Another set of practica examples you might need to use when attempting git.
Git for beginners: The definitive practical guide #
Git is still a complex matter, especially if you’re just starting with it. This guide takes on a very pragmatic approach with very specific questions you might have on Git and answering them clearly.
How “Exit Traps” Can Make Your Bash Scripts Way More Robust And Reliable #
A clever way of adding more logic and error handling into your Bash scripts by catching signals like SIGHUP and acting upon them.
System Design Cheatsheet #
A set of very good questions and considerations to make when designing a new system. Very practical questions like understanding bottlenecks, scaling and load balancing methods, replication methods to use, …
Running IPv6 in practice #
This Debian guide walks you through activating IPv6 on your network and performing the first basic troubleshooting.
The Ars guide to building a Linux router from scratch #
A do-it-yourself router, running Linux, with step by step instructions.
Secure Files/Directories using ACLs (Access Control Lists) in Linux #
A guide that takes you beyond simple owner/group and file permissions and introduces Access Control Lists (ACLs) in Linux.
Making the case for make #
A post in the defence of the tool ‘make‘ as your build tool, instead of complex scripts and dependencies that take in a lot of 3rd party software. A simple make configuration can go a long way.