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Links 06/07/2022: Release of pgAdmin 4 v6.11 and FSF Spring “Bulletin”



  • GNU/Linux

    • Make Use OfSystem76 Debuts Pricey Lemur Pro Linux Laptop

      Denver, Colorado-based Linux PC manufacturer System76 has announced the latest version of the 14-inch Lemur Pro laptop. The new laptop features Intel 12th generation Core processors.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • PurismUnleashing the Librem 14

         With the Librem 14 laptop we went a couple of new ways all at once. First of all this is the most custom laptop design we have done so far. It embodies everything we wanted to have – at the time of writing the specification. But not only that, with the Librem 14 we also started to use a liberated embedded controller (EC) firmware, besides Coreboot / PureBoot of course.

        The EC is a pretty primitive microcontroller that evolved from the old PC keyboard controllers. Basically it is a tiny CPU running a tiny program that does a very limited set of tasks, controlling the keyboard is still one of them. The EC also controls the power up and power down of the laptop, sequencing the different voltages, making sure that all supply voltages are OK and turned on and off at the right time etc. Additionally the EC controls functions like battery charging and maintains active communication with the main Intel CPU, to feed keyboard events into it but also to poke out information like the current temperature of the Intel package so that the EC can spin up the fans when necessary.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • LWNSystem call interception for unprivileged containers [LWN.net]

        On the first day of the 2022 Linux Security Summit North America (LSSNA) in Austin, Texas, Stéphane Graber and Christian Brauner gave a presentation on using system-call interception for container security purposes. The idea is to allow unprivileged containers, those without elevated privileges on the host, to still accomplish their tasks, some of which require privileges. A fair amount of work has been done to make this viable, but there is still more to do.

        Graber started things off by saying that he works for Canonical on the LXD container manager project, while Brauner works for Microsoft in various areas of Linux security. Graber said that there are two types of containers these days, privileged and unprivileged, "one is bad, one is OK". He noted that privileged containers are "unfortunately what everyone uses" for Docker containers, Kubernetes, and so on.

      • LWNTwo memory-tiering patch sets [LWN.net]

        Once upon a time, computers just had one type memory, so memory within a given system was interchangeable. The arrival of non-uniform memory access (NUMA) systems complicated the situation significantly; now some memory was faster to access than the rest, and memory-management algorithms had to adapt or performance would suffer. But NUMA was just the start; today's tiered-memory systems, which may include several tiers of memory with different performance characteristics, are adding new challenges. A couple of relevant patch sets currently under review help to illustrate the types of problems that will have to be solved.

        The core challenge with NUMA systems is ensuring that memory is allocated on the nodes where it will be used. A process that is running mostly from memory on its local node will perform better than one that is working with a lot of remote memory. So finding the right place for a given page is a one-time task; once that page and its users have found their way to the same NUMA node, the problem is solved and the only remaining concern is to avoid separating them again.

        Tiered memory is built on the NUMA concept, but there are some differences. A bank of memory can be represented as a NUMA node that lacks a CPU, so that memory will not be seen as local to any process in the system. As a general rule, memory on these CPU-less nodes is slower than normal system DRAM — it might be a large bank of persistent memory, for example — but that is not necessarily the case, as we will see below.

        Since memory on a CPU-less node is not local to any process, there must be some other criterion that regulates the allocation of memory there. The approach that is being taken is to demote pages to such a node from faster DRAM using the kernel's normal reclaim mechanisms; in a situation where a page would otherwise have been evicted or pushed to swap, it can be moved to slower memory instead. That makes use of the slower memory while keeping that page available should it turn out to still be useful. Eventually, if that page sits unused in the slower tier, it can be pushed to an even slower tier or evicted entirely.

        Demoting pages to slower tiers cannot be a one-way operation, though, or performance will suffer; some of those pages will end up being accessed frequently and keeping them in slow memory will slow things down. So there needs to be a mechanism for promoting pages back to faster memory. Simply moving a page back to fast memory on the first access after demotion would be one possible approach, but that would also promote infrequently used memory and would likely create a lot of movement of pages between tiers, which would have significant costs of its own; a better solution is called for.

      • LWNA "fireside" chat [LWN.net]

        In something of an Open Source Summit tradition, Linus Torvalds and Dirk Hohndel sit down for a discussion on various topics related to open source and, of course, the Linux kernel. Open Source Summit North America (OSSNA) 2022 in Austin, Texas was no exception, as they reprised their keynote on the first day of the conference. The headline-grabbing part of the chat was Torvalds's declaration that Rust for Linux might get merged as soon as the next merge window, which opens in just a few weeks, but there was plenty more of interest there.

        Hohndel introduced himself as the chief open source officer at the Cardano Foundation; he is working to help foster an open-source ecosystem around the foundation's blockchain technology. Torvalds said that these "fireside chats" are held because of his wishes; "I do software", not public speaking, he said, so the format makes it easier for him. He effectively has outsourced figuring out what people are interested in hearing about to Hohndel; with a grin, Torvalds said, "if he asks bad questions, it's not my fault".

      • LWNNFS: the new millennium [LWN.net]

        The network filesystem (NFS) protocol has been with us for nearly 40 years. While defined initially as a stateless protocol, NFS implementations have always had to manage state, and that need has been increasingly built into the protocol over successive revisions. The early days of NFS were discussed, with a focus on state management, in the first part of this series. This article completes the job with a look at the evolution of NFS since, approximately, the beginning of this millennium.

        The early days of NFS were controlled by Sun Microsystems, the originator of the NFS protocol and author of both the specification and implementation. As the new millennium approached, interest in NFS increased and independent implementations appeared. Of particular relevance here are the implementations in the Linux kernel that drew my attention — particularly the server implementation — and the Filer appliance produced and sold by Network Appliance (NetApp). The community's interest in NFS extended as far as a desire to have more say in the further development of the protocol. I do not know what negotiations happened, but happen they did, and one clear outcome is documented for us in RFC 2339, wherein Sun Microsystems agreed to assign to The Internet Society certain rights concerning the development of version 4 (and beyond) of NFS, providing this development achieved "Proposed Standard" status within 24 months, meaning by early 2000. That particular deadline went wooshing past and was extended. We got a "Proposed Standard" in late 2000 with RFC 3010, which was revised for RFC 3530 in April 2003 and again for RFC 7530 in March 2015.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • HowTo ForgeHow to Install GitLab with Docker on Ubuntu 22.04

        Gitlab Server is an open-source version of the cloud-hosted Gitlab version control. This guide will teach you how to install Gitlab Server using Docker on a Ubuntu 22.04 server.

      • UNIX CopHow to install FFmpeg on Fedora 36?

        Hello, friends. Recently, we have explained to you how to install FFmpeg on CentOS 9 Stream, but we will do it on Fedora 36 because it is a very popular system, and it is convenient to know how to do it.

      • TechtownHow to Enable Syntax Highlighting in Notepad++ and Create your own - Techtown

        Syntax highlighting is one of the most important features available in Notepad++ Text Editor. Very useful for Developers. During the lifetime of a code, a lot of code is added and commented on. It would be difficult to differentiate between code and comments when you open it without syntax highlighting.

      • TechtownNotepad++ JSON formatter Plugin (JSONViewer) - (How) Download, Install and Use - Techtown

        JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation is a lightweight data-interchange format. Mostly you would have used it in web service to send and receive payloads. JSON is based on the collection of name/value pairs and an ordered list of values.

        You can use any text editor even Notepad to create and modify JSON. Smaller files are easy to read and understand. You need a tool for the large and complex one to quickly format and compress JSON.

        In this article, I am going to cover JSON Plugin for Notepad++ which you can use to view, format, and compress JSON.

      • Learning ACPI for ARM64 part 2: Completeing Early intialization | Adam Young's Web Log

        Last article got up through allocating the memory for the ACPI Tables. Now we want to populate them.

        There are many lines between the allocation of the space for the tables and the finalization of the ACPI early initialization. Why? My guess is that things in-between can either lazy load entries or depend on the ACPI table without caring what is in it.

      • ACPI root pointer from UEFI System Table. | Adam Young's Web Log

        As I found out after I posted my lat entry , the correct way to find the Root pointer for the ACPI tables is to get it from the EFI System table. Where does that get set? Here’s the general flow: again, we start at init/main.c. start_kernel. However, the call is not in the ACPI code, but rather in setup_arch. The call chain goes

      • ByteXDHow to Setup a Private Git Server on Ubuntu - ByteXD

        Git, short for git protocol or git version control system, is an open-source distributed version control system that allows you to track changes to a project’s files and interact with other developers. Linus Torvalds initially developed git in 2005 as an internal tool for Linux kernel development. It has since been widely adopted across the software development community and projects.

        Git is both a distributed and free software, released explicitly under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). However, most Linux distributions provide a pre-packaged git client.

      • Linux Made SimpleHow to install the Y8 Browser on a Chromebook in 2022

        Today we are looking at how to install the Y8 Browser on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

      • SUSE's Corporate BlogHow to Ace Technical Expert Exams
      • LinuxOpSysTcpdump Command in Linux with 10 Examples

        Network is a signification component of the modern information technology infrastructure. A secure network ensures the absolute safety of your critical business data. Network connectivity issues may make your data inaccessible and such issues might be difficult to troubleshoot. Linux provides the tcpdump utility to capture and analyze the network traffic on your computer and to help you troubleshoot network issues.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • PostgreSQLPostgreSQL: pgAdmin 4 v6.11 Released

        The pgAdmin Development Team is pleased to announce pgAdmin 4 version 6.11. This release of pgAdmin 4 includes 20 bug fixes and new features. For more details please see the release notes.

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

      • PostgreSQLPostgreSQL: Announcing the release of AgensGraph 2.12

        The AgensGraph Development Team are pleased to announce the release of AgensGraph v2.12.

        AgensGraph is a new generation multi-model graph database for the modern complex data environment. AgensGraph is a multi-model database, which supports the relational and graph data model at the same time that enables developers to integrate the legacy relational data model and the flexible graph data model in one database. AgensGraph supports ANSI-SQL and openCypher. SQL queries and Cypher queries can be integrated into a single query in AgensGraph.

    • FSF

      • FSFJune GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Twelve new GNU releases! [Ed: Much respect to Amin Bandali for stepping up and helping the FSF a lot when it needed it the most]
      • FSFSpring "Bulletin": Verifying licenses, free software in education, and more!

        Software freedom needs our advocacy, our words and voices, and our generosity to spread. The biannual Free Software Foundation Bulletin is an item made for sharing, its articles from FSF staff and community members help facilitate the conversation about the importance of free software in daily life. It is a great tool to help people find their reason to support free software, to contribute to free software, or -- for the many who are just learning about it -- to take their next steps up the ladder to freedom.

    • Programming/Development

      • LWNWhatever happened to SHA-256 support in Git? [LWN.net]

        The news has been proclaimed loudly and often: the SHA-1 hash algorithm is terminally broken and should not be used in any situation where security matters. Among other things, this news gave some impetus to the longstanding effort to support a more robust hash algorithm in the Git source-code management system. As time has passed, though, that work seems to have slowed to a stop, leaving some users wondering when, if ever, Git will support a hash algorithm other than SHA-1.

        Hash functions are, of course, at the core of how Git works. Every object in its data store — every version of every file, among other things — is hashed, with the resulting value serving as the key under which that object is stored. Commits, too, are represented by a hash of the current state of the tree, the commit message, and the hash(es) of the parent commit(s). The security of the hash function is a key part of the integrity of a repository as a whole. If an attacker could replace a commit with another having the same hash value, they could perhaps inject malicious code into a repository without risking detection. That prospect is worrisome to anybody who depends on the security of code stored in Git repositories — everybody, in other words.

        The Git project has long since chosen SHA-256 as the replacement for SHA-1. Git was originally written with SHA-1 deeply wired into the code, but all of that code has since been refactored and can handle multiple hash types, with SHA-256 being the second supported type. It is now possible to create a Git repository using SHA-256 (just use the --object-format=sha256 flag) and most local operations will work just fine. The foundation for support of alternative hash algorithms in Git was part of the 2.29 release in 2020 and appears to be solid.

  • Leftovers

    • Proprietary

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Public KnowledgeFCC Order Will Help Keep Americans Connected When Disaster Strikes, But More Must Be Done - Public Knowledge

        Today, the Federal Communications Commission released an Order to protect the public from wireless outages following natural disasters. The Order makes the current voluntary industry framework under which wireless carriers support each other following natural disasters mandatory. The Order also makes important changes to improve the framework.

        Under the new framework, wireless carriers must have roaming agreements in place so that any carrier with a network outage caused by a natural disaster can get voice roaming on any carrier that is still operational, and render whatever other mutual aid to each they can reasonably provide during emergencies. The Order also establishes new “triggers” for when these obligations go into place so that obligations for cooperation go into effect as soon as disaster strikes. Public Knowledge applauds the FCC for taking action to keep Americans connected during disasters.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Ten Four FoxTenFourFox Development: Network Solutions screws the pooch again

        Floodgap appears to be down because Network Solutions' name servers are timing out and name queries are not reliably resolving (everything's up on this end). There is no ETA. If this continues for much longer I'll figure out an alternative, but between this and the social engineering hack last year, maybe this is a sign I need to move it to a different registrar even though I prepaid a few years ago.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Who is best in life?

        I rarely get tongue-tied in conversations, usually having quick answers for everything (not that I’m particularly clever, I’m definitively not, but because I’ve thought some kinda unusual perspectives through, and when people try to challenge me, they often lead the conversation straight into my home turf.

        That is also a lesson for when talking to people with messed up views—even if they're wrong, they might've thought their views through a lot more than most people have—so debate is usually not a good way to reach them compared to other forms of conversation, I don't know.

    • Politics

      • An easier way to fail

        Heard joke once: Man on knees in theatre lobby. Friend comes in. Asks what he’s doing. Man say he’s looking for his apartment keys that he lost before show. Friend say “Finding is simple. Think of where you lost them. Did you hear them fall?” Man says “Felt them fall out of pocket out on gravel parking lot.“ Friend asks why looking in here. Man bursts into tears. Says, “It’s too dark outside.” Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.

    • Technical

      • Science

        • I'm thinking of an infallible IQ test, and its name is "recyclable bin"

          I remember when I first lived in a locale that recycled glass/paper/etc. It was the late 1980s. And it was good. Always seemed like such a waste to not be doing such, so I couldn't have been happier.

          But then I'd have visitors, and they were clueless - even after explaining it to them. "Please rinse glassware a bit and put IN THIS HERE CONTAINER. Thank you."

          Um, nope. Too difficult. Crinkled up half used soda cans and the like still going into the trash bin.

          Same up through and including this day. For example, I've a 40+ year old son-in-law who fucks up my recycling bin every goddamned motherfucking visit.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Information on Gemini

          One of the things that I use the web the most for is getting information: Wikipedia, Github, Dictionaries, Translations, Book information, Programming Documentation, Calculators (inflation, interest, complex equations), etc.

          While I appreciate all of the blogs on Geminispace, I feel like we need more information and texts on Gemini. One of the main goals of AuraGem has been to provide as much access to general information as it can. I am taking this effort back up, starting with religious texts.

        • I Now Have a TwTxt

          You can find a list of crawled twtxt files from AuraGem's Search Engine here...

        • YT Proxy and Religious Texts Updates

          I have updated the YouTube proxy so that there are multiple download links for each video quality that one can download.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



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