🇺🇦BerkeleyLUG

On December 9th, 1968 a team of researchers in Menlo Park from SRI’s Augmentation Research Center put on a live, remote demo in San Francisco of their custom built computer system conceived to help solve the world’s complex, urgent problems. The capabilities they showed are still in some ways more advanced than all the marvelous technology that has come since then. The demo was later called the Mother of All Demos. Some of the firsts they showed were the mouse, chording keyset, video conferencing, and resizable computer windows.

Please join us today on the second Sunday of December at Bobby G’s Pizzeria in Berkeley from noon to three if you wish to celebrate this anniversary or just talk about anything related to Linux.

Who cares about Linux? You should. Do you use Google, Yahoo or Facebook? Do you use Windows 8? Ever flown in a plane in the US? You are trusting your data and your life to Linux every day. The Linux operating system is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) like many of the programs that run on it.

This 20th anniversary youtube story of Linux has some eye popping, validated claims. 75% of stock exchanges and 95% of supercomputers run Linux. Many TVs now use Linux internally. Every Android or iOS/Darwin phone or tablet is a unix computer.

Our berkeleylug.com group meets on the second and fourth Sundays from noon to three at Bobby G’s Pizzeria. Please join us for our meeting Sunday, Nov 25th to learn more. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Linux world stands still for no one. New releases of Fedora, Ubuntu and others are always in the works, each a unique mixture of upstream software versions and patches. It takes more than just a kernel to make an operating system. This is why each version of Linux is a little bit different even if almost all the software comes from the same sources.

Behind the scenes many people are involved in the releases, making all these parts work together smoothly. While all Linux distributions organize their own events the Ubuntu community has the most opportunities for public participation. The reason Ubuntu and Canonical was founded in 2004 by Mark Shuttleworth and his team was to create an easy-to-use Linux desktop based on Debian. For example, during the six months after an Ubuntu release the community puts on quite a range of events in a synchronized cadence. Some events are focused on helping newcomers.

As we approach the ’12 October release of Ubuntu 12.10, code name Quantal Quetzal, release parties are being planned by country and (in the US) state wide local community (LoCo) teams. Each volunteer run LoCo team participates in local events representing Ubuntu. Some teams host Ubuntu Hours. Currently the California Team hosts monthly Ubuntu Hours in San Francisco, San Jose, Mt. View, Palo Alto, Santa Cruz, Pasadena and San Diego. Volunteer team members sometimes give talks at local user groups (like BerkeleyLUG) about the new features in new releases based on the prepared release notes like these for 12.04. LoCo teams help enthusiasts collaborate with one another and are an on ramp for participation in the broader Ubuntu community. The California team holds IRC meetings every other Sunday evening at 7 PM and keeps a list of projects.

Shortly after an Ubuntu release, the next Ubuntu Developer Summit is held to plan the following release in six months. UDS-R in Copenhagen held Oct 29 – Nov 1, 2012 will plan for Ubuntu 13.04. Attendance is free and online participation are available at no charge. Travel and hotel expenses the responsibility of the attendee. Both in person and remote participation is highly encouraged. Some online IRC based events are hosted during each six month release cycle: App Developer Week, Developer week for packaging and software developers.

Global Jams are held online and in small group meetings where community members are encouraged to contribute to Ubuntu in some way of their choosing. The California Team hosted an event on Sept 7th in San Francisco at the Wikimedia Foundation offices. For full time Ubuntu developers and Canonical staff sprints are held to work together supplementing the usual remote work style.

Annual and one time events held in California and beyond include:

• SCALE February in Los Angeles
• Juju charm contest for the cloud Apr 25th
• Software Freedom Day (and wikipedia) September in many locations
• Linux Picnic August in Sunnyvale

I hope this post makes people aware of the many ways one can contribute back in some way making the operating system we use a little better. Berkeley LUG meetings continue every second and fourth Sunday each month at Bobby Gs Pizzeria from noon to three in Berkeley. Please join us this Sunday.

Computers need disks to store their operating system, programs and data. Good old disk partition management has not changed much over time. Using either MBR (created in 1983) or modern GPT paritions you are still using statically allocated partitions and filesystems. It can be challenging to deal with static partitions because initial choices can not be changed easily.

Unfortunately it is more complex to use Logical Volume Manager for Linux (wikipedia). Most factory installed computers use traditional partitioning. The added complexity is not usually needed but when it is needed it is really needed. The benefits of using LVM include the ability to more easily resize partitions and backup via snapshots. Server hardware can even replace disks using hot swapping. LVM is commonly used along with virtualization via LXC, Eucalyptus, OpenStack or other similar systems. Here are the steps needed to convert a root partition to LVM and mirror it on a redhat system.

1. Create a tar backup of your filesystem.

# tar czpf /root/redhat.tar --exclude=/var/tmp/portage/* --exclude=/root/* --exclude=/usr/portage/* --exclude=*.deb --exclude=/tmp/* --exclude=*.rpm --exclude=/sys/* --exclude=/proc/* --exclude=/dev/* --exclude=/mnt/* --exclude=/media/* --exclude=/home/*  --exclude=/var/lib/libvirt/images/* --exclude=/oracle/*  --exclude=redhat.tar


2. Use fdisk to create /boot  and 1 LVM partition on the new disk.

/dev/sda1   *   1    100      803218+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2 101121601  975956782+ 8e Linux LVM


3. Set /dev/sda1 to be bootable.

# parted /dev/sda set 1 boot on


4.  Create the new LVM partition.

# pvcreate /dev/sda2
# vgcreate vg /dev/sda2
# lvcreate -L 200G /dev/vg -n root
# mkfs /dev/vg/root
# mkfs /dev/sda1
# mount /dev/vg/root /mnt
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot


5. Extract the tar file to /mnt

# tar xpf /root/redhat.tar -C /mnt/


6. Modify the following files:

/mnt/grub/menu.list:

Modify the kernel line to support LVM by adding the following LVM details:

rd_LVM_VG=vg rd_LVM_LV=root


Also ensure that initrd and kernel does not have /boot/ in the location.

Example:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-279.2.1.el6.x86_64 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg-root LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us crashkernel=128M  rd_LVM_VG=vg rd_LVM_LV=root rhgb quiet
initrd /initramfs-2.6.32-279.2.1.el6.x86_64.img


/mnt/etc/fstab:

Change the /boot and / entries to LVM:

/dev/sda1 /boot ext4 defaults 0 0
/dev/mapper/vg-root /      ext4    defaults        1 1


7. Mount and configure the new environment:

# mount /dev/vg/root /mnt
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
# mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
# mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
# mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
# grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts  > /mnt/etc/mtab


Modify /mnt/etc/mtab and add:

/dev/sda1 /boot ext4 rw 0 0


Change the apparent root directory for the current running process and its children:

# chroot /mnt


8. Install GRUB and reconfigure the ram disk image:

# grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
# dracut --force


9. Unmount and reboot:

Type exit to exit the chroot environment

# cd /
# umount /mnt/*
# umount /mnt
# reboot


Set your system to boot from the disk known as /dev/sda

10. Initialize and format your original boot disk.

Just like we did for /dev/sda.

 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *           1       100      803218+  83  Linux
/dev/sdc2             101    121601   975956782+  8e  Linux LVM


11. Add /dev/sdc to the volume group.

# vgextend /dev/vg /dev/sdc2


12. Format the boot partition on the drive and set it bootable:

# mkfs /dev/sdc1
# parted /dev/sdc set 1 boot on


13. Mirror the boot disk:

# lvconvert -m1 /dev/vg/root


We hope this helps you with your disks. Berkeley LUG meetings continue every second and fourth Sunday each month at Bobby Gs Pizzeria from noon to three in Berkeley. Please join us.

Computing device choices of US consumers seem to increasingly indicate we prefer mobile devices, the web and the mobile web. Unix-like operating systems play a big role underneath it all. It will be interesting to see how these trends converge in the coming year.

There are about as many mobile phone subscriptions as people in the world with penetration averaging over 100% in Europe and many other countries. Developing countries are still catching up but are doing so quickly. the ITU released fascinating numbers in May, 2013 For smartphones, penetration is over 60% of in the US according to comscore in Oct, 2013. Every Android phone is a Linux device and every iOS device is based on Darwin. Though HTML5 can do amazing things, mobile apps are still a much more customized and compelling user experience so far. How do you think the mobile trends like Bluetooth low energy, Wi-Fi (Direct and more conventional 802.11n and 802.11ac just approved), cameras, mobile phones, tablets and wearables fit into our future?

We meet on the second and fourth Sundays of each month in Berkeley near the Downtown Berkeley BART station. We hope you join us at Bobby G’s Pizzeria.

This is going to be a series of blog posts on trusting open source. I am first introducing some questions that newcomers ask when first trying to understand the nature and model of open source software. These questions are crucial to getting answered adequately so that people can move on to using the software. I will talk about the security and reliability of open source and then alternatives to open source.

When you think about it, how can anyone trust the open source process and the code it produces? You don’t know who is coding what is running on your computer. If you aren’t a coder you aren’t looking at the code. Why does this work so well?

Few technical folks will use something they do not understand and/or trust. For others they need to know they have someone who can answer their questions. Tim O’Reilly calls these people alpha geeks. You may call them your nephews or nieces. Since nobody is born knowing everything about technology and because it changes we all need to learn sometime.

Some people still are trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) about open source. These efforts have largely been shown to be specious. While science, technology engineering (somtimes art is included) and mathematics (STEM fields) is now the hot topic for the US education system, the scientific method itself seems to be under attack in some newspapers giving fact based arguments equal or less standing to conjecture.

Is open source right for you? I look forward to seeing your comments.

As a reminder for those in our area, our 4th Sunday meeting at Bobby G’s Pizzeria is going on now.

What is this? Some vendors want to lock down the new UEFI boot loader on machines they sell you. It seems Red Hat and Fedora have some arrangement with Microsoft. Our own zareason will ship all systems with UEFI Secure Boot disabled until a more workable solution is found. The story has evolved quickly.

http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/12368.html

http://boingboing.net/2012/05/31/lockdown-freeopen-os-maker-p.html

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/06/06/1232243/red-hat-clarifies-doubts-over-uefi-secure-boot-solution

Our usual second (and fourth) Sunday meeting is today too. Please join us.