• Kubeflow at OSCON 2019– Over 10 sessions! Covering security, pipelines, productivity, ML ops and more. Some of the sessions are led by end-users, which means you’ll get the real deal about using Kubeflow in your production solution
• Kubeflow at KubeCon Europe 2019 in Barcelona– The top Kubeflow events from Kubecon in Barcelona, 2019. Tutorials, Pipelines, and Kubeflow 1.0 ruminations. The discussion on when Kubeflow will reach 1.0 should be of interest to those waiting for that milestone.
• Kubeflow Contributor Summit 2019– Presentations and Slide decks, 22+ of them. Reviewing them will help you understand how the sausage is made. One of the interesting videos focuses on a panel discussion with machine learning practitioners and experts discussing the dynamics of machine learning at their workplace.
• Kubeflow events calendar– Find a past or future event. This is a great resource for reviewing content from community leaders and leveling up on the current state of Kubeflow. If you are aware of something that is missing, feel free to add the content through github – become a community member! 
• Use Case Spotlight: IBM’s photo-scraping scandal shows what a weird bubble AI researchers live in. This bubble is all about data – who owns it, who can monopolize it, who is monetizing it, and what the expectations around it. The expectations is the crux of the issue – people using the data may be at odds with the people supplying the data.

The post Issue #2019.07.22 – Kubeflow and Conferences, 2019 appeared first on Ubuntu Blog.

Previously: v5.1.

Linux kernel v5.2 was released last week! Here are some security-related things I found interesting:

page allocator freelist randomization
While the SLUB and SLAB allocator freelists have been randomized for a while now, the overarching page allocator itself wasn’t. This meant that anything doing allocation outside of the kmem_cache/kmalloc() would have deterministic placement in memory. This is bad both for security and for some cache management cases. Dan Williams implemented this randomization under CONFIG_SHUFFLE_PAGE_ALLOCATOR now, which provides additional uncertainty to memory layouts, though at a rather low granularity of 4MB (see SHUFFLE_ORDER). Also note that this feature needs to be enabled at boot time with page_alloc.shuffle=1 unless you have direct-mapped memory-side-cache (you can check the state at /sys/module/page_alloc/parameters/shuffle).

stack variable initialization with Clang
Alexander Potapenko added support via CONFIG_INIT_STACK_ALL for Clang’s -ftrivial-auto-var-init=pattern option that enables automatic initialization of stack variables. This provides even greater coverage than the prior GCC plugin for stack variable initialization, as Clang’s implementation also covers variables not passed by reference. (In theory, the kernel build should still warn about these instances, but even if they exist, Clang will initialize them.) Another notable difference between the GCC plugins and Clang’s implementation is that Clang initializes with a repeating 0xAA byte pattern, rather than zero. (Though this changes under certain situations, like for 32-bit pointers which are initialized with 0x000000AA.) As with the GCC plugin, the benefit is that the entire class of uninitialized stack variable flaws goes away.

Kernel Userspace Access Prevention on powerpc
Like SMAP on x86 and PAN on ARM, Michael Ellerman and Russell Currey have landed support for disallowing access to userspace without explicit markings in the kernel (KUAP) on Power9 and later PPC CPUs under CONFIG_PPC_RADIX_MMU=y (which is the default). This is the continuation of the execute protection (KUEP) in v4.10. Now if an attacker tries to trick the kernel into any kind of unexpected access from userspace (not just executing code), the kernel will fault.

Microarchitectural Data Sampling mitigations on x86
Another set of cache memory side-channel attacks came to light, and were consolidated together under the name Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS). MDS is weaker than other cache side-channels (less control over target address), but memory contents can still be exposed. Much like L1TF, when one’s threat model includes untrusted code running under Symmetric Multi Threading (SMT: more logical cores than physical cores), the only full mitigation is to disable hyperthreading (boot with “nosmt“). For all the other variations of the MDS family, Andi Kleen (and others) implemented various flushing mechanisms to avoid cache leakage.

unprivileged userfaultfd sysctl knob
Both FUSE and userfaultfd provide attackers with a way to stall a kernel thread in the middle of memory accesses from userspace by initiating an access on an unmapped page. While FUSE is usually behind some kind of access controls, userfaultfd hadn’t been. To avoid things like Use-After-Free heap grooming, Peter Xu added the new “vm.unprivileged_userfaultfd” sysctl knob to disallow unprivileged access to the userfaultfd syscall.

temporary mm for text poking on x86
The kernel regularly performs self-modification with things like text_poke() (during stuff like alternatives, ftrace, etc). Before, this was done with fixed mappings (“fixmap”) where a specific fixed address at the high end of memory was used to map physical pages as needed. However, this resulted in some temporal risks: other CPUs could write to the fixmap, or there might be stale TLB entries on removal that other CPUs might still be able to write through to change the target contents. Instead, Nadav Amit has created a separate memory map for kernel text writes, as if the kernel is trying to make writes to userspace. This mapping ends up staying local to the current CPU, and the poking address is randomized, unlike the old fixmap.

ongoing: implicit fall-through removal
Gustavo A. R. Silva is nearly done with marking (and fixing) all the implicit fall-through cases in the kernel. Based on the pull request from Gustavo, it looks very much like v5.3 will see -Wimplicit-fallthrough added to the global build flags and then this class of bug should stay extinct in the kernel.

That’s it for now; let me know if you think I should add anything here. We’re almost to -rc1 for v5.3!

© 2019, Kees Cook. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

As you probably know, there are many ways you can build snaps: locally using snapcraft, with CI systems like Travis, through Launchpad, and also via the free online Snapcraft Build Service. Now, a new preview feature called Remote build also allows you to build snaps for multiple architectures directly from the command line. This has been high on the developers’ wish list, and now it’s here. Let’s see how it works.

Install experimental branch

To get the remote build preview, you will need to install a separate branch of snapcraft:

snap install snapcraft --channel=beta/remote-build

If you already have snapcraft installed, you will then use the refresh command instead.

sudo snap refresh snapcraft --channel beta/remote-build
snapcraft (beta/remote-build) 3.5+git1.g13c59d4 from Canonical✓ refreshed

Configure system for use

Once the remote-build branch is configured on your system, you can start building snaps. You will need a valid snapcraft.yaml file (that builds successfully) and a Launchpad account, configured for SSH access. This means you will have created an SSH key pair, and the public key will be configured in your Launchpad account.

Start remote build

You invoke remote builds by providing your Launchpad user ID and several optional flags. The remote build functionality comes with some rather nifty features, like the ability to check the status of a running build, resume a previously interrupted build using a unique build number, build from a local git repo, and most importantly, specify target architectures.

--recover <build-number>  Recover interrupted remote build.
--status <build-number>   Display remote build status.
--arch <arch-list>        Set architectures to build.
--git                     Build a local git repository.
--user <username>         Launchpad username.
--help                    Show this message and exit.

The arch option is really handy if your snaps need to run on multiple platforms, for which you might not have sufficient hardware resources (or toolchain expertise) to perform the necessary builds and testing. You can build for i386, amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, and s390x. By default, without any arch arguments supplied, only the first two will be built.

First time run

When you invoke your first remote build, snapcraft will (try to) open your Launchpad account in the browser, and approve snapcraft for authorized access. Depending on your operating system environment setup, snapcraft may automatically launch the browser page, or you can manually access the provided link. The command-line execution will wait until you have completed this step.

snapcraft remote-build --user “your Launchpad user id”
snapcraft remote-build is offered as a preview. Authentication and transport mechanisms will change in future releases. Use with caution in scripts.

The authorization page:

(https://launchpad.net/+authorize-token?oauth_token=swT6JPJhMZwz0ztrb6X8&allow_permission=DESKTOP_INTEGRATION) should be opening in your browser. Use your browser to authorize this program to access Launchpad on your behalf.

Waiting to hear from Launchpad about your decision...

In Launchpad, the requester application will be your hostname, and you have the option to decide for how long you want to allow access. You can go for temporary or permanent access, and of course, you can always revoke it later on if you like.

The next step is to approve the authenticity of the remote host – as we’re establishing an SSH connection. Optionally, depending on your security configuration, you will be asked to provide a password for your private key.

Sending data to remote builder…
The authenticity of host 'git.launchpad.net (162.213.33.95)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is SHA256:ABCDEF…
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? Yes
Enter passphrase for key '/home/your-username/.ssh/id_rsa':
Building package. This may take some time to finish.

Once this step completes, the build will resume.

Building in progress

The remote build can take a little while to start. You snapcraft build will be placed in a queue, and you will see an expected time for it to initialize and finish. You can track the status from the command line as well as through your Launchpad account.

The easiest way to access the snaps page is by using the following URL format:

https://launchpad.net/~”your-Launchpad-username”/+snaps

Meanwhile, the build ought to continue:

Building package. This may take some time to finish.
If interrupted, resume with: 'snapcraft remote-build --recover 49937505'

After a while, if your YAML syntax is valid, the build will finish successfully.

The created snaps will be copied over to your host, and you will see them in your project directory. In our example, since we haven’t used any architecture overrides, we have two snaps (i386 and amd64):

Building package. This may take some time to finish.
If interrupted, resume with: 'snapcraft remote-build --recover 49937505'
Snapped tqdm_1.0_i386.snap
Snapped tqdm_1.0_amd64.snap
Build complete.

Summary

Remote build is rather useful feature, as it provides developers with a great deal of flexibility and power in the snap build cycles. It allows you to use snapcraft even if your local system is not well suited for the task, like hardware or resources(or both). The multi-arch support makes remote build extra useful for IoT and non-desktop platforms. The initial setup takes a little bit of effort, but after that, you should have a robust, elegant capability in place, which greatly expands your application reach. At the moment, this is still a test feature, so we welcome feedback and ideas. Please join our forum and tell us what you think.

Bonus points if you picked up the C&C: RA references in this article.

Photo by Felix Berger on Unsplash.

The post Handy snapcraft features: Remote build appeared first on Ubuntu Blog.

Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS.

Individual reports

In June, 201 work hours have been dispatched among 14 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 7 hours (out of 14 hours allocated plus 7 extra hours from May, thus carrying over 14h to July).
• Adrian Bunk did 6 hours (out of 8 hours allocated plus 8 extra hours from May, thus carrying over 10h to July).
• Ben Hutchings did 17 hours (out of 17 hours allocated).
• Brian May did 10 hours (out of 10 hours allocated).
• Chris Lamb did 17 hours (out of 17 hours allocated plus 0.25 extra hours from May, thus carrying over 0.25h to July).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did not provide his June report yet. (He got 17 hours allocated and carried over 0.25h from May).
• Hugo Lefeuvre did 4.25 hours (out of 17 hours allocated and he gave back 12.75 hours to the pool, thus he’s not carrying over any hours to July).
• Jonas Meurer did 16.75 hours (out of 17 hours allocated plus 1.75h extra hours from May, thus he is carrying over 2h to July).
• Markus Koschany did 17 hours (out of 17 hours allocated).
• Mike Gabriel did 9.75 hours (out of 17 hours allocated, thus carrying over 7.25h to July).
• Ola Lundqvist did 4.5 hours (out of 8 hours allocated plus 6h from June, then he gave back 1.5h to the pool, thus he is carrying over 8h to July).
• Roberto C. Sanchez did 8 hours (out of 8 hours allocated).
• Sylvain Beucler did 17 hours (out of 17 hours allocated).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 17 hours (out of 17 hours allocated).

DebConf sponsorship

Thanks to the Extended LTS service, Freexian has been able to invest some money in DebConf sponsorship. This year, Debconf attendees should have Debian LTS stickers and flyer in their welcome bag. And while we were thinking of marketing, we also opted to create a promotional video explaining LTS and Freexian’s offer. This video will be premiered at Debconf 19!

Evolution of the situation

We continue to be looking for new contributors. Please contact Holger if you are interested to become a paid LTS contributor.

The security tracker (now for oldoldstable as Buster has been released and thus Stretch became oldoldstable) currently lists 41 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 43 packages needing an update.

Thanks to our sponsors

New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 45 months)
• GitHub (for 36 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 13 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• The Positive Internet (for 62 months)
• Blablacar (for 60 months)
• Linode (for 50 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 40 months)
• Plat’Home (for 39 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• Domeneshop AS (for 61 months)
• Nantes Métropole (for 55 months)
• Dalenys (for 51 months)
• Université Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 47 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 46 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 40 months)
• maxcluster GmbH (for 34 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 30 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 24 months)
• Vente-privee.com (for 21 months)
• CINECA (for 14 months)
• Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères (for 8 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Evolix (for 61 months)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 61 months)
• MyTux (for 60 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 58 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 58 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 57 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 56 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 56 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 55 months)
• NUMLOG (for 55 months)
• WinGo AG (for 54 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes – LHEEA (for 50 months)
• Sig-I/O (for 48 months)
• Entr’ouvert (for 45 months)
• Adfinis SyGroup AG (for 43 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 37 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI – UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 37 months)
• Quarantainenet BV (for 37 months)
• Bearstech (for 29 months)
• LiHAS (for 29 months)
• People Doc (for 25 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 23 months)
• Supagro (for 19 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 17 months)
• TrapX Security (for 14 months)
• NCC Group (for 11 months)
• Université Grenoble Alpes (for 3 months)

No comment | Liked this article? Click here. | My blog is Flattr-enabled.

Neste episódio tivemos a de novo participação do João Jotta e do André Paula do Linuxtechpt onde discutimos práticas de segurança e privacidade e snaps. Já sabes, ouve, subscreve e partilha!

• https://linuxtech.pt/
• https://ubucon.eu
• https://sintra2019.ubucon.org/call-for-papers-announcement/
• https://framaforms.org/volunteers-voluntarios-ubucon-europe-2019-sintra-1559899302

Apoios

Este episódio foi produzido e editado por Alexandre Carrapiço (Thunderclaws Studios – captação, produção, edição, mistura e masterização de som) contacto: thunderclawstudiosPT–arroba–gmail.com.

Outra forma de nos apoiarem é usarem os links de afiliados do Humble Bundle, porque ao usarem esses links para fazer uma compra, uma parte do valor que pagam reverte a favor do Podcast Ubuntu Portugal
E podem obter tudo isso com 15 dólares ou diferentes partes dependendo de pagarem 1, ou 8.
Achamos que isto vale bem mais do que 15 dólares, pelo que se puderem paguem mais um pouco mais visto que têm a opção de pagar o quanto quiserem.

• Sugestão de bundle:

• https://www.humblebundle.com/books/open-source-bookshelf?partner=pup
• https://www.humblebundle.com/books/programmable-boards-make-books?partner=pup

Se estiverem interessados em outros bundles se acrescentarem no fim do link para qualquer bundle: ?partner=pup (da mesma forma como no link da sugestão) e vão estar também a apoiar-nos.

Atribuição e licenças

“Dingo”by PaulBalfe is licensed under CC BY 2.0

A música do genérico é: “Won’t see it comin’ (Feat Aequality & N’sorte d’autruche)”, por Alpha Hydrae e está licenciada nos termos da [CC0 1.0 Universal License](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).

Este episódio está licenciado nos termos da licença: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), cujo texto integral pode ser lido aqui. Estamos abertos a licenciar para permitir outros tipos de utilização, contactem-nos para validação e autorização.

CMake is an open-source, cross-platform family of tools designed to build, test and package software. It is used to control the software compilation process and generate native makefiles and workspaces that can be used in any compiler environment. 

While some users of CMake want to stay up to date with the latest release, others want to be able to stay with a known version and choose when to move forward to newer releases, picking up just the minor bug fixes for the feature release they are tracking. Users may also occasionally need to roll back to an earlier feature release, such as when a bug or a change introduced in a newer CMake version exposes problems within their project.

Craig Scott, one of the co-maintainers of CMake, sees snaps as an excellent solution to these needs. Snaps’ ability to support separate tracks for each feature release in addition to giving users the choice of following official releases, release candidates or bleeding edge builds are an ideal fit. When he received an invitation to the 2019 Snapcraft Summit, he was keen to work directly with those at the pointy end of developing and supporting the snap system. 

He believes snaps can help projects connect with the user population by providing an easy, trustworthy installation path. In his opinion, “users often do not want to install anything that is not in an official repository, and they want the install process to be both simple and familiar.” Together, the Snap Store and snaps meet these requirements. 

Discoverability of CMake is becoming less of an issue these days. According to Craig, “if you’re working  in C++, CMake is getting hard to ignore. Developer surveys show that CMake has become the leading build system for C++ projects.” Therefore, the biggest benefit of having CMake available in the Snap Store is to give users convenient access to official releases in a timely fashion.

CMake’s active user and developer communities ensure that there is a fairly constant stream of contributions in the form of enhancements and fixes. Continuous integration (CI) is part of CMake’s DNA and Craig plans to use Travis CI to automatically release CMake in the edge channel of the Snap Store, in addition to official releases and release candidates. He spent a couple of days at the Summit working directly with the Travis CI team, working through how to set up the builds to be reliable and easy to maintain. “Some of the challenges were related to automatically determining the feature release track to submit builds to and setting up scheduled daily builds to follow CMake development. I found answers to questions on some of the Travis CI and Snapcraft documentation and worked with both teams to iron out several speed bumps.”.

Improvements to snaps that Craig would like to see include better SELinux compatibility. Improving this would further strengthen the case for snaps becoming the standard way of packaging on Linux. Indeed, “Whether an app or a tool is standard and gaining adoption are important points for me when deciding where to spend my time maintaining a project like CMake.”

Craig also has some advice for developers thinking of using snaps. He suggests, “First, find a project in the Snapcraft Store with similar needs to yours. Then look at how they have structured their Snapcraft builds and integrated them into whichever CI system they are using.” He finds the documentation is sometimes behind concerning the latest patches, so it makes sense to leverage the success of another project that already works.

What did he think of the Summit? Craig was impressed to see how quickly people were putting things together and the overall sense of progress. He also said, “People can come to the Summit not only with the expectation of learning how snaps and Snapcraft work, but also with the goal of getting to know other project maintainers and establishing mutually beneficial networks.” With the range of applications in the Snapcraft Store increasing, he would now like to see the tool chain community representation growing too.

Install the CMake snap here.

The post CMake leverages the Snapcraft Summit with Travis CI to build snaps appeared first on Ubuntu Blog.

Ubuntu Advantage  for Infrastructure为业内最全面的软件、安全和IaaS提供单一 ，每节点包支持。OpenStack和Kubernetes支持的加入，UA基础设施建设提供了验证未来数据中心所需要的一切。 Ubuntu Advantage也是Canonical为企业所提供的专业技术支持，旨在降低生成环境维护成本，确保企业生产、服务正常运行免除安全威胁。

Ubuntu Advantage为企业提供安全、合规性支持，在提高效率的同时降低了复杂性和成本支出。Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure帮助全球领先的组织管理生产环境中的Ubuntu的部署。（以下简称Ubuntu Advantage为UA）
包含：

• 扩展安全维护更新（ESM）
• Kernel live patch 服务可避免重启
• Landscape内部系统管理工具
• 24×7的电话和ticket支持
• 支持OpenStack，Kubernetes，Ceph/Swift及更多
• 知识库访问
• IP（知识产权）法律支持计划
• 通过FIPS 140-2认证的加密模块和普通标准

扩展安全维护更新（ESM）

扩展的安全维护（ESM）通过UA for Infrastructure确保Ubuntu长期支持（LTS）系统的持续安全性和完整性。

Canonical Ubuntu安全团队将提供Ubuntu main archive上常用的服务器包的高危漏洞、已知的安全风险修复服务。其包含12.04 LTS及14.04 LTS的支持。

Kernel live patch（内核热补丁服务）

Kernel live patch：无需重启即可给内核高危漏洞打补丁，特点如下：

• 无需重启系统即可自动修补安全漏洞
• 减少下载时间，为你的LTS系统增加安全保障
• 已包含在UA for Infrastructure内

UA价格列表：

以下提及到相关价格为2019年7月19日，已包含扩展安全维护更新服务（ESM）。最新价格可访问此页面或者联系我们。

1、虚拟服务器（Virtual Server ）

• 基础版：75美元/年
• 标准版：250美元/年
• 高级版：500美元/年

各版本服务支持描述（上到下对应左到右）

2、物理服务器（Physical Server ）

UＡ服务只能提供给通过Canonical的服务器认证流程的物理服务器。已认证服务器列表见：链接

• 基础版：225美元/年
• 标准版：750美元/年
• 高级版：1500美元/年

各版本服务支持描述（上到下对应左到右）

3、桌面系统（Desktop）

• 基础版：25美元/年（100台起售）
• 标准版：150美元/年（20台起售）
• 高级版：300美元/年（10台起售）

各版本服务支持描述（上到下对应左到右）

更多内容请访问Ubuntu企业支持。如需要其他支持服务，请联系我们。

The post 企业专业支持：Ubuntu Advantage介绍 appeared first on Ubuntu Blog.

This is a follow-up to the End of Life warning sent earlier this month to confirm that as of today (July 18, 2019), Ubuntu 18.10 is no longer supported. No more package updates will be accepted to 18.10, and it will be archived to old-releases.ubuntu.com in the coming weeks.

The original End of Life warning follows, with upgrade instructions:

Ubuntu announced its 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) release almost 9 months ago, on October 18, 2018. As a non-LTS release, 18.10 has a 9-month support cycle and, as such, the support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 18.10 will reach end of life on Thursday, July 18th.

At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 18.10.

The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 18.10 is via Ubuntu 19.04. Instructions and caveats for the upgrade may be found at:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DiscoUpgrades

Ubuntu 19.04 continues to be actively supported with security updates and select high-impact bug fixes. Announcements of security updates for Ubuntu releases are sent to the ubuntu-security-announce mailing list, information about which may be found at:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-security-announce

Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users in homes, schools, businesses and governments around the world. Ubuntu is Open Source software, costs nothing to download, and users are free to customise or alter their software in order to meet their needs.

Originally posted to the ubuntu-announce mailing list on Fri Jul 19 00:10:53 UTC 2019 by Adam Conrad, on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team

In recent times, there has been increasing attention on all forms of abuse and violence against women.

Many types of abuse are hidden from public scrutiny. Yet there is one that is easily visible: the acid attack.

Reshma Qureshi, pictured above, was attacked by an estranged brother-in-law. He had aimed to attack her sister, his ex-wife. This reveals one of the key attributes of these attacks: they are often perpetrated by somebody who the victim trusted.

When so many other forms of abuse are hidden, why is the acid attack so visible? This is another common theme: the perpetrator is often motivated to leave lasting damage, to limit the future opportunities available to the victim. It is not about hurting the victim, it is about making sure they will be rejected by others.

It is disturbing then that we find similar characteristics in online communities. Debian and Wikimedia (beware: scandal) have both recently decided to experiment with publicly shaming, humiliating and denouncing people. In the world of technology, trust is critical. People in positions of leadership have found that a simple email to the press can be used to undermine trust in a rival, leaving a smear that will linger, like the scars intended by Qureshi's estranged brother-in-law. Here is an example:

Jackson's virtual acid attack was picked up by at least one journalist and used to create a news story.

Some people spend endless hours talking (or writing) about safety and codes of conduct, yet they seem to completely miss the point. Personally, I don't object to codes of conduct, but we have to remember that not all codes of conduct are equal. In practice, the use of codes of conduct in many free software communities today looks like this:

If you search for sample codes of conduct online, you may well find some organizations use alternative titles, such as a statement of member's rights and obligations. This reminds us that you need to have both.

When we see organizations like FSFE and Debian trying to make up excuses to explain why members can't be members of their respective legal bodies, what they are really saying is that they want the members to have less rights.

When you have obligations without rights, you end up with slavery and cult-like phenomena.

History lessons

One of the first codes of conduct may be the Magna Carta from the year 1215. Lord Denning described it as the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.

In other words, 800 years ago in medieval England they came to the conclusion that members of a community couldn't be punished arbitrarily.

What is significant about this document is that the king himself chose to be subjected to this early code of conduct.

An example of rights

In 2016, when serious accusations of sexual misconduct were made against a volunteer who participates in multiple online communities, the Debian Account Managers sent him a threat of expulsion and gave him two days to respond.

Yet in 2018, when Chris Lamb decided to indulge in removing members from the Debian keyring, he simply did it spontaneously, using the Debian Account Managers as puppets to do his bidding. Members targetted by these politically-motivated assassinations weren't given the same two day notice period as the person facing allegations of sexual assault.

Two days hardly seems like sufficient time to respond to such allegations, especially for the member who was ambushed the week before Christmas. What if such a message was sent when he was already on vacation and didn't even receive the message until January? Nonetheless, however crude, a two day response period is a process. Chris Lamb threw that process out the window. There is something incredibly arrogant about that, a leader who doesn't need to listen to people before making such a serious decision, it is as if he thinks being Debian Project Leader is equivalent to being God.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 10 tells us that Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations. They were probably thinking about more than a two day response period when they wrote that.

Any organization seeking to have a credible code of conduct seeks to have a clause equivalent to article 10. Yet the recent scandals in Debian and Wikimedia demonstrate what happens in the absence of such clauses. As Lord Denning put it, without any process or hearing, members are faced with the arbitrary authority of the despot.

The trauma of incarceration

In her FOSDEM 2019 talk about Enforcement, Molly de Blanc has chosen pictures of a cat behind bars and a cat being squashed in a sofa.

It is abhorrent that de Blanc chose to use this imagery just three days after another member of the Debian community passed away. Locking up people (or animals) is highly abusive and not something to joke about. For example, we wouldn't joke with a photo of an animal being raped, so why is it OK to display an image of a cat behind bars?

Deaths in custody are a phenomena that is both disturbing and far too common. Debian's founder had taken his life immediately after a period of incarceration.

Virtual incarceration

The system of secretly shaming people, censoring people, demoting people and running huge lynching threads on the debian-private mailing list has many psychological similarities to incarceration.

Here is a snapshot of what happens on debian-private:

It resembles the medieval practice of locking people in the pillory or stocks and inviting the rest of the community to throw rocks and garbage at them.

How would we feel if somebody either responded to this virtual lynching with physical means, or if they took their own life or the lives of other people? In my earlier blog about secret punishments, I referred to the research published in Social Psychology of Education which found that psychological impacts of online bullying, which includes shaming, are just as harmful as the psychological impact from child abuse.

Would you want to holiday in a village that re-introduced this type of cruel punishment? It turns out, studies have also shown that witnesses to the bullying, which could include any subscribers to the debian-private mailing list, may be suffering as much or more harm than the victims.

If Debian's new leader took bullying seriously, he would roll back all decisions made through such vile processes, delete all evidence of the bullying from public mailing list archives and give a public statement to confirm that the organization failed. Instead, we see people continuing to try and justify a kangaroo court, using grievance procedures sketched on the back of a napkin.

What is leadership for?

It is generally accepted that leaders of modern organizations should act to prevent lynchings and mobbings in their organizations. Yet in recent cases in both Debian and Wikimedia, it appears that the leaders have been the instigators, using the lynching to turn opinion against their victims before there is any time to analyse evidence or give people a fair hearing.

What's more, many people have formed the impression that Molly de Blanc's talks on this subject are not only encouraging these practices but also trolling the victims. She is becoming a trauma trigger for anybody who has ever been bullied.

Looking over the debian-project mailing list since December 2018, it appears all the most abusive messages, such as the call for dirt on another member, or the public announcement that a member is on probation, have been written by people in a position of leadership or authority, past or present. These people control the infrastructure, they know the messages will reach a lot of people and they intend to preserve them publicly for eternity. That is remarkably similar to the mindset of the men who perpetrate acid attacks on women they can't control.

Therefore, if the leader of an organization repeatedly indulges himself, telling volunteers they are not real developers, has he really made them less of a developer, or has he simply become less of a leader, demoting himself to become one of the despots Lord Denning refers to?

Kubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish was released on October 18th 2018 with 9 months support. As of 18th July 2019, 18.10 reaches ‘end of life’. No more package updates will be accepted to 18.10, and it will be archived to old-releases.ubuntu.com in the coming weeks.

The official end of life announcement for Ubuntu as a whole can be found here [1].

Kubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo continues to be supported, receiving security and high-impact bugfix updates until January 2020.

Users of 18.10 can follow the Kubuntu 18.10 to 19.04 Upgrade [2] instructions.

Should for some reason your upgrade be delayed, and you find that the 18.10 repositories have been archived to old-releases.ubuntu.com, instructions to perform a EOL Upgrade can be found on the Ubuntu wiki [3].

Thank you for using Kubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish.

The Kubuntu team.

[1] – https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2019-July/000247.html
[2] – https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DiscoUpgrades/Kubuntu
[3] – https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EOLUpgrades

Lifecycle management entails fulfilling changing requirements over time. However, there is a gap that the existing robot development frameworks do not address, making it challenging to tackle system-level requirements (fault tolerance, system safety, maintainability, interoperability or reusability etc…). Ubuntu Core aims at closing this gap by complementing existing frameworks with a set of tools that enable the long term viability of robotic projects. Referring to system life cycle standard ISO/IEC 15288, we will describe how Ubuntu Core enables success in each specified stage.

ISO/IEC 15288: System Life Cycle

Concept and Development phases: accelerating prototyping

Ubuntu makes it really easy to start a robotic POC by removing all the barriers that an innovator may encounter in getting a project off the ground. Developers can embed Ubuntu at no cost to their hardware of choice. Being open source, it is also easy to tailor Ubuntu to the specific needs of a project. Developers love Ubuntu. This popularity brings the benefits of broad community support and therefore a large pool of developers to contribute to, or help you troubleshoot your applications. What’s more, the popularity of Ubuntu drives off-the-shelf development board support, making it easy to find suitable hardware to start prototyping.

Development and production phases: bringing continuous delivery and integration to robotics

Delivering software upgrades to a fleet of robots operating in the field is a tedious task involving manual intervention and disrupted operations. As the consequence bug fixes are very costly to deploy. Additionally, the lack of agility in the delivery of security upgrades exposes to security vulnerabilities. To reduce this exposure, Ubuntu Core makes use of snaps. These are containerised software packages that are upgraded automatically. Snapcraft, the developer tool dedicated to the creation and delivery of snaps is easy to integrate into CI pipelines. On the operations side, Snapd is a tool that exposes an API to automate the deployment of snaps on robots in the field. Channels and tracks allow for the deployment of different versions of the software on the same fleet, or even on the same unit. Software be tested on dedicated units, before it is rolled out to an entire fleet.

Utilisation phase: unlocking new revenue models

Snaps open the door for robotics-as-a-platform. Robots embedded with Ubuntu Core will not be expensive single purpose assets anymore, but rather channels for services mediated by software-defined hardware. This is an important paradigm shift with the potential to unlock new business models and stimulate innovation in robotics. From application marketplaces to paid add-ons, or pay per use, new avenues to generate recurring revenue from a robot become possible.

Support phase: security and reliability through cloud integration

Ubuntu Core is designed as a security-first OS. The system is tamper-resistant and processes are strictly confined to their own environments. In addition to this inherent security, maintenance of system security is assured for as long as 10 years through Extended Security Maintenance (ESM). Snaps update automatically, which means that non-disruptive updates are provided continuously. This happens in a transactional manner that preserves data and rolls back on error, assuring system reliability.

Retirement phase: stretching the useful life of robots

The snap packages underlying Ubuntu Core enable function virtualisation. New functionalities can be packaged and delivered to a robot through self-contained snaps at any point of its service life. For instance, machine learning capabilities can be added to an existing cleaning robot, extending the scope of its functionalities. The ability to push new functions to a robot can be leveraged to delay their obsolescence. This will stretch the useful life of robot fleets, with a positive effect on the overall economics for both operators and makers of robots. This capability will have repercussions on the hardware architecture of robots. Makers will be incentivised to build more robots as futureproof platforms. Hardware and software upgrades will be delivered during the life of robots to make them evolve, pushing back the boundaries of obsolescence.

The post Robot lifecycle management with Ubuntu appeared first on Ubuntu Blog.

This week we’ve been buying a new phone and playing with QEMU. We discuss the release fo Debian 10, Ubuntu users saying “Thank you”, Nvidia drivers, WSL and Ubuntu MATE for the GPD MicroPC. We also round up some events and tech news.

It’s Season 12 Episode 15 of the Ubuntu Podcast! Mark Johnson, Martin Wimpress and Stuart Langridge are connected and speaking to your brain.

In this week’s show:

• We discuss what we’ve been up to recently:
  • Mark has been buying a new phone.
  • Stuart has been playing with QEMU.
• We discuss the community news:
  • Debian 10 Buster is released
  • Will Cooke has a nice message
  • Introducing ubuntu-wsl, the package making Ubuntu better and better on WSL including a fresh Ubuntu wiki page about WSL
  • Ubuntu MATE 19.10 is coming to the GPD MicroPC
  • Ubuntu LTS Linux Distributions Will Now Get The Latest Nvidia Drivers Installed Automatically

• We mention some events:
  • UbuCon Europe 2019: 10th to 13th of October 2019 – Sintra, Portugal.
  • Oggcamp 19: 19th to 20th of October 2019 – The Manchester Conference Centre, Pendulum Hotel, Manchester UK.
• We discuss the news:
  • Internet group brands Mozilla “internet villain” for supporting DNS privacy feature
  • Maintainer for gpodder.net needed
  • Raspberry Pi 4 doesn’t work with some USB-C cables
• Image taken from Diablo published in 1996 for PC by Blizzard Entertainment.

That’s all for this week! You can listen to the Ubuntu Podcast back catalogue on YouTube. If there’s a topic you’d like us to discuss, or you have any feedback on previous shows, please send your comments and suggestions to show@ubuntupodcast.org or Tweet us or Toot us or Comment on our Facebook page or comment on our sub-Reddit.

• Join us in the Ubuntu Podcast Telegram group.

desk lamp with mirror behind

Some time ago, I wanted to make my own desk lamp. It should provide soft, bright task lighting above my desk, no sharp shadows that could cover part of my work area, but also some atmospheric lighting around the desk in my basement office. The lamp should have a natural look around it, but since I made it myself, I also didn’t mind exposing some of its internals.

SMD5050 LED strips

I had some nice oak floor shelves that I got from a friend lying around. which I used as base material for the lamp. I combined these with some RGBW led strips that I had lying around, and a wireless controller that would allow me to connect the lamp to my Philips Hue lighting system, that I use throughout the house to control the lights. I’ve sanded the wood until it was completely smooth, and then finished it with oil to make it more durable and give it a more pronounced texture.

Fixed to the ceiling

Internals of the desk lamp

The center board is covered in 0.5mm aluminium to dissipate heat from the led strips and provide some extra diffusion of the light. This material is also very suitable to stick the led strips to. For the light itself, I used SMD5050 LED strips that can produce warm and cold white light, as well as RGB colors. I put 5 rows of strips next to each other to provide enough light. The strips wrap around at the top, so light is not just shining down on my desk, but also reflecting from walls and ceiling around it. The front and back are another piece of wood to avoid looking directly into the LEDs, which would be distractive, annoying when working and also quite ugly. I attached a front and back board as well to the lamp, making it into an H shape.

Light reflects nicely from surrounding surfaces

The controller (a Gledopto Z-Wave controller, that is compatible with Philips Hue) is attached to the center board as well, so I just needed to run 2 12V wires to the lamp. I was being a bit creative here, and thought “why not use the power cables also to have the lamp hanging from the ceiling. I used enamelled steel wire, which I deisolated on some points to have power run through steel hooks screwed into the ceiling to supply the lamp with power. This ended up creating a rather clean look for the whole lamp and really brought the whole thing together.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 588 for the week of July 14 – 20, 2019. The full version of this issue is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) End of Life reached on July 18 2019
• Ubuntu Stats
• Hot in Support
• Our Diamond Sponsor – Ubuntu!
• LoCo Events
• security things in Linux v5.2
• Canonical News
• In the Blogosphere
• Other Articles of Interest
• Featured Audio and Video
• Meeting Reports
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security for 16.04, 18.04, 18.10(EOL), and 19.04
• And much more!

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Krytarik Raido
• Bashing-om
• Chris Guiver
• Wild Man
• 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, this issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Currently we are waiting on some news to develop. This is dependent upon matters on Capitol Hill. Outcomes currently remain fairly uncertain.

At a certain point I end up having to consider if I have to look at raising my own income and leaving federal service. We are at a point at work now where I get to choose between either being pushed or jumping of my own accord. I am looking at an informal gathering of some colleagues on Saturday where we'll have to discuss this matter and its implications for all of us. With the groundwork being laid for a proper work plan to be executed I think I would be able to dust off https://liberapay.com/smkellat to be put to proper use. Certainly edits could be made to http://erielookingproductions.info/ if and when that becomes solely what I'm up to.

Work projects at Erie Looking Productions currently include finishing off the submission for the Dam Short Film Festival as well as the new work-in-progress that may go to another event such as MidWest WeirdFest or MicroMania Film Festival. A podcast resumption plan is still under development and that pace is frustratingly slow. Our production work at Erie Looking Productions runs on various flavors of Ubuntu (Ubuntu MATE and Xubuntu) and uses free software such as ikiwiki, LaTeX, kino, audacity, VLC, libsox, cups, and more.

In terms of research and development we are still looking at issues such as the migration of Seth MacFarlane's The Orville to Hulu as recently announced while we also see outlets like Netflix facing new competition in addition to their stock taking a hit in value. Even AT&T was making waves recently in the streaming space posting concerning financial results. We're not quite sure what it all means yet other than it needs watching.

All in all, standing by means we still have to watch and wait. There will be more to come presumably.

In January 2018, Dan Llewellyn joined his first Snapcraft Summit in Seattle in his role as a community Snapcrafter. At that event, we discussed his views on everything snap related from most requested snaps, new feature requests and popular discussion topics. Since then, snaps has grown across every metric and seen numerous new high profile snaps enter the store including Microsoft Visual Studio Code, a suite from JetBrains, Opera and more. We took the opportunity at the most recent Snapcraft Summit in Montreal to get Dan’s insider perspective 18 months on.

“Snaps are reaching ubiquity. People using or building snaps no longer think of themselves as early adopters, but more adhering to the status quo,” Dan observes. There has been a “natural progression” in the growth trajectory that snaps have experienced. Dan believes part of this is driven by developers seeing the likes of Microsoft, Amazon and Google publishing software in the Snap Store. Similarly, Dan has noticed an increase in commercial interest in the format compared to individual developers in the earlier days.

Dan also suggests two additional factors for the increased adoption. Firstly, the availability in the Ubuntu store with desktop users being served snaps first over other formats. Secondly, the crossover with the Docker container story – users like the throwaway nature. They can do their work, delete and start again with the next build. 

Such trends are evident in the nature of the forum conversation as well with less discussion around how to build snaps and far more around the management of existing snaps. He has also seen less around the automatic update feature which he believes is due to the message resonating and it is now a given. “People are comfortable with the feature and expect automatic updates when originally they may have been sceptical if it would work on a desktop or IoT device,” Dan adds. Talking of IoT, Dan has seen an uplift in topics around the internet of things given the benefits snaps can bring to embedded devices. 

What has been Dan’s favourite additions to the Snap Store recently? Gitkraken is one that Dan sees as relevant to his everyday work. He also can’t overlook the addition of Visual Studio Code which he views as an “evergreen”. “Without even thinking about it, you have an up to date editor. Just open your browser and you have a ‘What’s New’ page just updated,” Dan says in reference to snaps’ automatic updates. In terms of what’s next, he’d love to see Ring – the video conference app – available in the Snap Store. 

Referencing the move away from pure desktop snaps, Dan cites MicroK8s as a good example and one in which he has used himself. For some of the websites he builds, Dan runs Kubernetes on GKE. As he explains, “once I had a proof of concept locally I found I could directly mirror my development environment to production really easily. The way you spin-up a local service on MicroK8s to test your code is identical to how you spin up an in-production service of Kubernetes in the cloud. This meant I could go from development to production in minutes.”

With three Snapcraft Summits attended, Dan is able to start observing trends in the attendees and engagement. “I’ve not seen anyone back away once they have published a snap following a summit which is encouraging. If I compare the Seattle one to the London event in November 2018, I saw an increased purpose and a sense of everyone sharing each other’s achievements,” Dan states. There were some big wins from the Seattle summit including Slack, Skype and Microsoft Powershell. However, in just three days in Montreal, 17 snaps were published emphasising Dan’s observations further. 

With the next Snapcraft Summit scheduled for 2020, the challenge is on to surpass the last 18 months achievements.

The post Community Snapcrafter on MicroK8s, summits and the evolving nature of snaps appeared first on Ubuntu Blog.

Artificial intelligence relies on machine vision just as much as human intelligence relies on vision. Image sensors are, therefore, crucial for AI applications because of the richness of data that they capture. Capturing and processing video and images at the edge is a capability that intelligent IoT applications need to deliver. In this tutorial we will build the first block of such intelligent applications by implementing a connected camera capable of streaming video to remote network clients for further processing.

Introduction

For this purpose, we use an off-the-shelf Raspberry Pi running on Ubuntu Core, with a snapped version of picamera deployed as a snap. The snap version of picamera was developed by @ogra and is available in the Snap Store for all Raspberry Pi owners to use freely.

We will go through the following main steps in this tutorial:

• Installing Ubuntu Core on the Raspberry Pi
• Booting Ubuntu Core and setup the board
• Installing the snap package and launching the video streaming application

Prerequisites

The bill of materials necessary for this tutorial is detailed in the table below. These are items that most Raspberry Pi owners will have or can easily order at a relatively modest price online.

This tutorial was made on Ubuntu, however the actions described below remain broadly applicable for IoS and Windows.

Install Ubuntu Core on your Raspberry Pi

Step 1: Create an Ubuntu SSO account.

Step 2: Generate an rsa key to import to your Ubuntu SSO account

To keep things simple, create keys in the home directory of the development PC:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

Then name your keys and enter a passphrase for them. The public key will be used to SSH remotely into the Raspberry Pi once Ubuntu Core has been installed. To attach the generated keys to your board, it will be necessary to import your public key into your Ubuntu SSO account (simple copy and paste).

Step 3: Download Ubuntu Core for your Raspberry Pi 2 or Raspberry Pi 3

Step 4: Create a bootable image of Ubuntu Core on your SD card

More details here. In the setup used for this tutorial, the image was saved in the Downloads folder of Ubuntu desktop, and the SD card’s file was /dev/sdb.

xzcat ~/Downloads/ubuntu-core-18-armhf+raspi3.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdb bs=32M

Boot Ubuntu Core and setup your Raspberry Pi

Step 5: Connect serial to your PC and Raspberry Pi

Using a serial cable makes it possible to perform all subsequent operations on the development PC, rather than connecting the board via HDMI to another display while accessing the board from the development PC. It is therefore less tedious (and recommended) to use a USB serial cable as described below for the next phases. The image below shows the general setup of the cable.

Source: raspberrypi.stackexchange.com

Care should be taken to match the serial cables with the GPIO PINs appropriately as described below:

Source: raspberrypi.org

Once the serial is connected to the board GPIO PINs and to a USB port on a development PC, start a session as follows, using GNU Screen, to access the serial console. This will allow you to monitor the boot and configure the board.

sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

Step 6: Boot your Raspberry Pi

For this step, insert the SD card into the intended slot in the board and power it up. You should see the board booting up as depicted below.

Step 7: Setup WiFi same as your PC

Once the first boot has completed, you will be asked to configure the board. Enter you WiFi access credentials here. The board will connect to the internet to retrieve the public key that was generated in the earlier steps, so as to allow SSH connections to the board from your development PC.

Step 8: SSH into your Raspberry Pi using the board’s IP address

Once the board setup has completed, Ubuntu Core will display the network IP address of the board. You can then use your key and your Ubuntu SSO ID to access your board from your development PC. You will be asked to authenticate your board and to enter a passphrase for your key. These actions will log you into your Raspberry Pi running Ubuntu Core. Welcome!

ssh -i <your key> <your id>@<board IP address>

Install your video streaming application

Step 9: Enable the camera on your board

It will be necessary to edit the uboot config file on your board to enable the camera. A simple text editor like vi or nano should be used to this end. 

sudo vi /boot/uboot/config.txt

Once the file is opened, scroll down to the last line and then type the following commands:

Step 10: Install the picamera demo application

Snaps show part of their magic in this step. In a single command, you will be able to download and install a ready to use, and properly configured application package developed by the community. Doing such a setup manually (with debs or cloning the code from github) would take much more configuration time. Snaps give you the flexibility to install, test or remove applications in a simple and clean way. This  capability accelerates embedded product development quite significantly.

snap install picamera-streaming-demo

Step 11: Connect the camera to the CSI interface

Take care to connect the camera wires as depicted below.

Step 12: Reboot the Raspberry Pi

Step 13: Watch the stream in your browser

http://<address of your Board>:8000/

Takeaways

• Snaps save several long steps
• Snaps allow rapid prototyping
• Snaps are easy to install, test, remove
• Snaps are application containers optimised for embedded systems

Resources

• Picamera-streaming-demo on snapcraft.io
• Picamera-streaming-demo snap source on GitHub
• How to manage snaps on a device

Next steps 

Following this demo, we will demonstrate in upcoming posts how to develop custom image recognition applications on the Raspberry PI leveraging artificial intelligence. Based on these first blocks we will demonstrate additional demos to illustrate machine vision and AI use cases at the edge with Ubuntu.

The post Getting started with Ubuntu Core – streaming video from a Raspberry Pi appeared first on Ubuntu Blog.

Today, Canonical announces it’s Charmed OpenStack on Ubuntu has been selected by BT as a key component of its next generation 5G Core. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, will provide the open source virtual infrastructure manager (VIM) as part of BT’s Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) program, and the transition to a cloud-based Core network.

This open source cloud-based approach will ensure that BT can quickly deploy new services, and increase capacity to stay ahead of customer demand driven by 5G and FTTP. Canonical’s OpenStack architecture will also facilitate the delivery of BT’s full 5G Core network.

Openstack cloud software will enable the separation of network hardware and software, turning Core network components into software applications, meaning they can be updated faster with continuous integration and development. This separation allows different network applications to share the same hardware across data centres, making the network more resilient and scalable when additional capacity is needed. The speed at which software can be updated compared to replacing core network equipment will lead to a new way of working for the development of 5G services where BT can build new services in weeks and deploy in days.

Neil J. McRae, BT Group Chief Architect, said: “Canonical is providing us with the ‘cloud-native’ foundation that enables us to create a smart and fully converged network. Utilising open source and best-of-breed technologies will ensure we can deliver on our convergence vision, and enable a world-leading 5G and FTTP experience for our customers.”

Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, said: “BT has recognised the efficiency, flexibility and innovation afforded by an open architecture, and realises the value of such an approach in enabling its delivery of new 5G services. We’re delighted to be working with them to deliver the foundation to this approach, which will underpin BT’s 5G strategy.”

BT’s EE mobile network switched on 5G in six launch cities on Thursday 30th May 2019. Customers and businesses in London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester, Edinburgh and Belfast are the first places in the UK to experience the benefits of 5G. BT has also outlined its 5G roadmap, which will see the cloud-based full 5G Core introduced from 2022.

The higher bandwidth and lower latency, coupled with expansive and growing 5G coverage, will deliver a more responsive network, enabling truly immersive mobile augmented reality, real-time health monitoring, and mobile cloud gaming. The full 5G Core is also a vital step on BT’s convergence of network technologies, bringing together fixed, mobile and WiFi into one seamless customer experience.

Further developments, able to be introduced with more agility thanks to the cloud-based architecture, will introduce Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC), Network Slicing and multi-gigabit-per-second speeds. This phase of 5G will enable critical applications like real-time traffic management of fleets of autonomous vehicles, massive sensor networks with millions of devices measuring air quality across the entire country, and the ‘tactile internet’, where a sense of touch can be added to remote real-time interactions.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

BT’s 5G Core will be built on Canonical’s Charmed OpenStack, and utilise Canonical’s open source tools to automate the deployment and operations of their infrastructure. To deploy the virtual infrastructure manager (VIM), BT has adopted Juju and Charms for a model-driven architecture to onboard virtual network functions (VNFs) applications, while MAAS is used as the cloud provisioning tool. BT’s 5G Core will be backed by Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure for the ongoing management and support of operations.

About BT

BT’s purpose is to use the power of communications to make a better world. It is one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in 180 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband, TV and internet products and services; and converged fixed-mobile products and services.  BT consists of four customer-facing units: Consumer, Enterprise, Global Services and Openreach.

For the year ended 31 March 2019, BT Group’s reported revenue was £23,428m with reported profit before taxation of £2,666m.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit www.btplc.com

About Canonical

Canonical is the publisher of Ubuntu, the OS for most public cloud workloads as well as the emerging categories of smart gateways, self-driving cars and advanced robots. Canonical provides enterprise security, support and services to commercial users of Ubuntu. Established in 2004, Canonical is a privately held company.

The post BT turns to Canonical Ubuntu to enable next generation 5G Cloud Core appeared first on Ubuntu Blog.