One of the key trends in software infrastructure in 2019 is Observability.

It has gained a lot of attention recently.

The module was created as a part of my master thesis in the 2010 year. The master thesis theme is Keylogging in Linux kernel. The main idea was to find out a way to intercept system calls for x64 arch Linux kernel, especially for kernel 2.6.34.7-61.fc13.x86_64.

It is text version of the presentation 2018-04-25 at Saint-Petersburg Linux User Group. Configuration example locates at https://github.com/ultral/ansible-role-testing

I suppose that that you make configuration management, not bash. It means that you have to test it some how. Have you ever tested ansible roles? How do you do it?

Russian version

Let's imagine that you are developing software and hardware appliance. The appliance consists of custom OS distributive, upscale servers, a lot of business logic, as a result, it has to use real hardware. If you release broken appliance, your users will not be happy. How to do stable releases?

I'd like to share my story how we dealt with it.

In the seventh version of the PVS-Studio static analyzer, we added support of the Java language. It's time for a brief story of how we've started making support of the Java language, how far we've come, and what is in our further plans. Of course, this article will list first analyzer trials on open source projects.

Today is an important day — after 28 releases of the sixth version we present our PVS-Studio 7.00, in which the key innovation is the support of the Java language. However, during 2018 we have acquired many other important changes related to C++, C#, infrastructure and support of coding standards. Therefore, we bring to your attention a note that sums up the major changes that have happened in PVS-Studio for the last time.

Original post in Russian

Keeping your code consistent and well formatted not an easy task even when you work alone. But when you work with a team or with open source project all start getting even harder. Everyone has own code style, someone doesn’t run tests, and no one writes documentation. This article will help you to set up all these things and even more — automate this routine to never do it manually.

After reading you will get your own npm-ready project with next features:

There are a lot of posts about what a typical coding interview at Google looks like. But, while not as widely described and discussed, there is also quite often a system design interview. For an SRE position it’s NALSD: non-abstract large system design. The key difference between SWE and SRE interviews consists in these two letters: NA.

So, what is the difference? How to be prepared for this interview? Let’s be non-abstract, and use an example. To be more non-abstract, let’s take something from the material world, such that you won’t be asked the exact same thing at the real interview (at least, not at the Google interview) :)

So, let’s design a public library system. For the paper books, like you have seen everywhere around. The whole text below was written all at once within around one hour, to roughly show you the areas that you should be able to cover / touch during the interview. Please excuse some disorder, that’s how I think (therefore I am).

Author of the original post in Russian: frsamara

I always loved playing with things and testing them under all sorts of wacky conditions as a kid and even considered getting a job as a tester, but I never did. Nevertheless, I still like taking things made by someone else and poking them for vulnerabilities.

I remember, when first self-service payment terminals started popping around town, I saw one of them put up a browser window while updating, and the game was on — I broke it almost immediately. There’s been a lot of discussion about it since then and developers have started to pay a lot more attention towards security in these machines.

Recently, fast-food joints have started installing these terminals. Obviously, it’s quite convenient: just tap a couple of virtual buttons, place an order, pay with a bank card and wait for your number to show on the screen.

Also, nearly every big mall has these interactive boards with floor plans and information on various sales and discounts.

How secure are they?