Development for Linux *

Overview

Once every true-linux engineer gets a trouble: there is no any software in his distro or it's built without needed options. I am keen on the phrase: "Only source control gives you freedom".

Of course, you can build this software on your computer without any src-packages, directly (with simplification: configure, make, make install). But it's a non-reproducible solution, also hard for distribution.

The better way is to make distro-aligned package that can be built if needed and that produces lightly distributed binary-packages. It's about debian-source packages(debian,ubuntu,etc), pkgbuild (for arch), ebuild for gentoo, src-rpm for red hat-based, and many others.

I will use cri-o like a specimen.

Before reading the text below I strongly recommend to get familiarized with the official Debian policy manual placed here and debhelper manpage.

Also you will be required to setup some variables like DEBMAIL and DEBFULLNAME for proper data in changelog and other places.

Hearing is one of the few basic senses that we humans have along with the other our abilities to see, smell, taste and touch. If we couldn't hear, the world as we know it would be less interesting and colorful to us. It would be a total silence - a scary thing, even to imagine. And speaking makes our life so much fun, because what else can be better than talking to our friends and family? Also, we're able to listen to our favorite music wherever we are, thanks to computers and headphones. With the help of tiny microphones integrated into our phones and laptops we are now able to talk to the people around the world from any place with an Internet connection. But computer hardware alone isn't enough - it is computer software that really defines the way how and when the hardware should operate. Operating Systems provide the means for that to the apps that want to use computer's audio capabilities. In real use-cases audio data usually goes the long way from one end to another, being transformed and (un)compressed on-the-fly, attenuated, filtered, and so on. But in the end it all comes down to just 2 basic processes: playing the sound or recording it.

Today we're going to discuss how to make use of the API that popular OS provide: this is an essential knowledge if you want to create an app yourself which works with audio I/O. But there's just one problem standing on our way: there is no single API that all OS support. In fact, there are completely different API, different approaches, slightly different logic. We could just use some library which solves all those problems for us, but in that case we won't understand what's really going on under the hood - what's the point? But humans are built the way that we sometimes want to dig a little bit deeper, to learn a little bit more than what just lies on the surface. That's why we're going to learn the API that OS provide by default: ALSA (Linux), PulseAudio (Linux), WASAPI (Windows), OSS (FreeBSD), CoreAudio (macOS).

Overview

Sometimes all of us need to make a graphical installer for one's own linux distro. It goes without saying that you are able to use a distro-specific installer like Anaconda for RedHat-based or DebianInstaller for debian-based. On the other hand Calamares is a graphical installer which is not aligned with only one package manager.

I want to share my experience how to make a universal install solution with GUI. I did not find any complete article about it, hence, I reinvented the wheel.

When talking about high-performance software we probably think of server software (such as nginx) which processes millions requests from thousands clients in parallel. Surely, what makes server software work so fast is high-end CPU running with huge amount of memory and a very fast network link. But even then, the software must utilize these hardware resources at maximum efficiency level, otherwise it will end up wasting the most of the valuable CPU power for unnecessary kernel-user context switching or while waiting for slow I/O operations to complete.

Thankfully, the Operating Systems have a solution to this problem, and it's called kernel event queue. Server software and OS kernel use this mechanism together to achieve minimum latency and maximum scalability (when serving a very large number of clients in parallel). In this article we are going to talk about FreeBSD, macOS and kqueue, Linux and epoll, Windows and I/O Completion Ports. They all have their similarities and differences which we're going to discuss here. The goal of this article is for you to understand the whole mechanism behind kernel queues and to understand how to work with each API.

On August 25th, 2021, the Linux kernel celebrated its 30th anniversary. Since then, it's changed a lot. We changed too. Nowadays, the Linux kernel is a huge project used by millions. We checked the kernel 5 years ago. So, we can't miss this event and want to look at the code of this epic project again.

Tested on the following configuration:
Server: ubuntu 20.04
Clients: ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, 20.04

It doesn’t require a lot of software to create it.

You may have already read a recent article about the first PVS-Studio run and filtration of warnings. We used the GTK 4 project as an example. It's about time we worked with the received report in more detail. Our regular readers may have already guessed that this article will be a description of errors found in the code.

The FT4232H is USB 2.0 High speed to UART IC converter. The FT4232H has four UART ports and one USB port.

By connecting EEPROM memory to this chip, you can set specific operating modes or change the manufacturer's data.

Let's look at the example and configure FT4232H directly on a system running GNU/Linux. We will do this using the ftdi_eeprom.

Example with JSONDecoder

struct Test<T>: Codable where T: Codable {
    enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
        case value
    }
    
    let value: T
    let info: String
}

extension Test {
    init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
        let container = try decoder.container(keyedBy: CodingKeys.self)
        self.value = try container.decode(T.self, forKey: .value)
        self.info = "Default init(from decoder:)"
    }
}

extension Test where T == String {
    init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
        let container = try decoder.container(keyedBy: CodingKeys.self)
        self.value = try container.decode(T.self, forKey: .value)
        self.info = "Custom init(from decoder:)"
    }
}

let data = #"{"value":"Hello, World!"}"#.data(using: .utf8)!
let object = try? JSONDecoder().decode(Test<String>.self, from: data)
print(object.debugDescription)

Optional(
    Test<String>(
        value: "Hello, World!", 
        info: "Default init(from decoder:)"
    )
)

Intro

Every Linux professional write scripts. Someеimes light, linear. Sometimes complex script with functions and libs(yes, you can write your bash-library for use in other scripts).

But some of the scripts need a configuration file to work. For instance, I wrote a script that builds the ubuntu image for pxe, and I need to change the build process without build-script changes. The best way to resolve this task is to add configuration files.

Intro

PXE is a great solution for booting a diskless computer (or a computer without an OS installed). This method is often used for terminal stations and OS mass installation.

Stock ubuntu (16.04) in pxe-mode can mount rootfs only from NFS. But this is not a great idea: any difficulties with the network/NFS server and the user gets problems.

In my opinion, it's best to use other protocols, such as http/ftp. Once booting, you will have an independent system

The basics of porting

Originally, Buildroot offers a limited number of packages. It makes sense — there is everything you need, but any other packages can be added.

To add a package, create 2 description files, an optional checksum file, and add a link to the package in the general package list. There are hooks at different stages of the build. At the same time, Buildroot can recognize the needed type of packages:

Intro

Like I said earlier in previos articles, Buildroot is a great system for embedded Linux development. But sometimes strange things can happen.

Once upon a workday, I got the following task: add printing system in firmware (Kraftway terminal Linux next generation). Ok, so I had to add cups + cups filter and to build firmware. I set a postscript-printer and got an error "Filter failed". Trivial tasks turned into serious work.

In this article, I wrote my own way of solving this problem. It may be useful for other developers and IT-specialist and, also, for a deeper understanding of the Buildroot.

If you are a Buildroot beginner, I recommend reading my previous articles.

Update 1 may 2020

Revisioned versions of this patches applied to master.

Introduction

In my previous article (Monitor linux) I wrote, what is this distro and how it works. Now i will write how to do it. It's may be interesting for everyone, who want to study buildroot.

Target goals

The result we get from article is the following:

• Firmware (non-volatile image with restorable config)
• Easy management via web-interface
• Cross-platform (qemu x86_64, arm-based SBC like rasberry 4, beagle bone black and asus tinker board)
• Support without extra effort

About

This is small cross-platform linux-distro with zabbix server. It's a simple way to deploy powerful monitoring system on ARM platfornms and x86_64.

Worked as firmware (non-changeable systemd image with config files), have web-interface for system management like network settings, password and other.

Who is interested

• System admins/engineers who need to fast deploy of zabbix server.
• Everyone, who want to deploy zabbix on ARM.
• Enthusiasts

The search for a suitable storage platform: GlusterFS vs. Ceph vs. Virtuozzo Storage

Gluster

Where it all began