Apache Karaf Update Sept 22 - 29, 2012

Since starting with Savoir Technologies one of my weekly routines has been to brief our team on recent development work at Apache Karaf. These updates have generally been tracking whats been going on as per the project Jira. As the issue lists below will show, keeping up with three active branches can be a challenge so I've decided (with permission) to start sharing these reports with everyone.

In the below sections you'll find issues being worked upon, reported, or assigned to various future release versions of Karaf. Yes, this is just one week worth of Jira entires - the Karaf community kicks ass! :)

Apache Karaf 2.2.10:

New issues:
Karaf-1879 admin management bundle has unecessary imports
Karaf-1881 Karaf jaas password authenticator is broken. 

Resolved issues:
Karaf-1856 Merge bundle:diag command
Karaf-1857 Merge bundle:services command
Karaf-1850 feature:list should use alphabetical order

Updated issues:
Karaf-1853 Attached kar deploys to a different snapshot build number than the main artifact
Karaf-1701 Parsing of config for a field with cardinality > 1 is incorrectly processed and displayed on Admin Console

General 2.2.10 issue list.

Apache Karaf 2.3.0:

New issues:
Karaf-1883  Upgrade to ASM 4.1
Karaf-1859 Upgrade to ServiceMix Specs 2.1
Karaf-1862 Upgrade to Felix FileInstall 3.2.6
Karaf-1868 Upgrade aries bundles to 1.0.1 (blueprint-core, jmx-core, transaction-manager, jpa-container-context) 
Karaf-1817 Upgrade to sshd 0.8.0
Karaf-1879 admin management bundle has unecessary imports

Resolved issues:
Karaf-1541 jaas:realm-manage raises a NullPointerException
Karaf-1850 feature:list should use alphabetical order
Karaf-1844 Add command aliases for migration purpose between 2.3.x and 3.x
Karaf-1857 Merge bundle:services command
Karaf-1858 itests look stuck (use 100% CPU)
Karaf-1863 Upgrade to sshd 0.8.0
Karaf-1865 Upgrade to paxlogging 1.7.0
Karaf-1864 Upgrade to jline 2.9
Karaf-1867 Upgrade to felix event admin 1.3.0
Karaf-1816 Upgrade to jline 2.9
Karaf-1882 Provide Level attribute in the LogMBean

Updated issues:
Karaf-1853 Attached kar deploys to a different snapshot build number than the main artifact
Karaf-1336 Release Apache Karaf 2.3.0

General 2.3.0 issue list.

Apache Karaf 3.0.0:

New issues:
Karaf-1859 Upgrade to ServiceMix Specs 2.1
Karaf-1862 Upgrade to Felix FileInstall 3.2.6
Karaf-1868 Upgrade aries bundles to 1.0.1 (blueprint-core, jmx-core, transaction-manager, jpa-container-context) 
Karaf-1817 Upgrade to sshd 0.8.0
Karaf-1869 war deployer fails to find seemingly present jsp
Karaf-1878 Feature bundle start up order by startLvl 

Resolved issues:
Karaf-1541 jaas:realm-manage raises a NullPointerException
Karaf-1738  features-generate-descriptor should support "install" attribute
Karaf-1850 feature:list should use alphabetical order
Karaf-1861 Test failure in exam regression tests : KarafWithBundleTest
Karaf-1863 Upgrade to sshd 0.8.0
Karaf-1865 Upgrade to paxlogging 1.7.0
Karaf-1864 Upgrade to jline 2.9
Karaf-1867 Upgrade to felix event admin 1.3.0
Karaf-1816 Upgrade to jline 2.9
Karaf-1872 Backward224Test should check for the karaf version
Karaf-1873 BaseKarafDefaultFrameworkTest should test for felix framework
Karaf-1877 itests fail on jenkins

Updated issues:
Karaf-1853 Attached kar deploys to a different snapshot build number than the main artifact
Karaf-1245 blueprint deployer and spring deployer should get started before features.core bundle
Karaf-608 Allow for multi-stage boot features installation

General 3.0.0 issue list.

Un-versioned:

Karaf-1851 inconsistent FeaturesNamespaces versions
Karaf-988 Upgrade to Aries Blueprint 0.4

NLWebDevs Intro to Git

NLWebDevs Presentation: Intro to Git 

When: Thursday, October 4, 2012 @ 6:30 PM
Where: Memorial University, S.J Carew Engineering Building, EN-2022 

Tim Oram will be giving a Git tutorial for beginners, introducing them to the version control system. The tutorial will cover the basics of Git including setup; staging; committing; adding remotes; and pushing/pulling to/from remotes. Half of this tutorial will be interactive.

Mun CS Fall Programming Competition 2012 Results

The Fall 2012 CS Team programming competition took place last Thursday night at Memorial University. Five student teams took part, trying their skills against the algorithmic conundrums the programming competition committee prepare as their set of three problems.

The competition was close again this time, with the following results:

In Third Place: Zack Mullaly, Richard Bajona, and Whymarrh Whitby.

In Second Place: Gannon Lawlor, Megan O'Connor, and Ken Collingwood.

And Finally, in First Place: Mark Stacey, Adam Murphy, and Jonathan Wall 

I'd like to thank all the students, volunteers, and the games committee again for making these Mun CS programming competitions possible. I hope to see everyone again in the new year when we have the next competition.

BSides St John's 2012 in Pictures

BSides St John's 2012 has come and passed, however we can relive the fun reviewing some photos I took during the event...

The early morning audience awaiting the beginning of the conference.

Norbert welcoming the attendees, speakers, and sponsors to the conference.

Mark Nunnikhoven: The Basics & Other Things That We're Probably Doing Wrong. 

View from the back of the room.

Jamie Goodyear: Anatomy of an Apache vulnerability report, and Secure Release Management

The view from the podium.

Russ Diucet: Key Considerations in Securing Internet Access.

Karim Nathoo: Command and Control and Data Exfiltration, Version 2.0

Kellman Meghu: How NOT To Do Security: Lessons Learned From the Galactic Empire 

Bruno Germain: Services defence in depth: an emerging paradigm for protecting the Data Center

The audience towards the end of the conference talks.

I'd like to thank again our sponsors, speakers, organizers, volunteers, and our outstanding audience for making BSides St John's 2012 a successes!

Last minute Fall 2012 CS Programming Competition

First

The Fall 2012 CS Teams Programming Competition (three CS students) are tentatively scheduled for Thursday September 27th, 2012, in room EN-2036 at 5pm to 7:30pm. There is a sign up sheet in the CS department head office, please contact them if you are interested in competing - seats are limited (CS students only).

Second

Third

I didn't have much time to pick up prizes for this round of competitions - so this time around I've kept things light: Third place consists of a supply of Chips, Air Duster, Hot chocolate, and Maximum PC magazine. Second place consists of Pringles, Air Duster, Teas, and Screen cleaning kit. Finally, first place receives a variety of coffees, teas, and an O'Reilly pocket reference book. All prize packs are collected in Mun branded reusable market bags.

Best luck to all the competitors and see you there!

Dell Vostro 2420 with Ubuntu 11.10 Preinstalled.

Going back to my university days I had said that if I was in the position to purchase a laptop directly from a large manufacture with Linux pre-installed that I'd give it try - well, I'm in the position now, so I ordered a Dell Vostro 2420 with Ubuntu 11.10 pre-installed.

Let's look at the hardware:

The Vostro case of the 2420 series follows closely to the Vostro 15xx series (I have a Vostro 1540 I use for Windows 7 Professional testing).

• Intel Core i3-2328M CPU @ 2.20 GHz (2 core, 4 threads)
• Intel Mobile HM75 Express Chipset
• 4 GB Ram (256MB used by Video)
• HD 3000 Graphics (Intel Sandybridge Mobile Driver)
• 500 GB 5400 rpm HDD
• Integrated Gigabit Ethernet
• 802.11 b/g/n wireless and Bluetooth combo V4.0+HS
• 8x CD/DVD +/- Burner
• 2 x 2W speakers
• 1.0 MP HD Camera w/ digital microphone
• 6-cell Lithium Ion battery
• 65 Watt power adapter

Un-boxing:

So what does this laptop look like?

The Vostro 2420 comes in standard Dell packaging, I detected no damage to any of the contents. As pictured, the box contained the laptop, power cord and adaptor, environmental, warranty, and parts paperwork.

Taking a closer look on the left side of the laptop we can see the ethernet , svga, and two USB ports.

On the right side we can see two more USB ports, the CD/DVD Burner, and the audio headset and Microphone in ports.

On the front panel the usual set of LED indicator lights can be found on the lefthand side, while in the centre the SD MMC MS slot is accessible.

Taking apart the case:

As above I was quite happy with the hardware, however there was one issue - user access to the interior of the case left my pristine laptop with gouges in keyboard inlay. The issue is that you have to pry back four clips in the keyboard tray to gain access to the inside of the machine. If you do remove the keyboard you will however find that accessing the two So-Dimm slots easy. Further deconstruction of the laptop is required from here to access the hard drive.

Be careful when unlocking the clips that hold in the keyboard, it's easy to gouge the surrounding plastics.

Things I liked:

Ubuntu pre-installed - it's not difficult to install Ubuntu on most common machines, but having it come factory installed is wonderful. Seeing each major hardware feature functioning right out of the box is something that those of us that helped to organize Linux Install Fests like to see. In my testing I've tried the webcam, wifi, bluetooth, closing the lid to put the laptop asleep and have it wake up again, and the various function buttons for back light, volume, etc - they just work as you'd expect them too :)

Having a Ubuntu case badge - again its nice to not have to carry around a badge for an OS I'm not using (I will note that the windows key remains on the keyboard).

Things I didn't like - a couple of setup issues:

The setup of the laptop was for the most part plug and play, however there were a few little setup issues that I had to resolve.

Swap had to be manually enabled. 

The basic commands involved to enable swap were:
sudo -s
cd /usr/local
dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=4G count=1
mkswap -L SWAP swapfile
swapon

Then editing /etc/fstab and /etc/rc.local to ensure that the swap space would be used on each boot up.

System Info did not display the graphics driver. 

To remedy this execute the following in a terminal session:
sudo apt-get install mesa-utils

Any benchmarks?

This machine wasn't purchased to be a main development rig, or for load testing - it's purpose is to do general build and runtime testing. This being said I ran two simple operations to gain a base level understanding of this system's capabilities for workloads it'll be seeing.

Building Apache Karaf 2.2.x Branch with Maven 2.2.1 and Java 1.6.0_35 (note: Maven was in off line mode)

Apache ActiveMQ 5.6.0 KahaDB Disk Benchmark using Java 1.6.0_35.

In my first test I built Apache Karaf 2.2.x source tree in Maven offline mode, which took just over 6 minutes build time. Please note that this build includes kit assembly and test case execution.

In my second test I ran the Apache ActiveMQ KahaDB Disk Benchmark test. The laptop's 500 GB 5400 RPM SATA drive stats are about where I'd expect a drive of its class to score.

Overall opinion?

As a pre-installed, general purpose Linux machine it's quite good. Out of the box it was straight forward to configure and have up and running on my network in just a few minutes. Basic office productivity apps were on my desktop, and the Ubuntu software centre made it easy to find more applications. As a build validation and test bed it should keep up with work loads I'll be throwing at it as long as I keep the laptop inherent capabilities in mind. If I find that it's not keeping up than it should be a simple process to add some additional ram and swap the hard drive for a solid state device.

Would I buy another one? 

As this system stands, if I had the need for another Linux laptop for general purpose work loads I would order this unit again.

Update!:

I recently updated the Vostro 2420's hardware and OS installation - read about the process and results here.

Atlanti-Con Game Developer's Jam

Atlanti-Con Game Developer's Jam

4 pm Friday, September 28, 2012 through 6 pm Sunday, September 30, 2012.

Danger Room

Greenwood Inn and Suites

Corner Brook, NL

Atlanti-con Game Developer's Jam from Janice Hertel

BSides St John's Security Conference 2012 Schedule

The BSides St John's Security Conference 2012 Schedule is out!

Friday September 21st, 2012	Track 1
8:30 AM - 9:00 AM	Registration\Networking - Coffee and Muffins Served
9:00 AM - 9:10 AM	Opening Remarks
9:10 AM- 9:50 AM	Name: Mark Nunnikhoven Talk: The Basics and Other Things That We're Probably Doing Wrong
10:00 AM - 10:20 AM	Name: Jamie Goodyear Talk: Anatomy of an Apache vulnerability report, and Secure Release Management
10:30 AM - 11:20 AM	Name: Russ Doucet Talk: Key Considerations in Securing Internet Access
11:30 AM - 12:20 AM	Name: Karim Nathoo Talk: Command and Control and Data Exfiltration, Version 2.0
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM	LUNCH
1:30 PM - 2:20 PM	Name: Kellman Meghu Talk: How NOT To Do Security: Lessons Learned From the Galactic Empire
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM	Name: Darryl MacLeod Talk: Have Credentials, Will Travel... Literally.
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM	Break
3:30 PM - 4:20 PM	Name: Bruno Germain Talk: Services defense in depth: an emerging paradigm for protecting the Data Center
4:30 PM - 5:20 PM	Name: Stefano Tiranardi Talk: Today's Threat Landscape – Facts, Figures, Myths and Perceptions
5:30 PM - 6:00 PM	Grand Prize (**iPad**) Give Away
6:00 PM - Onwards	Finger Foods\Drinks and Social Gathering

Last Summer BBQ

 Today I had my last BBQ of the summer (the sun was out and not too cold yet to fire up the BBQ one last time). I thought I'd share a few pics...

The burgers were made from 3kg ground roast beef, with three cloves of garlic, half an onion, and various spices mixed in.

The pie was a simple store bought pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream topping -- you can feel the Fall weather just thinking of pumpkin pie.

Now for the tough task of getting back to work ;)