eCryptfs in the Wild

Perhaps you're aware of my involvement in the eCryptfs project, as the maintainer of the ecryptfs-utils userspace tools...

This post is just a collection of some recent news and headlines about the project...

1. I'm thrilled that eCryptfs' kernel maintainer, Tyler Hicks, joined Canonical's Ubuntu Security Team last month!  He'll be working on the usual Security Updates for stable Ubuntu releases, but he'll also be helping develop, triage and fix eCryptfs kernel bugs, both in the Upstream Linux Kernel, and in Ubuntu's downstream Linux kernel packages.  Welcome Tyler!
2. More and more and more products seem to be landing in the market, using eCryptfs encryption!  This is, all at the same time, impressive/intimidating/frightening to me :-)
• Google's ChromeOS uses eCryptfs to securely store browser cache locally (this feature was in fact modeled after Ubuntu Encrypted Private Directory feature, and the guys over at Google even sent me a Cr48 to play with!)
• We've spotted several NAS solutions on the market running eCryptfs, such as this Synology DS1010+ and the BlackArmor NAS 220 from Seagate
• Do you know of any others?
3. I've had several conversations with Android developers recently, who are also quite interested in using eCryptfs to efficiently secure local storage on their devices.  As an avid Android user, I'd love to see this!
4. There's a company here in Austin, called Gazzang, that's developing Cloud Storage solutions (mostly database backends) backed by eCryptfs.
5. And there's a start-up in the Bay Area investingating eCryptfs + LXC + MongoDB for added security to their personal storage solution.

Exciting times in eCryptfs-land, for sure!

Which brings me to the point of this post...  We could really use some more community interaction and developer involvement around eCryptfs!

• Do you know anything about encryption?
• What about Linux filesystems?
• Perhaps you're a user who's interested in helping with some bug triage, or willing to help support some other users?
• We have both kernel, and user space bug-fixing and new development to be done!
• There's code in both C and Shell that need some love.
• Heck, even our documentation has plenty of room for improvement!

If you'd like to get involved, drop by #ecryptfs in irc.oftc.net, and poke kirkland or tyhicks.

Cheers,

:-Dustin

Ubuntu Monospace Font

At long last, we have a Beta of the Ubuntu Monospace font available!  (Request membership to the  ubuntu-typeface-interest team in Launchpad for access.)

Here's a screenshot of some code open in Byobu in the new font!

It really has a light, modern feel to it.  I like the distinct differences between "0" and "O", and "1" and "l", which are often tricky with monospace fonts.  Cheers to the team working on this -- I really appreciate the efforts, and hope these land on the console/tty at some point too!

I've only encountered one bug so far, which looks to have been filed already, so I added a comment to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/+bug/677134  I think the "i" and "l" are a little too similar.  if-fi statements in shell are kind of hard to read.

Anyway, nice job -- looking forward to using this font more in the future!

Enjoy,
:-Dustin

Enterprise Software History

I've visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View three times now.  I love reading Steven Levy's dramatic biographies of the unsung heroes of technology.  Heck, I even took an independent study class at Texas A&M on the History of Mathematics :-)  Geek: yes.

Anyway, I recently came across a nice little series of articles about the history of software, specifically:

http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/enterprise/software-history-pt1-1082411/
http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/enterprise/software-history-part-2-109062011/
http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/enterprise/software-history-part-3-109082011/
http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/enterprise/software-history-part-4-109142011/

Linux got a mention, but no sign of Ubuntu yet, in the annals of Software History.  Best start working harder ;-)

:-Dustin

5.1 Ubuntu Login Sound now in a PPA!

 

Thanks for all the positive feedback to my last post!  I have made a couple of updates to the 5.1 channel Ubuntu login sound, namely:

1. Remastered based on the original wav files, since my previous version was based on the lossy, compressed ogg files.
2. Adjusted a couple of levels, having actually tested it on as many different 5.1 and 2-channel stereo environments I could find.
3. Updated the ubuntu-sounds package and pushed to bzr and a PPA for easier installation on lucid, maverick, natty, or oneiric!

So now, you can install the 5.1 channel Ubuntu login sound easily from this PPA to any supported Ubuntu release with:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kirkland/sound
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-sounds

Log out, and then log back in.  If your Ubuntu system is hooked up (correctly) to a 5.1 stereo receiver, then you should hear the login sound start in the center speaker, then spread outwards to the front left and right channels, with the sound moving from the front to the rear for the whoosh and crickets at the end.  Oh, and the bongos should be bumpin' in your sub woofer :-)

If you're interested in the sources, they're in bzr too:

bzr branch lp:~kirkland/ubuntu-sounds/834802

Finally, if you'd like to see this land in Ubuntu, mark bug #834802 as "affects me too"!

I'll embed the audio here, but it sounds really different in the various browsers I've tested (Firefox, Chromium, Chrome).  Sounds like the the multi-channel OGG is being correctly passed to Pulse Audio for proper downmixing/discrete playback in Firefox, but not in Chrome/Chromium.  So your mileage may vary! :-)







Cheers!
:-Dustin

The Ubuntu Login Sound in 5.1 Channel Glory

It was way too hot here in Austin, Texas this weekend, as it hit 110F on Sunday!  So I spent most of the heat of the day inside, toying with something that I think is pretty cool :-)  I couldn't find any OS today (Mac, Windows, or Linux) that has a 5.1 channel login sound...  I'm hoping that Ubuntu might be the first!

I have 7.1 channel surround sound in my home theater, which is great for watching movies.  Hooked up to my projector is (of course) an Ubuntu nettop, which I use to stream and serve most of my media content.

I thought it would be neat to remix the Ubuntu login sound in 5.1 channels, to exercise my theater's surround sound at boot.

So I grabbed the familiar "drums and crickets" OGG file, which you can find at /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/desktop-login.ogg, and opened it in audacity, a phenomenal open source mixer.  I split that stereo track into two mono tracks, and then added four more blank tracks.

The first two tracks are the Left and Right channels, respectively, followed by the Center channel, the Sub woofer channel, and then the Surround Left and Surround Right channels.  I copied the Left and Right channels to the Surround Left and Surround Right channels.

Then, I opened the original desktop-login.ogg again, and mixed that stereo track to a single mono track.  I took that mono track and copied it to the Center and Sub woofer channels.

Okay, now I had 6 tracks ... time to start playing with them!

I decided that I wanted the "crickets and wind" at the end of the clip to be exclusively in my rear, surround channels.  So I silenced the Surround Left and Surround Right tracks until about the 3.85 second mark, and then faded in from 3.85 seconds to 5.43 seconds, and faded out from 5.43 seconds until the end of the clip.  Since I wanted that sound exclusively in the rear channels, I silenced each of the Left, Right, Center, and Sub woofer channels from the 5.0 second mark, until the end of the clip.  Next, I smoothly faded out the Left and Right channels from about 2.21 until the 4.54 second marks.

For the intro, I wanted the first few drum beats to emanate from the center channel, and then spread wide to the Left and Right channels, right up to the big cymbal crash and the crescendo of the clip.  So I took the Center channel and added a very long fade, from the 0.30 second mark until about 3.97 seconds.  And then I set the Left and Right channels to slowly fade in, from 0 seconds to about 1.48 seconds.

Finally, I took the bass track and de-amplified it way down.  And then I applied a low-pass bass boost filter several times, until the lowest hits of the bass drum are the only audible parts of the track.

Want to hear it for yourself?  Well, you'll have to have 5.1 speakers in a true Surround Sound setup...  If so, grab the [flac, ogg, or wav] file, and open it in smplayer, ensuring that you have 5.1 channel sound enabled in smplayer.

With the right equipment, you should be in for a treat!  The first few drum beats you'll hear in your Center channel along with some solid, thumping bass hits.  The sound should spread quickly from the Center, fanning outward toward your Right and Left channels right up to the big crashing cymbal!  And with that crescendo, the Left, Right, Center, and Sub should all gracefully fall silent, while the crickets and the wooshing wind sweep back to your Rear Left and Rear Right channels!

Don't have 5.1 sound?  Well, you can still listen to each track individually.  Grab the [flac, ogg, or wav] file, and open it in audacity.  You should see 6 channels vertically down your screen.  You can click the Solo button next to each track, and listen to each track one-by-one.  Make sure you un-click the Solo button between plays.  This might give you a decent idea of how each of the channels come together.

Fancy yourself a sound producer?  Remix it again and share :-)  I have the wav sources up at lp:~kirkland/ubuntu-sounds/834802. Better yet, how about creating a whole new Ubuntu login sound?  :-)  Maybe one day....

From the right side of my brain,
:-Dustin

Distro Breakdown in the Netflix/Linux Petition

I was pretty stoked to read earlier this month that ChromeOS and Chrome/Chromium was getting a Netflix app in the Chrome Webstore.  I installed it earlier tonight, but sadly it's not working on Chrome or Chromium on Ubuntu.  I installed it on my Cr-48, and it worked there.  Reports on the page indicate that it's working on Chrome/Windows.  But Chrome/Chromium on Linux -- no dice :-(

So the Netflix-on-Linux blues continue, unfortunately :-(

In looking for workarounds, I came across this web petition for Netflix-on-Linux support:

• http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/ 

So I signed the petition and was impressed to see 16,518 other signatures!

In fact, I downloaded all of the signatures and did a little (far from scientific) grepping of my own to see where Ubuntu stood among the other desktops in the signature list.  Ubuntu lands at nearly 70%.  Impressive!

Ubuntu 11433 69.2% Fedora/RH/CentOS 1600 9.7% Mint 1092 6.6% Arch 891 5.4% Debian 856 5.2% SuSE 596 3.6% Other 50 0.3% 16518

:-Dustin

Ubuntu ARM Servers -- At last!!!

for Ubuntu Servers

I've long had a personal interest in the energy efficiency of the Ubuntu Server.  This interest has manifested in several ways.  From founding the PowerNap Project to using tiny netbooks and notebooks as servers, I'm just fascinated with the idea of making computing more energy efficient.

It wasn't so long ago, in December 2008 at UDS-Jaunty in Mountain View that I proposed just such a concept, and was nearly ridiculed out of the room.  (Surely no admin in his right mind would want enterprise infrastructure running on ARM processors!!! ...  Um, well, yeah, I do, actually....)  Just a little over two years ago, in July 2009, I longed for the day when Ubuntu ARM Servers might actually be a reality...

My friends, that day is here at last!  Ubuntu ARM Servers are now quite real!


The affable Chris Kenyon first introduced the world to Canonical's efforts in this space with his blog post, Ubuntu Server for ARM Processors a little over a week ago.  El Reg picked up the story quickly, and broke the news in Canonical ARMs Ubuntu for microserver wars.   And ZDNet wasn't far behind, running an article this week, Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server.  So the cat is now officially out of the bag -- Ubuntu Servers on ARM are here :-)

Looking for one?  This Geek.com article covers David Mandala's 42-core ARM cluster, based around TI Panda boards.  I also recently came across the ZT Systems R1801e Server, boasting 8 x Dual ARM Cortex A9 processors.  The most exciting part is that this is just the tip of the iceberg.  We've partnered with companies like Calxeda (here in Austin) and others to ensure that the ARM port of the Ubuntu Server will be the most attractive OS option for quite some time.

A huge round of kudos goes to the team of outstanding engineers at Canonical (and elsewhere) doing this work.  I'm sure I'm leaving off a ton of people (feel free to leave comments about who I've missed), but the work that's been most visible to me has been by:

• Michael Casadevall, Oliver Grawert, and David Mandala (leading and manning the ARM/Server/Toolchain bits)
• Serge Hallyn (hacking on LXC as a container solution on the virt-less platform)
• Chuck Short and Dave Walker (OpenStack, libvirt, qemu ARM support)
• Ben Howard (Cloud images for Ubuntu ARM)

So I'm looking forward to reducing my servers' energy footprint...are you?

:-Dustin