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Kotlin and Groovy JVM Languages with AWS Lambda

2017-06-23 Juan Villa

Post Syndicated from Juan Villa original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/kotlin-and-groovy-jvm-languages-with-aws-lambda/

Juan Villa – Partner Solutions Architect

When most people hear “Java” they think of Java the programming language. Java is a lot more than a programming language, it also implies a larger ecosystem including the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Java, the programming language, is just one of the many languages that can be compiled to run on the JVM. Some of the most popular JVM languages, other than Java, are Clojure, Groovy, Scala, Kotlin, JRuby, and Jython (see this link for a list of more JVM languages).

Did you know that you can compile and subsequently run all these languages on AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda supports the Java 8 runtime, but this does not mean you are limited to the Java language. The Java 8 runtime is capable of running JVM languages such as Kotlin and Groovy once they have been compiled and packaged as a “fat” JAR (a JAR file containing all necessary dependencies and classes bundled in).

In this blog post we’ll work through building AWS Lambda functions in both Kotlin and Groovy programming languages. To compile and package our projects we will use Gradle build tool.

To follow along, please clone the Git repository available at GitHub here. Also, I recommend using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) such as JetBrain’s IntelliJ IDEA, this is the IDE I used while working on these projects.

Kotlin

Kotlin is a statically-typed JVM language designed and developed by JetBrains (one of our Amazon Partner Network Technology partners) and the open source community. Compared to Java the programming language, Kotlin has additional powerful language features such as: Data Classes, Default Arguments, Extensions, Elvis Operator, and Destructuring Declarations. This is a just a short list of Kotlin’s powerful language features. For a more thorough list of features, and how to use them, refer to the full documentation of the Kotlin language.

Let’s jump right into the code and see what an AWS Lambda function looks like in Kotlin.

package com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.kotlin

import java.io.*
import com.fasterxml.jackson.module.kotlin.*

data class HandlerInput(val who: String)
data class HandlerOutput(val message: String)

class Main {
    val mapper = jacksonObjectMapper()

    fun handler(input: InputStream, output: OutputStream): Unit {
        val inputObj = mapper.readValue<HandlerInput>(input)
        mapper.writeValue(output, HandlerOutput("Hello ${inputObj.who}"))
    }
}

The above example is a very simple Hello World application that accepts as an input a JSON object containing a key called “who” and returns a JSON object containing a key called “message” with a value of “Hello {who}”.

AWS Lambda does not support serializing JSON objects into Kotlin data classes, but don’t worry! AWS Lambda supports passing an input object as a Stream, and also supports an output Stream for returning a result (see this link for more information). Combined with the Input/Output Stream form of the handler function, we are using the Jackson library with a Kotlin extension function to support serialization and deserialization of Kotlin data class types.

To get started with this example, let’s first compile and package the Kotlin project.

git clone https://github.com/awslabs/lambda-kotlin-groovy-example
cd lambda-kotlin-groovy-example/kotlin
./gradlew shadowJar

Once packaged, a JAR file containing all necessary dependencies will be available at “build/libs/ jvmlangs-kotlin-1.0-SNAPSHOT-all.jar”. Now let’s deploy this package to AWS Lambda.

To deploy the lambda function, we will be using the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). You can find information on how to set up the AWS CLI here. This tool allows you to set up and manage AWS services via the command line.

aws lambda create-function --region us-east-1 --function-name kotlin-hello \
--zip-file fileb://build/libs/jvmlangs-kotlin-1.0-SNAPSHOT-all.jar \
--role arn:aws:iam::<account_id>:role/lambda_basic_execution \
--handler com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.kotlin.Main::handler --runtime java8 \
--timeout 15 --memory-size 128

Once deployed, we can test the function by invoking the lambda function from the CLI.

aws lambda invoke --function-name kotlin-hello --payload '{"who": "AWS Fan"}' output.txt
cat output.txt

If successful, you’ll see an output of “{"message":"Hello AWS Fan"}”.

Groovy

Groovy is an optionally typed JVM language with both dynamic and static typing capabilities. Groovy is currently being supported by the Apache Software Foundation. Like Kotlin, Groovy also packs a lot of powerful features such as: Closures, Dynamic Typing, Collection Literals, String Interpolation, and Elvis Operator. This is just a short list, see the full documentation for a list of features and how to use them.

Once again, let’s jump right into the code.

package com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.groovy

class HandlerInput {
    String who
}
class HandlerOutput {
    String message
}

class Main {
    def handler(HandlerInput input) {
        return new HandlerOutput(message: "Hello ${input.who}")
    }
}

Just like the Kotlin example, we have defined a function that takes a simple JSON object containing a “who” key value and build a response containing a “message” key. Note that in this case we are not using the Input/Output Stream form of the handler function, but rather we are letting AWS Lambda serialize the input JSON object into the type HandlerInput. To accomplish this, AWS Lambda uses the Jackson library and handles the serialization for us.

Let’s go ahead and compile and package this Groovy example.

git clone https://github.com/awslabs/lambda-kotlin-groovy-example
cd lambda-kotlin-groovy-example/groovy
./gradlew shadowJar

Once packaged, a JAR file containing all necessary dependencies will be available at “build/libs/ jvmlangs-groovy-1.0-SNAPSHOT-all.jar”. Now let’s deploy this package to AWS Lambda.

aws lambda create-function --region us-east-1 --function-name groovy-hello \
--zip-file fileb://build/libs/jvmlangs-groovy-1.0-SNAPSHOT-all.jar \
--role arn:aws:iam::<account_id>:role/lambda_basic_execution \
--handler com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.groovy.Main::handler --runtime java8 \
--timeout 15 --memory-size 128

Once deployed, we can test the function by invoking the lambda function from the CLI.

aws lambda invoke --function-name groovy-hello --payload '{"who": "AWS Fan"}' output.txt
cat output.txt

If successful, you’ll see an output of “{"message":"Hello AWS Fan"}”.

Gradle Build Tool

Finally, let’s touch up on how we built the JAR package from the Kotlin and Groovy sources above. To build the JARs we used the Gradle build tool. Gradle builds a project by reading instructions from a file called “build.gradle”. This is a file written in Gradle’s Groovy Domain Specific Langauge (DSL). You can find more information on the gradle build file by looking at their documentation. Let’s take a look at the Gradle build files we used for this post.

For the Kotlin example, this is the build file we used.

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
        jcenter()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-gradle-plugin:$kotlin_version"
        classpath "com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins:shadow:1.2.3"
    }
}

group 'com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.kotlin'
version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'

apply plugin: 'kotlin'
apply plugin: 'com.github.johnrengelman.shadow'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-stdlib:$kotlin_version"
    compile "com.fasterxml.jackson.module:jackson-module-kotlin:2.8.2"
}

For the Groovy example this is the build file we used.

buildscript {
    repositories {
        jcenter()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins:shadow:1.2.3'
    }
}

group 'com.aws.blog.jvmlangs.groovy'
version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'

apply plugin: 'groovy'
apply plugin: 'com.github.johnrengelman.shadow'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-all:2.3.11'
    testCompile group: 'junit', name: 'junit', version: '4.11'
}

As you can see, the build files for both Kotlin and Groovy files are very similar. For the Kotlin project we define a dependency on the Jackson Kotlin module. Also, for each respective language we include the language supporting libraries (kotlin-stdlib and groovy-all respectively).

In addition, you will notice that we are using a plugin called “shadow”. We use this plugin to package all the project dependencies into one JAR by using the Gradle task “shadowJar”. You can find more information on Shadow in their documentation.

Final Words

Don’t stop here though! Take a look at other JVM languages and get them running on AWS Lambda with the Java 8 runtime. Maybe start with Clojure? or Scala?

Also take a look AWS Lambda Java libraries provided by AWS. They provide interfaces and models to make handling events from event sources easier to handle.

How to Create an AMI Builder with AWS CodeBuild and HashiCorp Packer – Part 2

2017-06-22 Heitor Lessa

Post Syndicated from Heitor Lessa original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/how-to-create-an-ami-builder-with-aws-codebuild-and-hashicorp-packer-part-2/

Written by AWS Solutions Architects Jason Barto and Heitor Lessa

In Part 1 of this post, we described how AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeCommit, and HashiCorp Packer can be used to build an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from the latest version of Amazon Linux. In this post, we show how to use AWS CodePipeline, AWS CloudFormation, and Amazon CloudWatch Events to continuously ship new AMIs. We use Ansible by Red Hat to harden the OS on the AMIs through a well-known set of security controls outlined by the Center for Internet Security in its CIS Amazon Linux Benchmark.

You’ll find the source code for this post in our GitHub repo.

At the end of this post, we will have the following architecture:

Requirements

To follow along, you will need Git and a text editor. Make sure Git is configured to work with AWS CodeCommit, as described in Part 1.

Technologies

In addition to the services and products used in Part 1 of this post, we also use these AWS services and third-party software:

AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators an easy way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in an orderly and predictable fashion.

Amazon CloudWatch Events enables you to react selectively to events in the cloud and in your applications. Specifically, you can create CloudWatch Events rules that match event patterns, and take actions in response to those patterns.

AWS CodePipeline is a continuous integration and continuous delivery service for fast and reliable application and infrastructure updates. AWS CodePipeline builds, tests, and deploys your code every time there is a code change, based on release process models you define.

Amazon SNS is a fast, flexible, fully managed push notification service that lets you send individual messages or to fan out messages to large numbers of recipients. Amazon SNS makes it simple and cost-effective to send push notifications to mobile device users or email recipients. The service can even send messages to other distributed services.

Ansible is a simple IT automation system that handles configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, ad-hoc task-execution, and multinode orchestration.

Getting Started

We use CloudFormation to bootstrap the following infrastructure:

Component	Purpose
AWS CodeCommit repository	Git repository where the AMI builder code is stored.
S3 bucket	Build artifact repository used by AWS CodePipeline and AWS CodeBuild.
AWS CodeBuild project	Executes the AWS CodeBuild instructions contained in the build specification file.
AWS CodePipeline pipeline	Orchestrates the AMI build process, triggered by new changes in the AWS CodeCommit repository.
SNS topic	Notifies subscribed email addresses when an AMI build is complete.
CloudWatch Events rule	Defines how the AMI builder should send a custom event to notify an SNS topic.

Region	AMI Builder Launch Template
N. Virginia (us-east-1)
Ireland (eu-west-1)

After launching the CloudFormation template linked here, we will have a pipeline in the AWS CodePipeline console. (Failed at this stage simply means we don’t have any data in our newly created AWS CodeCommit Git repository.)

Next, we will clone the newly created AWS CodeCommit repository.

If this is your first time connecting to a AWS CodeCommit repository, please see instructions in our documentation on Setup steps for HTTPS Connections to AWS CodeCommit Repositories.

To clone the AWS CodeCommit repository (console)

From the AWS Management Console, open the AWS CloudFormation console.
Choose the AMI-Builder-Blogpost stack, and then choose Output.
Make a note of the Git repository URL.
Use git to clone the repository.

For example: git clone https://git-codecommit.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/AMI-Builder_repo

To clone the AWS CodeCommit repository (CLI)

# Retrieve CodeCommit repo URL
git_repo=$(aws cloudformation describe-stacks --query 'Stacks[0].Outputs[?OutputKey==`GitRepository`].OutputValue' --output text --stack-name "AMI-Builder-Blogpost")

# Clone repository locally
git clone ${git_repo}

Bootstrap the Repo with the AMI Builder Structure

Now that our infrastructure is ready, download all the files and templates required to build the AMI.

Download ami-builder-packer ZIP.
Extract and copy the contents to the Git repo.

Your local Git repo should have the following structure:

.
├── ami_builder_event.json
├── ansible
├── buildspec.yml
├── cloudformation
├── packer_cis.json

Next, push these changes to AWS CodeCommit, and then let AWS CodePipeline orchestrate the creation of the AMI:

git add .
git commit -m "My first AMI"
git push origin master

AWS CodeBuild Implementation Details

While we wait for the AMI to be created, let’s see what’s changed in our AWS CodeBuild buildspec.yml file:

...
phases:
  ...
  build:
    commands:
      ...
      - ./packer build -color=false packer_cis.json | tee build.log
  post_build:
    commands:
      - egrep "${AWS_REGION}\:\sami\-" build.log | cut -d' ' -f2 > ami_id.txt
      # Packer doesn't return non-zero status; we must do that if Packer build failed
      - test -s ami_id.txt || exit 1
      - sed -i.bak "s/<<AMI-ID>>/$(cat ami_id.txt)/g" ami_builder_event.json
      - aws events put-events --entries file://ami_builder_event.json
      ...
artifacts:
  files:
    - ami_builder_event.json
    - build.log
  discard-paths: yes

In the build phase, we capture Packer output into a file named build.log. In the post_build phase, we take the following actions:

Look up the AMI ID created by Packer and save its findings to a temporary file (ami_id.txt).
Forcefully make AWS CodeBuild to fail if the AMI ID (ami_id.txt) is not found. This is required because Packer doesn’t fail if something goes wrong during the AMI creation process. We have to tell AWS CodeBuild to stop by informing it that an error occurred.
If an AMI ID is found, we update the ami_builder_event.json file and then notify CloudWatch Events that the AMI creation process is complete.
CloudWatch Events publishes a message to an SNS topic. Anyone subscribed to the topic will be notified in email that an AMI has been created.

Lastly, the new artifacts phase instructs AWS CodeBuild to upload files built during the build process (ami_builder_event.json and build.log) to the S3 bucket specified in the Outputs section of the CloudFormation template. These artifacts can then be used as an input artifact in any later stage in AWS CodePipeline.

For information about customizing the artifacts sequence of the buildspec.yml, see the Build Specification Reference for AWS CodeBuild.

CloudWatch Events Implementation Details

CloudWatch Events allow you to extend the AMI builder to not only send email after the AMI has been created, but to hook up any of the supported targets to react to the AMI builder event. This event publication means you can decouple from Packer actions you might take after AMI completion and plug in other actions, as you see fit.

For more information about targets in CloudWatch Events, see the CloudWatch Events API Reference.

In this case, CloudWatch Events should receive the following event, match it with a rule we created through CloudFormation, and publish a message to SNS so that you can receive an email.

Example CloudWatch custom event

[
        {
            "Source": "com.ami.builder",
            "DetailType": "AmiBuilder",
            "Detail": "{ \"AmiStatus\": \"Created\"}",
            "Resources": [ "ami-12cd5guf" ]
        }
]

Cloudwatch Events rule

{
  "detail-type": [
    "AmiBuilder"
  ],
  "source": [
    "com.ami.builder"
  ],
  "detail": {
    "AmiStatus": [
      "Created"
    ]
  }
}

Example SNS message sent in email

{
    "version": "0",
    "id": "f8bdede0-b9d7...",
    "detail-type": "AmiBuilder",
    "source": "com.ami.builder",
    "account": "<<aws_account_number>>",
    "time": "2017-04-28T17:56:40Z",
    "region": "eu-west-1",
    "resources": ["ami-112cd5guf "],
    "detail": {
        "AmiStatus": "Created"
    }
}

Packer Implementation Details

In addition to the build specification file, there are differences between the current version of the HashiCorp Packer template (packer_cis.json) and the one used in Part 1.

Variables

  "variables": {
    "vpc": "{{env `BUILD_VPC_ID`}}",
    "subnet": "{{env `BUILD_SUBNET_ID`}}",
         “ami_name”: “Prod-CIS-Latest-AMZN-{{isotime \”02-Jan-06 03_04_05\”}}”
  },

ami_name: Prefixes a name used by Packer to tag resources during the Builders sequence.
vpc and subnet: Environment variables defined by the CloudFormation stack parameters.

We no longer assume a default VPC is present and instead use the VPC and subnet specified in the CloudFormation parameters. CloudFormation configures the AWS CodeBuild project to use these values as environment variables. They are made available throughout the build process.

That allows for more flexibility should you need to change which VPC and subnet will be used by Packer to launch temporary resources.

Builders

  "builders": [{
    ...
    "ami_name": “{{user `ami_name`| clean_ami_name}}”,
    "tags": {
      "Name": “{{user `ami_name`}}”,
    },
    "run_tags": {
      "Name": “{{user `ami_name`}}",
    },
    "run_volume_tags": {
      "Name": “{{user `ami_name`}}",
    },
    "snapshot_tags": {
      "Name": “{{user `ami_name`}}",
    },
    ...
    "vpc_id": "{{user `vpc` }}",
    "subnet_id": "{{user `subnet` }}"
  }],

We now have new properties (*_tag) and a new function (clean_ami_name) and launch temporary resources in a VPC and subnet specified in the environment variables. AMI names can only contain a certain set of ASCII characters. If the input in project deviates from the expected characters (for example, includes whitespace or slashes), Packer’s clean_ami_name function will fix it.

For more information, see functions on the HashiCorp Packer website.

Provisioners

  "provisioners": [
    {
        "type": "shell",
        "inline": [
            "sudo pip install ansible"
        ]
    }, 
    {
        "type": "ansible-local",
        "playbook_file": "ansible/playbook.yaml",
        "role_paths": [
            "ansible/roles/common"
        ],
        "playbook_dir": "ansible",
        "galaxy_file": "ansible/requirements.yaml"
    },
    {
      "type": "shell",
      "inline": [
        "rm .ssh/authorized_keys ; sudo rm /root/.ssh/authorized_keys"
      ]
    }

We used shell provisioner to apply OS patches in Part 1. Now, we use shell to install Ansible on the target machine and ansible-local to import, install, and execute Ansible roles to make our target machine conform to our standards.

Packer uses shell to remove temporary keys before it creates an AMI from the target and temporary EC2 instance.

Ansible Implementation Details

Ansible provides OS patching through a custom Common role that can be easily customized for other tasks.

CIS Benchmark and Cloudwatch Logs are implemented through two Ansible third-party roles that are defined in ansible/requirements.yaml as seen in the Packer template.

The Ansible provisioner uses Ansible Galaxy to download these roles onto the target machine and execute them as instructed by ansible/playbook.yaml.

For information about how these components are organized, see the Playbook Roles and Include Statements in the Ansible documentation.

The following Ansible playbook (ansible</playbook.yaml) controls the execution order and custom properties:

---
- hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  gather_facts: true    # gather OS info that is made available for tasks/roles
  become: yes           # majority of CIS tasks require root
  vars:
    # CIS Controls whitepaper:  http://bit.ly/2mGAmUc
    # AWS CIS Whitepaper:       http://bit.ly/2m2Ovrh
    cis_level_1_exclusions:
    # 3.4.2 and 3.4.3 effectively blocks access to all ports to the machine
    ## This can break automation; ignoring it as there are stronger mechanisms than that
      - 3.4.2 
      - 3.4.3
    # CloudWatch Logs will be used instead of Rsyslog/Syslog-ng
    ## Same would be true if any other software doesn't support Rsyslog/Syslog-ng mechanisms
      - 4.2.1.4
      - 4.2.2.4
      - 4.2.2.5
    # Autofs is not installed in newer versions, let's ignore
      - 1.1.19
    # Cloudwatch Logs role configuration
    logs:
      - file: /var/log/messages
        group_name: "system_logs"
  roles:
    - common
    - anthcourtney.cis-amazon-linux
    - dharrisio.aws-cloudwatch-logs-agent

Both third-party Ansible roles can be easily configured through variables (vars). We use Ansible playbook variables to exclude CIS controls that don’t apply to our case and to instruct the CloudWatch Logs agent to stream the /var/log/messages log file to CloudWatch Logs.

If you need to add more OS or application logs, you can easily duplicate the playbook and make changes. The CloudWatch Logs agent will ship configured log messages to CloudWatch Logs.

For more information about parameters you can use to further customize third-party roles, download Ansible roles for the Cloudwatch Logs Agent and CIS Amazon Linux from the Galaxy website.

Committing Changes

Now that Ansible and CloudWatch Events are configured as a part of the build process, commiting any changes to the AWS CodeComit Git Repository will triger a new AMI build process that can be followed through the AWS CodePipeline console.

When the build is complete, an email will be sent to the email address you provided as a part of the CloudFormation stack deployment. The email serves as notification that an AMI has been built and is ready for use.

Summary

We used AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, Packer, and Ansible to build a pipeline that continuously builds new, hardened CIS AMIs. We used Amazon SNS so that email addresses subscribed to a SNS topic are notified upon completion of the AMI build.

By treating our AMI creation process as code, we can iterate and track changes over time. In this way, it’s no different from a software development workflow. With that in mind, software patches, OS configuration, and logs that need to be shipped to a central location are only a git commit away.

Next Steps

Here are some ideas to extend this AMI builder:

Hook up a Lambda function in Cloudwatch Events to update EC2 Auto Scaling configuration upon completion of the AMI build.
Use AWS CodePipeline parallel steps to build multiple Packer images.
Add a commit ID as a tag for the AMI you created.
Create a scheduled Lambda function through Cloudwatch Events to clean up old AMIs based on timestamp (name or additional tag).
Implement Windows support for the AMI builder.
Create a cross-account or cross-region AMI build.

Cloudwatch Events allow the AMI builder to decouple AMI configuration and creation so that you can easily add your own logic using targets (AWS Lambda, Amazon SQS, Amazon SNS) to add events or recycle EC2 instances with the new AMI.

If you have questions or other feedback, feel free to leave it in the comments or contribute to the AMI Builder repo on GitHub.

Building Loosely Coupled, Scalable, C# Applications with Amazon SQS and Amazon SNS

2017-06-20 Tara Van Unen

Post Syndicated from Tara Van Unen original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/building-loosely-coupled-scalable-c-applications-with-amazon-sqs-and-amazon-sns/

Stephen Liedig, Solutions Architect

One of the many challenges professional software architects and developers face is how to make cloud-native applications scalable, fault-tolerant, and highly available.

Fundamental to your project success is understanding the importance of making systems highly cohesive and loosely coupled. That means considering the multi-dimensional facets of system coupling to support the distributed nature of the applications that you are building for the cloud.

By that, I mean addressing not only the application-level coupling (managing incoming and outgoing dependencies), but also considering the impacts of of platform, spatial, and temporal coupling of your systems. Platform coupling relates to the interoperability, or lack thereof, of heterogeneous systems components. Spatial coupling deals with managing components at a network topology level or protocol level. Temporal, or runtime coupling, refers to the ability of a component within your system to do any kind of meaningful work while it is performing a synchronous, blocking operation.

The AWS messaging services, Amazon SQS and Amazon SNS, help you deal with these forms of coupling by providing mechanisms for:

Reliable, durable, and fault-tolerant delivery of messages between application components
Logical decomposition of systems and increased autonomy of components
Creating unidirectional, non-blocking operations, temporarily decoupling system components at runtime
Decreasing the dependencies that components have on each other through standard communication and network channels

Following on the recent topic, Building Scalable Applications and Microservices: Adding Messaging to Your Toolbox, in this post, I look at some of the ways you can introduce SQS and SNS into your architectures to decouple your components, and show how you can implement them using C#.

Walkthrough

To illustrate some of these concepts, consider a web application that processes customer orders. As good architects and developers, you have followed best practices and made your application scalable and highly available. Your solution included implementing load balancing, dynamic scaling across multiple Availability Zones, and persisting orders in a Multi-AZ Amazon RDS database instance, as in the following diagram.

In this example, the application is responsible for handling and persisting the order data, as well as dealing with increases in traffic for popular items.

One potential point of vulnerability in the order processing workflow is in saving the order in the database. The business expects that every order has been persisted into the database. However, any potential deadlock, race condition, or network issue could cause the persistence of the order to fail. Then, the order is lost with no recourse to restore the order.

With good logging capability, you may be able to identify when an error occurred and which customer’s order failed. This wouldn’t allow you to “restore” the transaction, and by that stage, your customer is no longer your customer.

As illustrated in the following diagram, introducing an SQS queue helps improve your ordering application. Using the queue isolates the processing logic into its own component and runs it in a separate process from the web application. This, in turn, allows the system to be more resilient to spikes in traffic, while allowing work to be performed only as fast as necessary in order to manage costs.

In addition, you now have a mechanism for persisting orders as messages (with the queue acting as a temporary database), and have moved the scope of your transaction with your database further down the stack. In the event of an application exception or transaction failure, this ensures that the order processing can be retired or redirected to the Amazon SQS Dead Letter Queue (DLQ), for re-processing at a later stage. (See the recent post, Using Amazon SQS Dead-Letter Queues to Control Message Failure, for more information on dead-letter queues.)

Scaling the order processing nodes

This change allows you now to scale the web application frontend independently from the processing nodes. The frontend application can continue to scale based on metrics such as CPU usage, or the number of requests hitting the load balancer. Processing nodes can scale based on the number of orders in the queue. Here is an example of scale-in and scale-out alarms that you would associate with the scaling policy.

Scale-out Alarm

aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm --alarm-name AddCapacityToCustomerOrderQueue --metric-name ApproximateNumberOfMessagesVisible --namespace "AWS/SQS" 
--statistic Average --period 300 --threshold 3 --comparison-operator GreaterThanOrEqualToThreshold --dimensions Name=QueueName,Value=customer-orders
--evaluation-periods 2 --alarm-actions <arn of the scale-out autoscaling policy>

Scale-in Alarm

aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm --alarm-name RemoveCapacityFromCustomerOrderQueue --metric-name ApproximateNumberOfMessagesVisible --namespace "AWS/SQS" 
 --statistic Average --period 300 --threshold 1 --comparison-operator LessThanOrEqualToThreshold --dimensions Name=QueueName,Value=customer-orders
 --evaluation-periods 2 --alarm-actions <arn of the scale-in autoscaling policy>

In the above example, use the ApproximateNumberOfMessagesVisible metric to discover the queue length and drive the scaling policy of the Auto Scaling group. Another useful metric is ApproximateAgeOfOldestMessage, when applications have time-sensitive messages and developers need to ensure that messages are processed within a specific time period.

Scaling the order processing implementation

On top of scaling at an infrastructure level using Auto Scaling, make sure to take advantage of the processing power of your Amazon EC2 instances by using as many of the available threads as possible. There are several ways to implement this. In this post, we build a Windows service that uses the BackgroundWorker class to process the messages from the queue.

Here’s a closer look at the implementation. In the first section of the consuming application, use a loop to continually poll the queue for new messages, and construct a ReceiveMessageRequest variable.

public static void PollQueue()
{
    while (_running)
    {
        Task<ReceiveMessageResponse> receiveMessageResponse;

        // Pull messages off the queue
        using (var sqs = new AmazonSQSClient())
        {
            const int maxMessages = 10;  // 1-10

            //Receiving a message
            var receiveMessageRequest = new ReceiveMessageRequest
            {
                // Get URL from Configuration
                QueueUrl = _queueUrl, 
                // The maximum number of messages to return. 
                // Fewer messages might be returned. 
                MaxNumberOfMessages = maxMessages, 
                // A list of attributes that need to be returned with message.
                AttributeNames = new List<string> { "All" },
                // Enable long polling. 
                // Time to wait for message to arrive on queue.
                WaitTimeSeconds = 5 
            };

            receiveMessageResponse = sqs.ReceiveMessageAsync(receiveMessageRequest);
        }

The WaitTimeSeconds property of the ReceiveMessageRequest specifies the duration (in seconds) that the call waits for a message to arrive in the queue before returning a response to the calling application. There are a few benefits to using long polling:

It reduces the number of empty responses by allowing SQS to wait until a message is available in the queue before sending a response.
It eliminates false empty responses by querying all (rather than a limited number) of the servers.
It returns messages as soon any message becomes available.

For more information, see Amazon SQS Long Polling.

After you have returned messages from the queue, you can start to process them by looping through each message in the response and invoking a new BackgroundWorker thread.

// Process messages
if (receiveMessageResponse.Result.Messages != null)
{
    foreach (var message in receiveMessageResponse.Result.Messages)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Received SQS message, starting worker thread");

        // Create background worker to process message
        BackgroundWorker worker = new BackgroundWorker();
        worker.DoWork += (obj, e) => ProcessMessage(message);
        worker.RunWorkerAsync();
    }
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine("No messages on queue");
}

The event handler, ProcessMessage, is where you implement business logic for processing orders. It is important to have a good understanding of how long a typical transaction takes so you can set a message VisibilityTimeout that is long enough to complete your operation. If order processing takes longer than the specified timeout period, the message becomes visible on the queue. Other nodes may pick it and process the same order twice, leading to unintended consequences.

Handling Duplicate Messages

In order to manage duplicate messages, seek to make your processing application idempotent. In mathematics, idempotent describes a function that produces the same result if it is applied to itself:

f(x) = f(f(x))

No matter how many times you process the same message, the end result is the same (definition from Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions, Hohpe and Wolf, 2004).

There are several strategies you could apply to achieve this:

Create messages that have inherent idempotent characteristics. That is, they are non-transactional in nature and are unique at a specified point in time. Rather than saying “place new order for Customer A,” which adds a duplicate order to the customer, use “place order <orderid> on <timestamp> for Customer A,” which creates a single order no matter how often it is persisted.
Deliver your messages via an Amazon SQS FIFO queue, which provides the benefits of message sequencing, but also mechanisms for content-based deduplication. You can deduplicate using the MessageDeduplicationId property on the SendMessage request or by enabling content-based deduplication on the queue, which generates a hash for MessageDeduplicationId, based on the content of the message, not the attributes.

var sendMessageRequest = new SendMessageRequest
{
    QueueUrl = _queueUrl,
    MessageBody = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(order),
    MessageGroupId = Guid.NewGuid().ToString("N"),
    MessageDeduplicationId = Guid.NewGuid().ToString("N")
};

If using SQS FIFO queues is not an option, keep a message log of all messages attributes processed for a specified period of time, as an alternative to message deduplication on the receiving end. Verifying the existence of the message in the log before processing the message adds additional computational overhead to your processing. This can be minimized through low latency persistence solutions such as Amazon DynamoDB. Bear in mind that this solution is dependent on the successful, distributed transaction of the message and the message log.

Handling exceptions

Because of the distributed nature of SQS queues, it does not automatically delete the message. Therefore, you must explicitly delete the message from the queue after processing it, using the message ReceiptHandle property (see the following code example).

However, if at any stage you have an exception, avoid handling it as you normally would. The intention is to make sure that the message ends back on the queue, so that you can gracefully deal with intermittent failures. Instead, log the exception to capture diagnostic information, and swallow it.

By not explicitly deleting the message from the queue, you can take advantage of the VisibilityTimeout behavior described earlier. Gracefully handle the message processing failure and make the unprocessed message available to other nodes to process.

In the event that subsequent retries fail, SQS automatically moves the message to the configured DLQ after the configured number of receives has been reached. You can further investigate why the order process failed. Most importantly, the order has not been lost, and your customer is still your customer.

private static void ProcessMessage(Message message)
{
    using (var sqs = new AmazonSQSClient())
    {
        try
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Processing message id: {0}", message.MessageId);

            // Implement messaging processing here
            // Ensure no downstream resource contention (parallel processing)
            // <your order processing logic in here…>
            Console.WriteLine("{0} Thread {1}: {2}", DateTime.Now.ToString("s"), Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId, message.MessageId);
            
            // Delete the message off the queue. 
            // Receipt handle is the identifier you must provide 
            // when deleting the message.
            var deleteRequest = new DeleteMessageRequest(_queueName, message.ReceiptHandle);
            sqs.DeleteMessageAsync(deleteRequest);
            Console.WriteLine("Processed message id: {0}", message.MessageId);

        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            // Do nothing.
            // Swallow exception, message will return to the queue when 
            // visibility timeout has been exceeded.
            Console.WriteLine("Could not process message due to error. Exception: {0}", ex.Message);
        }
    }
}

Using SQS to adapt to changing business requirements

One of the benefits of introducing a message queue is that you can accommodate new business requirements without dramatically affecting your application.

If, for example, the business decided that all orders placed over $5000 are to be handled as a priority, you could introduce a new “priority order” queue. The way the orders are processed does not change. The only significant change to the processing application is to ensure that messages from the “priority order” queue are processed before the “standard order” queue.

The following diagram shows how this logic could be isolated in an “order dispatcher,” whose only purpose is to route order messages to the appropriate queue based on whether the order exceeds $5000. Nothing on the web application or the processing nodes changes other than the target queue to which the order is sent. The rates at which orders are processed can be achieved by modifying the poll rates and scalability settings that I have already discussed.

Extending the design pattern with Amazon SNS

Amazon SNS supports reliable publish-subscribe (pub-sub) scenarios and push notifications to known endpoints across a wide variety of protocols. It eliminates the need to periodically check or poll for new information and updates. SNS supports:

Reliable storage of messages for immediate or delayed processing
Publish / subscribe – direct, broadcast, targeted “push” messaging
Multiple subscriber protocols
Amazon SQS, HTTP, HTTPS, email, SMS, mobile push, AWS Lambda

With these capabilities, you can provide parallel asynchronous processing of orders in the system and extend it to support any number of different business use cases without affecting the production environment. This is commonly referred to as a “fanout” scenario.

Rather than your web application pushing orders to a queue for processing, send a notification via SNS. The SNS messages are sent to a topic and then replicated and pushed to multiple SQS queues and Lambda functions for processing.

As the diagram above shows, you have the development team consuming “live” data as they work on the next version of the processing application, or potentially using the messages to troubleshoot issues in production.

Marketing is consuming all order information, via a Lambda function that has subscribed to the SNS topic, inserting the records into an Amazon Redshift warehouse for analysis.

All of this, of course, is happening without affecting your order processing application.

Summary

While I haven’t dived deep into the specifics of each service, I have discussed how these services can be applied at an architectural level to build loosely coupled systems that facilitate multiple business use cases. I’ve also shown you how to use infrastructure and application-level scaling techniques, so you can get the most out of your EC2 instances.

One of the many benefits of using these managed services is how quickly and easily you can implement powerful messaging capabilities in your systems, and lower the capital and operational costs of managing your own messaging middleware.

Using Amazon SQS and Amazon SNS together can provide you with a powerful mechanism for decoupling application components. This should be part of design considerations as you architect for the cloud.

For more information, see the Amazon SQS Developer Guide and Amazon SNS Developer Guide. You’ll find tutorials on all the concepts covered in this post, and more. To can get started using the AWS console or SDK of your choice visit:

Happy messaging!

casync — A tool for distributing file system images

2017-06-20 Lennart Poettering

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original http://0pointer.net/blog/casync-a-tool-for-distributing-file-system-images.html

Introducing casync

In the past months I have been working on a new project:
casync. casync takes
inspiration from the popular rsync file
synchronization tool as well as the probably even more popular
git revision control system. It combines the
idea of the rsync algorithm with the idea of git-style
content-addressable file systems, and creates a new system for
efficiently storing and delivering file system images, optimized for
high-frequency update cycles over the Internet. Its current focus is
on delivering IoT, container, VM, application, portable service or OS
images, but I hope to extend it later in a generic fashion to become
useful for backups and home directory synchronization as well (but
more about that later).

The basic technological building blocks casync is built from are
neither new nor particularly innovative (at least not anymore),
however the way casync combines them is different from existing tools,
and that’s what makes it useful for a variety of usecases that other
tools can’t cover that well.

Why?

I created casync after studying how today’s popular tools store and
deliver file system images. To very incomprehensively and briefly name
a few: Docker has a layered tarball approach,
OSTree serves the
individual files directly via HTTP and maintains packed deltas to
speed up updates, while other systems operate on the block layer and
place raw squashfs images (or other archival file systems, such as
IS09660) for download on HTTP shares (in the better cases combined
with zsync data).

Neither of these approaches appeared fully convincing to me when used
in high-frequency update cycle systems. In such systems, it is
important to optimize towards a couple of goals:

Most importantly, make updates cheap traffic-wise (for this most tools use image deltas of some form)
Put boundaries on disk space usage on servers (keeping deltas between all version combinations clients might want to run updates between, would suggest keeping an exponentially growing amount of deltas on servers)
Put boundaries on disk space usage on clients
Be friendly to Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), i.e. serve neither too many small nor too many overly large files, and only require the most basic form of HTTP. Provide the repository administrator with high-level knobs to tune the average file size delivered.
Simplicity to use for users, repository administrators and developers

I don’t think any of the tools mentioned above are really good on more
than a small subset of these points.

Specifically: Docker’s layered tarball approach dumps the “delta”
question onto the feet of the image creators: the best way to make
your image downloads minimal is basing your work on an existing image
clients might already have, and inherit its resources, maintaing full
history. Here, revision control (a tool for the developer) is
intermingled with update management (a concept for optimizing
production delivery). As container histories grow individual deltas
are likely to stay small, but on the other hand a brand-new deployment
usually requires downloading the full history onto the deployment
system, even though there’s no use for it there, and likely requires
substantially more disk space and download sizes.

OSTree’s serving of individual files is unfriendly to CDNs (as many
small files in file trees cause an explosion of HTTP GET
requests). To counter that OSTree supports placing pre-calculated
delta images between selected revisions on the delivery servers, which
means a certain amount of revision management, that leaks into the
clients.

Delivering direct squashfs (or other file system) images is almost
beautifully simple, but of course means every update requires a full
download of the newest image, which is both bad for disk usage and
generated traffic. Enhancing it with zsync makes this a much better
option, as it can reduce generated traffic substantially at very
little cost of history/metadata (no explicit deltas between a large
number of versions need to be prepared server side). On the other hand
server requirements in disk space and functionality (HTTP Range
requests) are minus points for the usecase I am interested in.

(Note: all the mentioned systems have great properties, and it’s not
my intention to badmouth them. They only point I am trying to make is
that for the use case I care about — file system image delivery with
high high frequency update-cycles — each system comes with certain
drawbacks.)

Security & Reproducability

Besides the issues pointed out above I wasn’t happy with the security
and reproducability properties of these systems. In today’s world
where security breaches involving hacking and breaking into connected
systems happen every day, an image delivery system that cannot make
strong guarantees regarding data integrity is out of
date. Specifically, the tarball format is famously undeterministic:
the very same file tree can result in any number of different
valid serializations depending on the tool used, its version and the
underlying OS and file system. Some tar implementations attempt to
correct that by guaranteeing that each file tree maps to exactly
one valid serialization, but such a property is always only specific
to the tool used. I strongly believe that any good update system must
guarantee on every single link of the chain that there’s only one
valid representatin of the data to deliver, that can easily be
verified.

What casync Is

So much about the background why I created casync. Now, let’s have a
look what casync actually is like, and what it does. Here’s the brief
technical overview:

Encoding: Let’s take a large linear data stream, split it into
variable-sized chunks (the size of each being a function of the
chunk’s contents), and store these chunks in individual, compressed
files in some directory, each file named after a strong hash value of
its contents, so that the hash value may be used to as key for
retrieving the full chunk data. Let’s call this directory a “chunk
store”. At the same time, generate a “chunk index” file that lists
these chunk hash values plus their respective chunk sizes in a simple
linear array. The chunking algorithm is supposed to create variable,
but similarly sized chunks from the data stream, and do so in a way
that the same data results in the same chunks even if placed at
varying offsets. For more information see this blog
story.

Decoding: Let’s take the chunk index file, and reassemble the large
linear data stream by concatenating the uncompressed chunks retrieved
from the chunk store, keyed by the listed chunk hash values.

As an extra twist, we introduce a well-defined, reproducible,
random-access serialization format for file trees (think: a more
modern tar), to permit efficient, stable storage of complete file
trees in the system, simply by serializing them and then passing them
into the encoding step explained above.

Finally, let’s put all this on the network: for each image you want to
deliver, generate a chunk index file and place it on an HTTP
server. Do the same with the chunk store, and share it between the
various index files you intend to deliver.

Why bother with all of this? Streams with similar contents will result
in mostly the same chunk files in the chunk store. This means it is
very efficient to store many related versions of a data stream in the
same chunk store, thus minimizing disk usage. Moreover, when
transferring linear data streams chunks already known on the receiving
side can be made use of, thus minimizing network traffic.

Why is this different from rsync or OSTree, or similar tools? Well,
one major difference between casync and those tools is that we
remove file boundaries before chunking things up. This means that
small files are lumped together with their siblings and large files
are chopped into pieces, which permits us to recognize similarities in
files and directories beyond file boundaries, and makes sure our chunk
sizes are pretty evenly distributed, without the file boundaries
affecting them.

The “chunking” algorithm is based on a the buzhash rolling hash
function. SHA256 is used as strong hash function to generate digests
of the chunks. xz is used to compress the individual chunks.

Here’s a diagram, hopefully explaining a bit how the encoding process
works, wasn’t it for my crappy drawing skills:

The diagram shows the encoding process from top to bottom. It starts
with a block device or a file tree, which is then serialized and
chunked up into variable sized blocks. The compressed chunks are then
placed in the chunk store, while a chunk index file is written listing
the chunk hashes in order. (The original SVG of this graphic may be
found here.

Details

Note that casync operates on two different layers, depending on the
usecase of the user:

You may use it on the block layer. In this case the raw block data
on disk is taken as-is, read directly from the block device, split
into chunks as described above, compressed, stored and delivered.
You may use it on the file system layer. In this case, the
file tree serialization format mentioned above comes into play:
the file tree is serialized depth-first (much like tar would do
it) and then split into chunks, compressed, stored and delivered.

The fact that it may be used on both the block and file system layer
opens it up for a variety of different usecases. In the VM and IoT
ecosystems shipping images as block-level serializations is more
common, while in the container and application world file-system-level
serializations are more typically used.

Chunk index files referring to block-layer serializations carry the
.caibx suffix, while chunk index files referring to file system
serializations carry the .caidx suffix. Note that you may also use
casync as direct tar replacement, i.e. without the chunking, just
generating the plain linear file tree serialization. Such files
carry the .catar suffix. Internally .caibx are identical to
.caidx files, the only difference is semantical: .caidx files
describe a .catar file, while .caibx files may describe any other
blob. Finally, chunk stores are directories carrying the .castr
suffix.

Features

Here are a couple of other features casync has:

When downloading a new image you may use casync‘s --seed=
feature: each block device, file, or directory specified is processed
using the same chunking logic described above, and is used as
preferred source when putting together the downloaded image locally,
avoiding network transfer of it. This of course is useful whenever
updating an image: simply specify one or more old versions as seed and
only download the chunks that truly changed since then. Note that
using seeds requires no history relationship between seed and the new
image to download. This has major benefits: you can even use it to
speed up downloads of relatively foreign and unrelated data. For
example, when downloading a container image built using Ubuntu you can
use your Fedora host OS tree in /usr as seed, and casync will
automatically use whatever it can from that tree, for example timezone
and locale data that tends to be identical between
distributions. Example: casync extract http://example.com/myimage.caibx --seed=/dev/sda1 /dev/sda2. This
will place the block-layer image described by the indicated URL in the
/dev/sda2 partition, using the existing /dev/sda1 data as seeding
source. An invocation like this could be typically used by IoT systems
with an A/B partition setup. Example 2: casync extract http://example.com/mycontainer-v3.caidx --seed=/srv/container-v1 --seed=/srv/container-v2 /src/container-v3, is very similar but
operates on the file system layer, and uses two old container versions
to seed the new version.
When operating on the file system level, the user has fine-grained
control on the metadata included in the serialization. This is
relevant since different usecases tend to require a different set of
saved/restored metadata. For example, when shipping OS images, file
access bits/ACLs and ownership matter, while file modification times
hurt. When doing personal backups OTOH file ownership matters little
but file modification times are important. Moreover different backing
file systems support different feature sets, and storing more
information than necessary might make it impossible to validate a tree
against an image if the metadata cannot be replayed in full. Due to
this, casync provides a set of --with= and --without= parameters
that allow fine-grained control of the data stored in the file tree
serialization, including the granularity of modification times and
more. The precise set of selected metadata features is also always
part of the serialization, so that seeding can work correctly and
automatically.
casync tries to be as accurate as possible when storing file
system metadata. This means that besides the usual baseline of file
metadata (file ownership and access bits), and more advanced features
(extended attributes, ACLs, file capabilities) a number of more exotic
data is stored as well, including Linux
chattr(1) file attributes, as
well as FAT file
attributes
(you may wonder why the latter? — EFI is FAT, and /efi is part of
the comprehensive serialization of any host). In the future I intend
to extend this further, for example storing btrfs subvolume
information where available. Note that as described above every single
type of metadata may be turned off and on individually, hence if you
don’t need FAT file bits (and I figure it’s pretty likely you don’t),
then they won’t be stored.
The user creating .caidx or .caibx files may control the desired
average chunk length (before compression) freely, using the
--chunk-size= parameter. Smaller chunks increase the number of
generated files in the chunk store and increase HTTP GET load on the
server, but also ensure that sharing between similar images is
improved, as identical patterns in the images stored are more likely
to be recognized. By default casync will use a 64K average chunk
size. Tweaking this can be particularly useful when adapting the
system to specific CDNs, or when delivering compressed disk images
such as squashfs (see below).
Emphasis is placed on making all invocations reproducible,
well-defined and strictly deterministic. As mentioned above this is a
requirement to reach the intended security guarantees, but is also
useful for many other usecases. For example, the casync digest
command may be used to calculate a hash value identifying a specific
directory in all desired detail (use --with= and --without to pick
the desired detail). Moreover the casync mtree command may be used
to generate a BSD mtree(5) compatible manifest of a directory tree,
.caidx or .catar file.
The file system serialization format is nicely composable. By this
I mean that the serialization of a file tree is the concatenation of
the serializations of all files and file subtrees located at the
top of the tree, with zero metadata references from any of these
serializations into the others. This property is essential to ensure
maximum reuse of chunks when similar trees are serialized.
When extracting file trees or disk image files, casync
will automatically create
reflinks
from any specified seeds if the underlying file system supports it
(such as btrfs, ocfs, and future xfs). After all, instead of
copying the desired data from the seed, we can just tell the file
system to link up the relevant blocks. This works both when extracting
.caidx and .caibx files — the latter of course only when the
extracted disk image is placed in a regular raw image file on disk,
rather than directly on a plain block device, as plain block devices
do not know the concept of reflinks.
Optionally, when extracting file trees, casync can
create traditional UNIX hardlinks for identical files in specified
seeds (--hardlink=yes). This works on all UNIX file systems, and can
save substantial amounts of disk space. However, this only works for
very specific usecases where disk images are considered read-only
after extraction, as any changes made to one tree will propagate to
all other trees sharing the same hardlinked files, as that’s the
nature of hardlinks. In this mode, casync exposes OSTree-like
behaviour, which is built heavily around read-only hardlink trees.
casync tries to be smart when choosing what to include in file
system images. Implicitly, file systems such as procfs and sysfs are
exluded from serialization, as they expose API objects, not real
files. Moreover, the “nodump” (+d)
chattr(1) flag is honoured by
default, permitting users to mark files to exclude from serialization.
When creating and extracting file trees casync may apply am
automatic or explicit UID/GID shift. This is particularly useful when
transferring container image for use with Linux user namespacing.
In addition to local operation, casync currently supports HTTP,
HTTPS, FTP and ssh natively for downloading chunk index files and
chunks (the ssh mode requires installing casync on the remote host,
though, but an sftp mode not requiring that should be easy to
add). When creating index files or chunks, only ssh is supported as
remote backend.
When operating on block-layer images, you may expose locally or
remotely stored images as local block devices. Example: casync mkdev http://example.com/myimage.caibx exposes the disk image described by
the indicated URL as local block device in /dev, which you then may
use the usual block device tools on, such as mount or fdisk (only
read-only though). Chunks are downloaded on access with high priority,
and at low priority when idle in the background. Note that in this
mode, casync also plays a role similar to “dm-verity”, as all blocks
are validated against the strong digests in the chunk index file
before passing them on to the kernel’s block layer. This feature is
implemented though Linux’ NBD kernel facility.
Similar, when operating on file-system-layer images, you may mount
locally or remotely stored images as regular file systems. Example:
casync mount http://example.com/mytree.caidx /srv/mytree mounts the
file tree image described by the indicated URL as a local directory
/srv/mytree. This feature is implemented though Linux’ FUSE kernel
facility. Note that special care is taken that the images exposed this
way can be packed up again with casync make and are guaranteed to
return the bit-by-bit exact same serialization again that it was
mounted from. No data is lost or changed while passing thrings through
FUSE (OK, strictly speaking this is a lie, we do lose ACLs, but that’s
hopefully just a temporary gap to be fixed soon).
In IoT A/B fixed size partition setups the file systems placed in
the two partitions are usually much shorter than the partition size,
in order to keep some room for later, larger updates. casync is able
to analyze the superblock of a number of common file systems in order
to determine the actual size of a file system stored on a block
device, so that writing a file system to such a partition and reading
it back again will result in reproducible data. Moreover this speeds
up the seeding process, as there’s little point in seeding the
whitespace after the file system within the partition.

Example Command Lines

Here’s how to use casync, explained with a few examples:

$ casync make foobar.caidx /some/directory

This will create a chunk index file foobar.caidx in the local
directory, and populate the chunk store directory default.castr
located next to it with the chunks of the serialization (you can
change the name for the store directory with --store= if you
like). This command operates on the file-system level. A similar
command operating on the block level:

$ casync make foobar.caibx /dev/sda1

This command creates a chunk index file foobar.caibx in the local
directory describing the current contents of the /dev/sda1 block
device, and populates default.castr in the same way as above. Note
that you may as well read a raw disk image from a file instead of a
block device:

$ casync make foobar.caibx myimage.raw

To reconstruct the original file tree from the .caidx file and
the chunk store of the first command, use:

$ casync extract foobar.caidx /some/other/directory

And similar for the block-layer version:

$ casync extract foobar.caibx /dev/sdb1

or, to extract the block-layer version into a raw disk image:

$ casync extract foobar.caibx myotherimage.raw

The above are the most basic commands, operating on local data
only. Now let’s make this more interesting, and reference remote
resources:

$ casync extract http://example.com/images/foobar.caidx /some/other/directory

This extracts the specified .caidx onto a local directory. This of
course assumes that foobar.caidx was uploaded to the HTTP server in
the first place, along with the chunk store. You can use any command
you like to accomplish that, for example scp or
rsync. Alternatively, you can let casync do this directly when
generating the chunk index:

$ casync make ssh.example.com:images/foobar.caidx /some/directory

This will use ssh to connect to the ssh.example.com server, and then
places the .caidx file and the chunks on it. Note that this mode of
operation is “smart”: this scheme will only upload chunks currently
missing on the server side, and not retransmit what already is
available.

Note that you can always configure the precise path or URL of the
chunk store via the --store= option. If you do not do that, then the
store path is automatically derived from the path or URL: the last
component of the path or URL is replaced by default.castr.

Of course, when extracting .caidx or .caibx files from remote sources,
using a local seed is advisable:

$ casync extract http://example.com/images/foobar.caidx --seed=/some/exising/directory /some/other/directory

Or on the block layer:

$ casync extract http://example.com/images/foobar.caibx --seed=/dev/sda1 /dev/sdb2

When creating chunk indexes on the file system layer casync will by
default store metadata as accurately as possible. Let’s create a chunk
index with reduced metadata:

$ casync make foobar.caidx --with=sec-time --with=symlinks --with=read-only /some/dir

This command will create a chunk index for a file tree serialization
that has three features above the absolute baseline supported: 1s
granularity timestamps, symbolic links and a single read-only bit. In
this mode, all the other metadata bits are not stored, including
nanosecond timestamps, full unix permission bits, file ownership or
even ACLs or extended attributes.

Now let’s make a .caidx file available locally as a mounted file
system, without extracting it:

$ casync mount http://example.comf/images/foobar.caidx /mnt/foobar

And similar, let’s make a .caibx file available locally as a block device:

$ casync mkdev http://example.comf/images/foobar.caidx

This will create a block device in /dev and print the used device
node path to STDOUT.

As mentioned, casync is big about reproducability. Let’s make use of
that to calculate the a digest identifying a very specific version of
a file tree:

$ casync digest .

This digest will include all metadata bits casync and the underlying
file system know about. Usually, to make this useful you want to
configure exactly what metadata to include:

$ casync digest --with=unix .

This makes use of the --with=unix shortcut for selecting metadata
fields. Specifying --with-unix= selects all metadata that
traditional UNIX file systems support. It is a shortcut for writing out:
--with=16bit-uids --with=permissions --with=sec-time --with=symlinks --with=device-nodes --with=fifos --with=sockets.

Note that when calculating digests or creating chunk indexes you may
also use the negative --without= option to remove specific features
but start from the most precise:

$ casync digest --without=flag-immutable

This generates a digest with the most accurate metadata, but leaves
one feature out: chattr(1)‘s
immutable (+i) file flag.

To list the contents of a .caidx file use a command like the following:

$ casync list http://example.com/images/foobar.caidx

$ casync mtree http://example.com/images/foobar.caidx

The former command will generate a brief list of files and
directories, not too different from tar t or ls -al in its
output. The latter command will generate a BSD
mtree(5) compatible
manifest. Note that casync actually stores substantially more file
metadata than mtree files can express, though.

What casync isn’t

casync is not an attempt to minimize serialization and downloaded
deltas to the extreme. Instead, the tool is supposed to find a good
middle ground, that is good on traffic and disk space, but not at the
price of convenience or requiring explicit revision control. If you
care about updates that are absolutely minimal, there are binary delta
systems around that might be an option for you, such as Google’s
Courgette.
casync is not a replacement for rsync, or git or zsync or
anything like that. They have very different usecases and
semantics. For example, rsync permits you to directly synchronize two
file trees remotely. casync just cannot do that, and it is unlikely
it every will.

Where next?

casync is supposed to be a generic synchronization tool. Its primary
focus for now is delivery of OS images, but I’d like to make it useful
for a couple other usecases, too. Specifically:

To make the tool useful for backups, encryption is missing. I have
pretty concrete plans how to add that. When implemented, the tool
would might become an alternative to
restic or
tarsnap.
Right now, if you want to deploy casync in real-life, you still
need to validate the downloaded .caidx or .caibx file yourself, for
example with some gpg signature. It is my intention to integrate with
gpg in a minimal way so that signing and verifying chunk index files
is done automatically.
In the longer run, I’d like to build an automatic synchronizer for
$HOME between systems from this. Each $HOME instance would be
stored automatically in regular intervals in the cloud using casync,
and conflicts would be resolved locally.
casync is written in a shared library style, but it is not yet
built as one. Specifically this means that almost all of casync‘s
functionality is supposed to be available as C API soon, and
applications can process casync files on every level. It is my
intention to make this library useful enough so that it will be easy
to write a module for GNOME’s gvfs subsystem in order to make remote
or local .caidx files directly available to applications (as an
alternative to casync mount). In fact the idea is to make this all
flexible enough that even the remoting backends can be replaced
easily, for example to replace casync‘s default HTTP/HTTPS backends
built on CURL with GNOME’s own HTTP implementation, in order to share
cookies, certificates, … There’s also an alternative method to
integrate with casync in place already: simply invoke casync as a
subprocess. casync will inform you about a certain set of state
changes using a mechanism compatible with
sd_notify(3). In
future it will also propagate progress data this way and more.
I intend to a add a new seeding back-end that sources chunks from
the local network. After downloading the new .caidx file off the
Internet casync would then search for the listed chunks on the local
network first before retrieving them from the Internet. This should
speed things up on all installations that have multiple similar
systems deployed in the same network.

Further plans are listed tersely in the
TODO file.

FAQ:

Is this a systemd project? — casync is hosted under the
github systemd umbrella, and the
projects share the same coding style. However, the codebases are
distinct and without interdependencies, and casync works fine both
on systemd systems and systems without it.
Is casync portable? — At the moment: no. I only run Linux and
that’s what I code for. That said, I am open to accepting portability
patches (unlike for systemd, which doesn’t really make sense on
non-Linux systems), as long as they don’t interfere too much with the
way casync works. Specifically this means that I am not too
enthusiastic about merging portability patches for OSes lacking the
openat(2) family
of APIs.
Does casync require reflink-capable file systems to work, such
as btrfs? No it doesn’t. The reflink magic in casync is
employed when the file system permits it, and it’s good to have it,
but it’s not a requirement, and casync will implicitly fall back to
copying when it isn’t available. Note that casync supports a number
of file system features on a variety of file systems that aren’t
available everywhere, for example FAT’s system/hidden file flags or
xfs‘s projinherit file flag.
Is casync stable? — I just tagged the first, initial
release. While I have been working on it since quite some time and it
is quite featureful, this is the first time I advertise it publicly,
and it hence received very little testing outside of its own test
suite. I am also not fully ready to commit to the stability of the
current serialization or chunk index format. I don’t see any breakages
coming for it though. casync is pretty light on documentation right
now, and does not even have a man page. I also intend to correct that
soon.
Are the .caidx/.caibx and .catar file formats open and
documented? — casync is Open Source, so if you want to know the
precise format, have a look at the sources for now. It’s definitely my
intention to add comprehensive docs for both formats however. Don’t
forget this is just the initial version right now.
casync is just like $SOMEOTHERTOOL! Why are you reinventing
the wheel (again)? — Well, because casync isn’t “just like” some
other tool. I am pretty sure I did my homework, and that there is no
tool just like casync right now. The tools coming closest are probably
rsync, zsync, tarsnap, restic, but they are quite different beasts
each.
Why did you invent your own serialization format for file trees?
Why don’t you just use tar? That’s a good question, and other
systems — most prominently tarsnap — do that. However, as mentioned
above tar doesn’t enforce reproducability. It also doesn’t really do
random access: if you want to access some specific file you need to
read every single byte stored before it in the tar archive to find
it, which is of course very expensive. The serialization casync
implements places a focus on reproducability, random access, and
metadata control. Much like traditional tar it can still be
generated and extracted in a stream fashion though.
Does casync save/restore SELinux/SMACK file labels? At the
moment not. That’s not because I wouldn’t want it to, but simply
because I am not a guru of either of these systems, and didn’t want to
implement something I do not fully grok nor can test. If you look at
the sources you’ll find that there’s already some definitions in place
that keep room for them though. I’d be delighted to accept a patch
implementing this fully.
What about delivering squashfs images? How well does chunking
work on compressed serializations? – That’s a very good point!
Usually, if you apply the a chunking algorithm to a compressed data
stream (let’s say a tar.gz file), then changing a single bit at the
front will propagate into the entire remainder of the file, so that
minimal changes will explode into major changes. Thankfully this
doesn’t apply that strictly to squashfs images, as it provides
random access to files and directories and thus breaks up the
compression streams in regular intervals to make seeking easy. This
fact is beneficial for systems employing chunking, such as casync as
this means single bit changes might affect their vicinity but will not
explode in an unbounded fashion. In order achieve best results when
delivering squashfs images through casync the block sizes of
squashfs and the chunks sizes of casync should be matched up (using
casync‘s --chunk-size= option). How precisely to choose both
values is left to reasearch by the user, for now.
What does the name casync mean? – It’s a synchronizing
tool, hence the -sync suffix, following rsync‘s naming. It makes
use of the content-addressable concept of git hence the ca-
prefix.
Where can I get this stuff? Is it already packaged? – Check
out the sources on GitHub. I
just tagged the first
version. Martin
Pitt has packaged casync for
Ubuntu. There
is also an ArchLinux
package.

Should you care? Is this a tool for you?

Well, that’s up to you really. If you are involved with projects that
need to deliver IoT, VM, container, application or OS images, then
maybe this is a great tool for you — but other options exist, some of
which are linked above.

Note that casync is an Open Source project: if it doesn’t do exactly
what you need, prepare a patch that adds what you need, and we’ll
consider it.

If you are interested in the project and would like to talk about this
in person, I’ll be presenting casync soon at Kinvolk’s Linux
Technologies
Meetup
in Berlin, Germany. You are invited. I also intend to talk about it at
All Systems Go!, also in Berlin.

The Android Things Candy Dispenser

2017-06-19 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/android-things-candy-dispenser/

Alvaro Viebrantz‘s Android Things Candy Dispenser combines image recognition and sugar highs in one delicious Raspberry Pi project.

Android Things A.I. Candy Dispenser

A Candy Dispenser running Android Things, that exchange photos for candies. It uses computer vision to classify the image. https://github.com/alvarowolfx/ai-candy-dispenser https://www.hackster.io/alvarowolfx/android-things-a-i-candy-dispenser-a47e74

Android Things

Released late last year, Android Things is Google’s Android-based operating system for low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as the Raspberry Pi.

Candy

Invented in ancient India, candy is a scrumptious treat often made of sugar and/or chocolate.

The Android Things Candy Dispenser

Via its 20×4 display, Alvaro’s candy dispenser asks for an image, for example of a cat or a dog. Produce the requested image in front of the onboard Camera Module and the dispenser releases a delicious reward for you.

Inside the dispenser

Android Things Candy Dispenser Raspberry Pi

Alvaro’s schematic provides all the information you need to build your own Android Things candy dispenser (click for a larger version)

The dispenser uses a Raspberry Pi to control both the image detection and the candy release. Press the button, and the Raspberry Pi displays one of several image subjects on the screen. Via the camera, the Pi records the image you present and sends for processing via Google’s Cloud Vision API. Cloud Vision supplies image annotations and metadata, and if these match the image request, boom, free candy!

To discover more about Google Cloud Vision, check out this video from the Cloud Vision team.

Alvaro provides full instructions for the build, including all necessary code and peripherals, on both Instructables and GitHub.

Building with Android Things

Given that Android Things has not been available for very long, we have yet to see many complete builds using it with the Raspberry Pi. If you’d like to try out this OS, Alvaro’s project is a great entry point. You should also check out the Pimoroni Rainbow HAT Android Things Starter Kit that provides everything you need to begin making. And if you have a Pi and are raring to go, follow the official ‘Android Things on Raspberry Pi’ setup guide here.

If you’ve already built a project using the Android Things platform, we’d love to see it! Make sure to share your project link in the comments below.

The post The Android Things Candy Dispenser appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Digital painter rundown

2017-06-17 Eevee

Post Syndicated from Eevee original https://eev.ee/blog/2017/06/17/digital-painter-rundown/

Another patron post! IndustrialRobot asks:

You should totally write about drawing/image manipulation programs! (Inspired by https://eev.ee/blog/2015/05/31/text-editor-rundown/)

This is a little trickier than a text editor comparison — while most text editors are cross-platform, quite a few digital art programs are not. So I’m effectively unable to even try a decent chunk of the offerings. I’m also still a relatively new artist, and image editors are much harder to briefly compare than text editors…

Right, now that your expectations have been suitably lowered:

Krita

I do all of my digital art in Krita. It’s pretty alright.

…

Okay so Krita grew out of Calligra, which used to be KOffice, which was an office suite designed for KDE (a Linux desktop environment). I bring this up because KDE has a certain… reputation. With KDE, there are at least three completely different ways to do anything, each of those ways has ludicrous amounts of customization and settings, and somehow it still can’t do what you want.

Krita inherits this aesthetic by attempting to do literally everything. It has 17 different brush engines, more than 70 layer blending modes, seven color picker dockers, and an ungodly number of colorspaces. It’s clearly intended primarily for drawing, but it also supports animation and vector layers and a pretty decent spread of raster editing tools. I just right now discovered that it has Photoshop-like “layer styles” (e.g. drop shadow), after a year and a half of using it.

In fairness, Krita manages all of this stuff well enough, and (apparently!) it manages to stay out of your way if you’re not using it. In less fairness, they managed to break erasing with a Wacom tablet pen for three months?

I don’t want to rag on it too hard; it’s an impressive piece of work, and I enjoy using it! The emotion it evokes isn’t so much frustration as… mystified bewilderment.

I once filed a ticket suggesting the addition of a brush size palette — a panel showing a grid of fixed brush sizes that makes it easy to switch between known sizes with a tablet pen (and increases the chances that you’ll be able to get a brush back to the right size again). It’s a prominent feature of Paint Tool SAI and Clip Studio Paint, and while I’ve never used either of those myself, I’ve seen a good few artists swear by it.

The developer response was that I could emulate the behavior by creating brush presets. But that’s flat-out wrong: getting the same effect would require creating a ton of brush presets for every brush I have, plus giving them all distinct icons so the size is obvious at a glance. Even then, it would be much more tedious to use and fill my presets with junk.

And that sort of response is what’s so mysterious to me. I’ve never even been able to use this feature myself, but a year of amateur painting with Krita has convinced me that it would be pretty useful. But a developer didn’t see the use and suggested an incredibly tedious alternative that only half-solves the problem and creates new ones. Meanwhile, of the 28 existing dockable panels, a quarter of them are different ways to choose colors.

What is Krita trying to be, then? What does Krita think it is? Who precisely is the target audience? I have no idea.

Anyway, I enjoy drawing in Krita well enough. It ships with a respectable set of brushes, and there are plenty more floating around. It has canvas rotation, canvas mirroring, perspective guide tools, and other art goodies. It doesn’t colordrop on right click by default, which is arguably a grave sin (it shows a customizable radial menu instead), but that’s easy to rebind. It understands having a background color beneath a bottom transparent layer, which is very nice. You can also toggle any brush between painting and erasing with the press of a button, and that turns out to be very useful.

It doesn’t support infinite canvases, though it does offer a one-click button to extend the canvas in a given direction. I’ve never used it (and didn’t even know what it did until just now), but would totally use an infinite canvas.

I haven’t used the animation support too much, but it’s pretty nice to have. Granted, the only other animation software I’ve used is Aseprite, so I don’t have many points of reference here. It’s a relatively new addition, too, so I assume it’ll improve over time.

The one annoyance I remember with animation was really an interaction with a larger annoyance, which is: working with selections kind of sucks. You can’t drag a selection around with the selection tool; you have to switch to the move tool. That would be fine if you could at least drag the selection ring around with the selection tool, but you can’t do that either; dragging just creates a new selection.

If you want to copy a selection, you have to explicitly copy it to the clipboard and paste it, which creates a new layer. Ctrl-drag with the move tool doesn’t work. So then you have to merge that layer down, which I think is where the problem with animation comes in: a new layer is non-animated by default, meaning it effectively appears in any frame, so simply merging it down with merge it onto every single frame of the layer below. And you won’t even notice until you switch frames or play back the animation. Not ideal.

This is another thing that makes me wonder about Krita’s sense of identity. It has a lot of fancy general-purpose raster editing features that even GIMP is still struggling to implement, like high color depth support and non-destructive filters, yet something as basic as working with selections is clumsy. (In fairness, GIMP is a bit clumsy here too, but it has a consistent notion of “floating selection” that’s easy enough to work with.)

I don’t know how well Krita would work as a general-purpose raster editor; I’ve never tried to use it that way. I can’t think of anything obvious that’s missing. The only real gotcha is that some things you might expect to be tools, like smudge or clone, are just types of brush in Krita.

GIMP

Ah, GIMP — open source’s answer to Photoshop.

It’s very obviously intended for raster editing, and I’m pretty familiar with it after half a lifetime of only using Linux. I even wrote a little Scheme script for it ages ago to automate some simple edits to a couple hundred files, back before I was aware of ImageMagick. I don’t know what to say about it, specifically; it’s fairly powerful and does a wide variety of things.

In fact I’d say it’s almost frustratingly intended for raster editing. I used GIMP in my first attempts at digital painting, before I’d heard of Krita. It was okay, but so much of it felt clunky and awkward. Painting is split between a pencil tool, a paintbrush tool, and an airbrush tool; I don’t really know why. The default brushes are largely uninteresting. Instead of brush presets, there are tool presets that can be saved for any tool; it’s a neat idea, but doesn’t feel like a real substitute for brush presets.

Much of the same functionality as Krita is there, but it’s all somehow more clunky. I’m sure it’s possible to fiddle with the interface to get something friendlier for painting, but I never really figured out how.

And then there’s the surprising stuff that’s missing. There’s no canvas rotation, for example. There’s only one type of brush, and it just stamps the same pattern along a path. I don’t think it’s possible to smear or blend or pick up color while painting. The only way to change the brush size is via the very sensitive slider on the tool options panel, which I remember being a little annoying with a tablet pen. Also, you have to specifically enable tablet support? It’s not difficult or anything, but I have no idea why the default is to ignore tablet pressure and treat it like a regular mouse cursor.

As I mentioned above, there’s also no support for high color depth or non-destructive editing, which is honestly a little embarrassing. Those are the major things Serious Professionals™ have been asking for for ages, and GIMP has been trying to provide them, but it’s taking a very long time. The first signs of GEGL, a new library intended to provide these features, appeared in GIMP 2.6… in 2008. The last major release was in 2012. GIMP has been working on this new plumbing for almost as long as Krita’s entire development history. (To be fair, Krita has also raised almost €90,000 from three Kickstarters to fund its development; I don’t know that GIMP is funded at all.)

I don’t know what’s up with GIMP nowadays. It’s still under active development, but the exact status and roadmap are a little unclear. I still use it for some general-purpose editing, but I don’t see any reason to use it to draw.

I do know that canvas rotation will be in the next release, and there was some experimentation with embedding MyPaint’s brush engine (though when I tried it it was basically unusable), so maybe GIMP is interested in wooing artists? I guess we’ll see.

MyPaint

Ah, MyPaint. I gave it a try once. Once.

It’s a shame, really. It sounds pretty great: specifically built for drawing, has very powerful brushes, supports an infinite canvas, supports canvas rotation, has a simple UI that gets out of your way. Perfect.

Or so it seems. But in MyPaint’s eagerness to shed unnecessary raster editing tools, it forgot a few of the more useful ones. Like selections.

MyPaint has no notion of a selection, nor of copy/paste. If you want to move a head to align better to a body, for example, the sanctioned approach is to duplicate the layer, erase the head from the old layer, erase everything but the head from the new layer, then move the new layer.

I can’t find anything that resembles HSL adjustment, either. I guess the workaround for that is to create H/S/L layers and floodfill them with different colors until you get what you want.

I can’t work seriously without these basic editing tools. I could see myself doodling in MyPaint, but Krita works just as well for doodling as for serious painting, so I’ve never gone back to it.

Drawpile

Drawpile is the modern equivalent to OpenCanvas, I suppose? It lets multiple people draw on the same canvas simultaneously. (I would not recommend it as a general-purpose raster editor.)

It’s a little clunky in places — I sometimes have bugs where keyboard focus gets stuck in the chat, or my tablet cursor becomes invisible — but the collaborative part works surprisingly well. It’s not a brush powerhouse or anything, and I don’t think it allows textured brushes, but it supports tablet pressure and canvas rotation and locked alpha and selections and whatnot.

I’ve used it a couple times, and it’s worked well enough that… well, other people made pretty decent drawings with it? I’m not sure I’ve managed yet. And I wouldn’t use it single-player. Still, it’s fun.

Aseprite

Aseprite is for pixel art so it doesn’t really belong here at all. But it’s very good at that and I like it a lot.

That’s all

I can’t name any other serious contender that exists for Linux.

I’m dimly aware of a thing called “Photo Shop” that’s more intended for photos but functions as a passable painter. More artists seem to swear by Paint Tool SAI and Clip Studio Paint. Also there’s Paint.NET, but I have no idea how well it’s actually suited for painting.

And that’s it! That’s all I’ve got. Krita for drawing, GIMP for editing, Drawpile for collaborative doodling.

Mira, tiny robot of joyful delight

2017-06-16 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/mira-robot-alonso-martinez/

The staff of Pi Towers are currently melting into puddles while making ‘Aaaawwwwwww’ noises as Mira, the adorable little Pi-controlled robot made by Pixar 3D artist Alonso Martinez, steals their hearts.

Mira the robot playing peek-a-boo

If you want to get updates on Mira’s progress, sign up for the mailing list! http://eepurl.com/bteigD Mira is a desk companion that makes your life better one smile at a time. This project explores human robot interactivity and emotional intelligence. Currently Mira uses face tracking to interact with the users and loves playing the game “peek-a-boo”.

Introducing Mira

Honestly, I can’t type words – I am but a puddle! If I could type at all, I would only produce a stream of affectionate fragments. Imagine walking into a room full of kittens. What you would sound like is what I’d type.

No! I can do this. I’m a professional. I write for a living! I can…

SHE BLINKS OHMYAAAARGH!!!

Weebl & Bob meets South Park’s Ike Broflovski in an adorable 3D-printed bundle of ‘Aaawwwww’

Introducing Mira (I promise I can do this)

Right. I’ve had a nap and a drink. I’ve composed myself. I am up for this challenge. As long as I don’t look directly at her, I’ll be fine!

Here I go.

As one of the many über-talented 3D artists at Pixar, Alonso Martinez knows a thing or two about bringing adorable-looking characters to life on screen. However, his work left him wondering:

In movies you see really amazing things happening but you actually can’t interact with them – what would it be like if you could interact with characters?

So with the help of his friends Aaron Nathan and Vijay Sundaram, Alonso set out to bring the concept of animation to the physical world by building a “character” that reacts to her environment. His experiments with robotics started with Gertie, a ball-like robot reminiscent of his time spent animating bouncing balls when he was learning his trade. From there, he moved on to Mira.

Many, many of the views of this Tested YouTube video have come from me. So many.

Mira swivels to follow a person’s face, plays games such as peekaboo, shows surprise when you finger-shoot her, and giggles when you give her a kiss.

Mira’s inner workings

To get Mira to turn her head in three dimensions, Alonso took inspiration from the Microsoft Sidewinder Pro joystick he had as a kid. He purchased one on eBay, took it apart to understand how it works, and replicated its mechanism for Mira’s Raspberry Pi-powered innards.

Alonso used the smallest components he could find so that they would fit inside Mira’s tiny body.

Mira’s axis of 3D-printed parts moves via tiny Power HD DSM44 servos, while a camera and OpenCV handle face-tracking, and a single NeoPixel provides a range of colours to indicate her emotions. As for the blinking eyes? Two OLED screens boasting acrylic domes fit within the few millimeters between all the other moving parts.

More on Mira, including her history and how she works, can be found in this wonderful video released by Tested this week.

Pixar Artist’s 3D-Printed Animated Robots!

We’re gushing with grins and delight at the sight of these adorable animated robots created by artist Alonso Martinez. Sean chats with Alonso to learn how he designed and engineered his family of robots, using processes like 3D printing, mold-making, and silicone casting. They’re amazing!

You can also sign up for Alonso’s newsletter here to stay up-to-date about this little robot. Hopefully one of these newsletters will explain how to buy or build your own Mira, as I for one am desperate to see her adorable little face on my desk every day for the rest of my life.

The post Mira, tiny robot of joyful delight appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Estefannie’s GPS-Controlled GoPro Photo Taker

2017-06-13 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/estefannie-gopro-selfie/

Are you tired of having to take selfies physically? Do you only use your GoPro for the occasional beach vacation? Are you maybe even wondering what to do with the load of velcro you bought on a whim? Then we have good news for you: Estefannie‘s back to help you out with her Personal Automated GPS-Controlled Portable Photo Taker…PAGCPPT for short…or pagsssspt, if you like.

RASPBERRY PI + GPS CONTROLLED PHOTO TAKER

Hey World! Do you like vacation pictures but don’t like taking them? Make your own Personal Automated GPS Controlled Portable Photo Taker! The code, components, and instructions are in my Hackster.io account: https://www.hackster.io/estefanniegg/automated-gps-controlled-photo-taker-3fc84c For this build, I decided to put together a backpack to take pictures of me when I am close to places that like.

The Personal Automated GPS-Controlled Portable Photo Taker

Try saying that five times in a row.

Go on. I’ll wait.

Using a Raspberry Pi 3, a GPS module, a power pack, and a GoPro plus GoPro Stick, Estefannie created the PAGCPPT as a means of automatically taking selfies at pre-specified tourist attractions across London.

Estefannie Explains it All Raspberry Pi GPS GoPro Camera

There’s pie in my backpack too…but it’s a bit messy

With velcro and hot glue, she secured the tech in place on (and inside) a backpack. Then it was simply a case of programming her set up to take pictures while she walked around the city.

Making the GoPro…go

Estefannie made use of a GoPro API library to connect her GoPro to the Raspberry Pi via WiFi. With the help of this library, she wrote a Python script that made the GoPro take a photograph whenever her GPS module placed her within a ten-metre radius of a pre-selected landmark such as Tower Bridge, Abbey Road, or Platform 9 3/4.

“Accio selfie.”

The full script, as well as details regarding the components she used for the project, can be found on her hackster.io page here.

Estefannie Explains it All

You’ll have noticed that we’ve covered Estefannie once or twice before on the Raspberry Pi blog. We love project videos that convey a sense of ‘Oh hey, I can totally build one of those!’, and hers always tick that box. They are imaginative, interesting, quirky, and to be totally honest with you, I’ve been waiting for this particular video since she hinted at it on her visit to Pi Towers in May. I got the inside scoop, yo!

What’s better than taking pictures? Not taking pictures. But STILL having pictures. I made a personal automated GPS controlled Portable Photo Taker ⚡ NEW VIDEO ALERT⚡ Link in bio.

1,351 Likes, 70 Comments – Estefannie Explains It All (@estefanniegg) on Instagram: “What’s better than taking pictures? Not taking pictures. But STILL having pictures. I made a…”

Make sure to follow her on YouTube and Instagram for more maker content and random shenanigans. And if you have your own maker social media channel, YouTube account, blog, etc, this is your chance to share it for the world to see in the comments below!

The post Estefannie’s GPS-Controlled GoPro Photo Taker appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Building a Continuous Delivery Pipeline for AWS Service Catalog (Sync AWS Service Catalog with Version Control)

2017-06-13 Anuj Sharma

Post Syndicated from Anuj Sharma original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/aws-service-catalog-sync-code/

AWS Service Catalog enables organizations to create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use on AWS. These IT services can include everything from virtual machine images, servers, software, and databases to complete multitier application architectures. You can use AWS Service Catalog to centrally manage commonly deployed IT services. It also helps you achieve consistent governance and meet your compliance requirements, while enabling users to quickly deploy only the approved IT services they need.

However, as the number of Service Catalog portfolios and products increases across an organization, centralized management and scaling can become a challenge. In this blog post, I walk you through a solution that simplifies management of AWS Service Catalog portfolios and related products. This solution also enables portfolio sharing with other accounts, portfolio tagging, and granting access to users. Finally, the solution delivers updates to the products using a continuous delivery in AWS CodePipeline. This enables you to maintain them in version control, thereby adopting “Infrastructure as Code” practices.

Solution overview

Authors (developers, operations, architects, etc.) create the AWS CloudFormation templates based on the needs of their organizations. These templates are the reusable artifacts. They can be shared among various teams within the organizations. You can name these templates product-A.yaml or product-B.yaml. For example, if the template creates an Amazon VPC that is based on organization needs, as described in the Amazon VPC Architecture Quick Start, you can save it as product-vpc.yaml.

The authors also define a mapping.yaml file, which includes the list of products that you want to include in the portfolio and related metadata. The mapping.yaml file is the core configuration component of this solution. This file defines your portfolio and its associated permissions and products. This configuration file determines how your portfolio will look in AWS Service Catalog, after the solution deploys it. A sample mapping.yaml is described here. Configuration properties of this mapping.yaml are explained here.

Product template files and the mappings are committed to version control. In this example, we use AWS CodeCommit. The folder structure on the file system looks like the following:
- portfolio-infrastructure (folder name)
  – product-a.yaml
  – product-b.yaml
  – product-c.yaml
  – mapping.yaml
- portfolio-example (folder name)
  – product-c.yaml
  – product-d.yaml
  – mapping.yaml
The name of the folder must start with portfolio- because the AWS Lambda function iterates through all folders whose names start with portfolio-, and syncs them with AWS Service Catalog.

Checking in any code in the repository triggers an AWS CodePipeline orchestration and invokes the Lambda function.
The Lambda function downloads the code from version control and iterates through all folders with names that start with portfolio-. The function gets a list of all existing portfolios in AWS Service Catalog. Then it checks whether the display name of the portfolio matches the “name” property in the mapping.yaml under each folder. If the name doesn’t match, a new portfolio is created. If the name matches, the description and owner fields are updated and synced with what is in the file. There must be only one mapping.yaml file in each folder with a name starting with portfolio-.
and 5. The Lambda function iterates through the list of products in the mapping.yaml file. If the name of product matches any of the products already associated with the portfolio, a new version of the product is created and is associated with the portfolio. If the name of the product doesn’t match, a new product is created. The CloudFormation template file (as specified in the template property for that product in the mapping file) is uploaded to Amazon S3 with a unique ID. A new version of the product is created and is pointed to the unique S3 path.

Try it out!

Get started using this solution, which is available in this AWSLabs GitHub repository.

Clone the repository. It contains the AWS CloudFormation templates that we use in this walkthrough.

git clone https://github.com/awslabs/aws-pipeline-to-service-catalog.git
cd aws-pipeline-to-service-catalog

Examine mapping.yaml under the portfolio-infrastructure folder. Replace the account number with the account number with which to share the portfolio. To share the portfolio with multiple other accounts, you can append more account numbers to the list. These account numbers must be valid AWS accounts, and must not include the account number in which this solution is being created. Optionally, edit this file and provide the values you want for the name, description, and owner properties. You can also choose to leave these values as they are, which creates a portfolio with the name, description, and owners described in the file.
Optional – If you don’t have the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) installed, install it as described here. To prepare your access keys or assumed role to make calls to AWS, configure the AWS CLI as described here.
Create a pipeline. This orchestrates continuous integration with the AWS CodeCommit repository created in step 2, and continuously syncs AWS Service Catalog with the code.

aws cloudformation deploy --template-file pipeline-to-service-catalog.yaml \
--stack-name service-catalog-sync-pipeline --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM \
--parameter-overrides RepositoryName=blogs-pipeline-to-service-catalog

This creates the following resources.

An AWS CodeCommit repository to push the code to. You can get the repository URL to push the code from the outputs of the stack that we just created. Connect, commit, and push code to this repository as described here.

1. An S3 bucket, which holds the built artifacts (CloudFormation templates) and the Lambda function code.
2. The AWS IAM roles and policies, with least privileges for this solution to work.
3. An AWS CodeBuild project, which builds the Lambda function. This Python-based Lambda function has the logic, as explained earlier.
4. A pipeline with the following four stages:
  - Stage-1: Checks out source from the repository created in step 2
  - Stage-2: Builds the Lambda function using AWS CodeBuild, which has the logic to sync the AWS Service Catalog products and portfolios with code.
  - Stage-3: Deploys the Lambda function using CloudFormation.
  - Stage-4: Invokes the Lambda function. Once this stage completes successfully, you see an AWS Service Catalog portfolio and two products created, as shown below.

Optional next steps!

You can deploy the Lambda function as we explained in this post to sync AWS Service Catalog products, portfolios, and permissions across multiple accounts that you own with version control. You can create a secure cross-account continuous delivery pipeline, as explained here. To do this:

Delete all the resources created earlier.

aws cloudformation delete-stack -- stack-name service-catalog-sync-pipeline

Follow the steps in this blog post. The sample Lambda function, described here, is the same as what I explained in this post.

Conclusion

You can use AWS Lambda to make API calls to AWS Service Catalog to keep portfolios and products in sync with a mapping file. The code includes the CloudFormation templates and the mapping file and folder structure, which resembles the portfolios in AWS Service Catalog. When checked in to an AWS CodeCommit repository, it invokes the Lambda function, orchestrated by AWS CodePipeline.

Подкаст за българска фантастика

2017-06-09 Григор

Post Syndicated from Григор original http://www.gatchev.info/blog/?p=2062

Днес в скромния ми блог е на гости Валентин Д. Иванов. Известен по света като астроном и откривател на класа небесни тела „планемо“ – самотните планети, които нямат звезда. Едно от големите астрономически открития за последните 100 години.

У нас е „световно неизвестен“ – повечето българи мислят, че „астрономия“ е грешка и правилното е „астрология“. За щастие, в кръговете на любителите на фантастиката Вальо е отлично известен писател, преводач, популяризатор, застъпник на фендъма и какво ли не още. И може би най-много от всичко фен с душа, който не просто произвежда шум, а върши полезни неща.

За едно от тези неща – по любезния съвет на Александър Карапанчев – ще прочетете по-долу.

—-

Добре дошли в специализирания подкаст „Българска фантастика“ –

С еднакъв успех можете да го наричате и аудио списание. Целта ни е да произвеждаме аудио версии на български фантастични произведения.

Преди година и нещо, по силата на служебните си задължения в Eвропейската южна обсерватория, ми се наложи да правя образователни филмчета за нашите средства за обработка на наблюдателни данни (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCq4rxr30ydNyV94OWmLrMA). От друга страна, аудио фантастиката ми е близка, понеже доста често си запълвам времето, докато пътувам, със слушане на фантастични подкастове. Има много на английски (http://escapepod.org/; www.starshipsofa.com/) и руски език (https://fantlab.ru/work203487). Вече немалко списания слагат на страниците си и аудио версии на публикуваните разкази (http://www.newyorker.com/series/fiction-podcast, http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/; http://strangehorizons.com/podcasts/).

Не беше далеч мисълта да опитам с българска фантастика, в частност с моята собствена, и на 7 юни 2016 г. се появи това – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rfpa3NvR34.

Ясно е, че аз не съм професионален актьор, и резултатът беше точно толкова зле, колкото очаквах. За известно време оставих това начинание настрани, но преди няколко месеца пак се наложи да се върна към видео ръководствата и събрах смелост да пробвам отново. Разказът на Иван Вазов можеше да стане по-добре, обаче последните два си ги харесвам, колкото и да е нескромно. Живот и здраве, по-нататък се надявам да стават още по-сполучливи.

Ще се опитам да подготвям нов разказ един път на месец, най-много на два месеца. Бързам да кажа, че не мога да гарантирам периодичността, тя ще зависи от обстоятелствата. Изданието е плод на колектив от хора, включващ Дружеството на българските фантасти „Тера Фантазия“ и Фондация „Човешката библиотека“. По-нататък ще представя всеки един от тях.

Поканвам всички желаещи да ми пращат разкази и стихове в обем до 2500 думи [email protected]

Възнамеряваме да редуваме художествените произведения с публицистика, обаче за нея моля първо да се свържете с нас, за да проверите дали би ни заинтересувала. Същото се отнася и за илюстрациите – всеки разказ има нужда от една. Не знаем предварително какво ще публикуваме, но достатъчно общи фантастични сюжети са подходящи. Предполагам, че с времето ще създадем резерв от илюстрации, които ще използваме в бъдеще.

Определена тема няма. Изисквания също няма освен обичайните – разказите да не разпалват вражда и да не включват ненужно насилие или сексуални описания. Ще правя аудио версии на това, което аз и колегите ми харесаме. Всичко е субективно, не се огорчавайте, ако не изберем разказа ви или не успеем да му подготвим аудио версия по някаква друга причина. Мислете си как са се разпространявали книгите през Средновековието – някой е трябвало толкова да хареса вашия текст, че да отдели няколко месеца, за да си направи копие собственоръчно или да плати на специалист калиграф, който да произведе копието.

Дебело подчертавам, че ние нямаме монопол. Винаги може да си направите ваша аудио версия на собственото си произведение. Авторите ни не получават хонорари, но и не плащат за публикацията. Преди да ни упреквате за нещо, моля не забравяйте, че за това начинание отделяме доброволно и безвъзмездно от собственото си време.

Освен автори, поканвам с нас да се свързват и желаещи да четат разкази. Подозирам, че от такива хора ще имаме много по-голяма нужда, отколкото от автори.

В началото казах „първо аудио списание“, но има някои предтечи, които е редно да спомена. Например Богдан Дуков (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzD5Irz7MHwGA0_yiANA5wQ) от доста време публикува чудесни аудио версии на българската класика, включително от Светослав Минков (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK3jQ7TRQGQ). Един от подкастовете на „Правилният Мед“ (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuP9AG8V1M_LbNgL-Ku3uZw) от 2014 г. е разговор за фантастиката (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpMKNQo1Ias). И, разбира се, Янчо Чолаков, който през 2012 г. чете откъс от книгата си „Историята на Самотния редник“ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGt0ToQM_Sw). Може би има и други – ако науча за тях, с удоволствие ще ги добавя.

Пожелайте ни успех!

Encased in amber: meet the epoxy-embedded Pi

2017-06-09 Janina Ander

Post Syndicated from Janina Ander original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/epoxy-pi-resin-io/

The maker of one of our favourite projects from this year’s Maker Faire Bay Area took the idea of an ’embedded device’ and ran with it: Ronald McCollam has created a wireless, completely epoxy-encased Pi build – screen included!

Resin.io in resin epoxy-encased Raspberry Pi

*cue epic music theme* “Welcome…to resin in resin.”

Just encase…

Of course, this build is not meant to be a museum piece: Ronald embedded a Raspberry Pi 3 with built-in wireless LAN and Bluetooth to create a hands-on demonstration of the resin.io platform, for which he is a Solution Architect. Resin.io is useful for remotely controlling groups of Linux-based IoT devices. In this case, Ronald used it to connect to the encased Pi. And yes, he named his make Resin-in-resin – we salute you, sir!

“Life uh…finds a way.”

Before he started the practical part of his project, he did his research to find a suitable resin. He found that epoxy types specifically designed for encasing electronics are very expensive. In the end, Ronald tried out a cheap type, usually employed to coat furniture, by encasing an LED. It worked perfectly, and he went ahead to use this resin for embedding the Pi.

Bubbleshooting epoxy

This was the first time Ronald had worked with resin, so he learned some essential things about casting. He advises other makers to mix the epoxy very, very slowly to minimize the formation of bubbles; to try their hands on some small-scale casting attempts first; and to make sure they’re using a large enough mold for casting. Another thing to keep in mind is that some components of the make will heat up and expand while the device is running.

His first version of an encased Pi was still connected to the outside world by its USB cable:

Ronald McCollam on Twitter

Updates don’t get more “hands off” than a Raspberry Pi encased in epoxy — @resin_io inside resin! Come ask me about it at @DockerCon!

Not satisfied with this, he went on to incorporate an inductive charging coil as a power source, so that the Pi could be totally insulated in epoxy. The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Matt Richardson got a look the finished project at Maker Faire Bay Area:

MattRichardson️‍ on Twitter

If you’re at @makerfaire, you must check out what @resin_io is showing. A @Raspberry_Pi completely enclosed in resin. Completely wireless. https://t.co/djVjoLz3hI

MAGNETS!

The charging coil delivers enough power to keep the Pi running for several hours, but it doesn’t allow secure booting. After some head-scratching, Ronald came up with a cool solution to this problem: he added a battery and a magnetic reed switch. He explains:

[The] boot process is to use the magnetic switch to turn off the Pi, put it on the charger for a few minutes to allow the battery to charge up, then remove the magnet so the Pi boots.

“God help us, we’re in the hands of engineers.”

He talks about his build on the resin.io blog, and has provided a detailed project log on Hackaday. For those of you who want to recreate this project at home, Ronald has even put together an Adafruit wishlist of the necessary components.

Does this resin-ate with you?

What’s especially great about Ronald’s posts is that they’re full of helpful tips about getting started with using epoxy resin in your digital making projects. So whether you’re keen to build your own wireless Pi, or just generally interested in embedding electronic components in resin, you’ll find his write-ups useful.

If you have experience in working with epoxy and electronic devices and want to share what you’ve learned, please do so in the comments!

The post Encased in amber: meet the epoxy-embedded Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

How to Deploy Local Administrator Password Solution with AWS Microsoft AD

2017-06-07 Dragos Madarasan

Post Syndicated from Dragos Madarasan original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-deploy-local-administrator-password-solution-with-aws-microsoft-ad/

Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) from Microsoft simplifies password management by allowing organizations to use Active Directory (AD) to store unique passwords for computers. Typically, an organization might reuse the same local administrator password across the computers in an AD domain. However, this approach represents a security risk because it can be exploited during lateral escalation attacks. LAPS solves this problem by creating unique, randomized passwords for the Administrator account on each computer and storing it encrypted in AD.

Deploying LAPS with AWS Microsoft AD requires the following steps:

Install the LAPS binaries on instances joined to your AWS Microsoft AD domain. The binaries add additional client-side extension (CSE) functionality to the Group Policy client.
Extend the AWS Microsoft AD schema. LAPS requires new AD attributes to store an encrypted password and its expiration time.
Configure AD permissions and delegate the ability to retrieve the local administrator password for IT staff in your organization.
Configure Group Policy on instances joined to your AWS Microsoft AD domain to enable LAPS. This configures the Group Policy client to process LAPS settings and uses the binaries installed in Step 1.

The following diagram illustrates the setup that I will be using throughout this post and the associated tasks to set up LAPS. Note that the AWS Directory Service directory is deployed across multiple Availability Zones, and monitoring automatically detects and replaces domain controllers that fail.

In this blog post, I explain the prerequisites to set up Local Administrator Password Solution, demonstrate the steps involved to update the AD schema on your AWS Microsoft AD domain, show how to delegate permissions to IT staff and configure LAPS via Group Policy, and demonstrate how to retrieve the password using the graphical user interface or with Windows PowerShell.

This post assumes you are familiar with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol Data Interchange Format (LDIF) files and AWS Microsoft AD. If you need more of an introduction to Directory Service and AWS Microsoft AD, see How to Move More Custom Applications to the AWS Cloud with AWS Directory Service, which introduces working with schema changes in AWS Microsoft AD.

Prerequisites

In order to implement LAPS, you must use AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (Enterprise Edition), also known as AWS Microsoft AD. Any instance on which you want to configure LAPS must be joined to your AWS Microsoft AD domain. You also need a Management instance on which you install the LAPS management tools.

In this post, I use an AWS Microsoft AD domain called example.com that I have launched in the EU (London) region. To see which the regions in which Directory Service is available, see AWS Regions and Endpoints.

In addition, you must have at least two instances launched in the same region as the AWS Microsoft AD domain. To join the instances to your AWS Microsoft AD domain, you have two options:

Use the Amazon EC2 Systems Manager (SSM) domain join feature. To learn more about how to set up domain join for EC2 instances, see joining a Windows Instance to an AWS Directory Service Domain.
Manually configure the DNS server addresses in the Internet Protocol version 4 (TCP/IPv4) settings of the network card to use the AWS Microsoft AD DNS addresses (172.31.9.64 and 172.31.16.191, for this blog post) and perform a manual domain join.

For the purpose of this post, my two instances are:

A Management instance on which I will install the management tools that I have tagged as Management.
A Web Server instance on which I will be deploying the LAPS binary.

Implementing the solution

1. Install the LAPS binaries on instances joined to your AWS Microsoft AD domain by using EC2 Run Command

LAPS binaries come in the form of an MSI installer and can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. You can install the LAPS binaries manually, with an automation service such as EC2 Run Command, or with your existing software deployment solution.

For this post, I will deploy the LAPS binaries on my Web Server instance (i-0b7563d0f89d3453a) by using EC2 Run Command:

While signed in to the AWS Management Console, choose EC2. In the Systems Manager Services section of the navigation pane, choose Run Command.
Choose Run a command, and from the Command document list, choose AWS-InstallApplication.
From Target instances, choose the instance on which you want to deploy the LAPS binaries. In my case, I will be selecting the instance tagged as Web Server. If you do not see any instances listed, make sure you have met the prerequisites for Amazon EC2 Systems Manager (SSM) by reviewing the Systems Manager Prerequisites.
For Action, choose Install, and then stipulate the following values:
- Parameters: /quiet
- Source: https://download.microsoft.com/download/C/7/A/C7AAD914-A8A6-4904-88A1-29E657445D03/LAPS.x64.msi
- Source Hash: f63ebbc45e2d080630bd62a195cd225de734131a56bb7b453c84336e37abd766
- Comment: LAPS deployment

Leave the other options with the default values and choose Run. The AWS Management Console will return a Command ID, which will initially have a status of In Progress. It should take less than 5 minutes to download and install the binaries, after which the Command ID will update its status to Success.

If the Command ID runs for more than 5 minutes or returns an error, it might indicate a problem with the installer. To troubleshoot, review the steps in Troubleshooting Systems Manager Run Command.

To verify the binaries have been installed successfully, open Control Panel and review the recently installed applications in Programs and Features.

You should see an entry for Local Administrator Password Solution with a version of 6.2.0.0 or newer.

2. Extend the AWS Microsoft AD schema

In the previous section, I used EC2 Run Command to install the LAPS binaries on an EC2 instance. Now, I am ready to extend the schema in an AWS Microsoft AD domain. Extending the schema is a requirement because LAPS relies on new AD attributes to store the encrypted password and its expiration time.

In an on-premises AD environment, you would update the schema by running the Update-AdmPwdADSchema Windows PowerShell cmdlet with schema administrator credentials. Because AWS Microsoft AD is a managed service, I do not have permissions to update the schema directly. Instead, I will update the AD schema from the Directory Service console by importing an LDIF file. If you are unfamiliar with schema updates or LDIF files, see How to Move More Custom Applications to the AWS Cloud with AWS Directory Service.

To make things easier for you, I am providing you with a sample LDIF file that contains the required AD schema changes. Using Notepad or a similar text editor, open the SchemaChanges-0517.ldif file and update the values of dc=example,dc=com with your own AWS Microsoft AD domain and suffix.

After I update the LDIF file with my AWS Microsoft AD details, I import it by using the AWS Management Console:

On the Directory Service console, select from the list of directories in the Microsoft AD directory by choosing its identifier (it will look something like d-534373570ea).
On the Directory details page, choose the Schema extensions tab and choose Upload and update schema.
When prompted for the LDIF file that contains the changes, choose the sample LDIF file.
In the background, the LDIF file is validated for errors and a backup of the directory is created for recovery purposes. Updating the schema might take a few minutes and the status will change to Updating Schema. When the process has completed, the status of Completed will be displayed, as shown in the following screenshot.

When the process has completed, the status of Completed will be displayed, as shown in the following screenshot.

If the LDIF file contains errors or the schema extension fails, the Directory Service console will generate an error code and additional debug information. To help troubleshoot error messages, see Schema Extension Errors.

The sample LDIF file triggers AWS Microsoft AD to perform the following actions:

Create the ms-Mcs-AdmPwd attribute, which stores the encrypted password.
Create the ms-Mcs-AdmPwdExpirationTime attribute, which stores the time of the password’s expiration.
Add both attributes to the Computer class.

3. Configure AD permissions

In the previous section, I updated the AWS Microsoft AD schema with the required attributes for LAPS. I am now ready to configure the permissions for administrators to retrieve the password and for computer accounts to update their password attribute.

As part of configuring AD permissions, I grant computers the ability to update their own password attribute and specify which security groups have permissions to retrieve the password from AD. As part of this process, I run Windows PowerShell cmdlets that are not installed by default on Windows Server.

Note: To learn more about Windows PowerShell and the concept of a cmdlet (pronounced “command-let”), go to Getting Started with Windows PowerShell.

Before getting started, I need to set up the required tools for LAPS on my Management instance, which must be joined to the AWS Microsoft AD domain. I will be using the same LAPS installer that I downloaded from the Microsoft LAPS website. In my Management instance, I have manually run the installer by clicking the LAPS.x64.msi file. On the Custom Setup page of the installer, under Management Tools, for each option I have selected Install on local hard drive.

In the preceding screenshot, the features are:

The fat client UI – A simple user interface for retrieving the password (I will use it at the end of this post).
The Windows PowerShell module – Needed to run the commands in the next sections.
The GPO Editor templates – Used to configure Group Policy objects.

The next step is to grant computers in the Computers OU the permission to update their own attributes. While connected to my Management instance, I go to the Start menu and type PowerShell. In the list of results, right-click Windows PowerShell and choose Run as administrator and then Yes when prompted by User Account Control.

In the Windows PowerShell prompt, I type the following command.

Import-module AdmPwd.PS

Set-AdmPwdComputerSelfPermission –OrgUnit “OU=Computers,OU=MyMicrosoftAD,DC=example,DC=com

To grant the administrator group called Admins the permission to retrieve the computer password, I run the following command in the Windows PowerShell prompt I previously started.

Import-module AdmPwd.PS

Set-AdmPwdReadPasswordPermission –OrgUnit “OU=Computers, OU=MyMicrosoftAD,DC=example,DC=com” –AllowedPrincipals “Admins”

4. Configure Group Policy to enable LAPS

In the previous section, I deployed the LAPS management tools on my management instance, granted the computer accounts the permission to self-update their local administrator password attribute, and granted my Admins group permissions to retrieve the password.

Note: The following section addresses the Group Policy Management Console and Group Policy objects. If you are unfamiliar with or wish to learn more about these concepts, go to Get Started Using the GPMC and Group Policy for Beginners.

I am now ready to enable LAPS via Group Policy:

On my Management instance (i-03b2c5d5b1113c7ac), I have installed the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) by running the following command in Windows PowerShell.

Install-WindowsFeature –Name GPMC

Next, I have opened the GPMC and created a new Group Policy object (GPO) called LAPS GPO.
In the Local Group Policy Editor, I navigate to Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > LAPS. I have configured the settings using the values in the following table.

Setting	State	Options
Password Settings	Enabled	Complexity: large letters, small letters, numbers, specials
Do not allow password expiration time longer than required by policy	Enabled	N/A
Enable local admin password management	Enabled	N/A

Next, I need to link the GPO to an organizational unit (OU) in which my machine accounts sit. In your environment, I recommend testing the new settings on a test OU and then deploying the GPO to production OUs.

Note: If you choose to create a new test organizational unit, you must create it in the OU that AWS Microsoft AD delegates to you to manage. For example, if your AWS Microsoft AD directory name were example.com, the test OU path would be example.com/example/Computers/Test.

To test that LAPS works, I need to make sure the computer has received the new policy by forcing a Group Policy update. While connected to the Web Server instance (i-0b7563d0f89d3453a) using Remote Desktop, I open an elevated administrative command prompt and run the following command: gpupdate /force. I can check if the policy is applied by running the command: gpresult /r | findstr LAPS GPO, where LAPS GPO is the name of the GPO created in the second step.
Back on my Management instance, I can then launch the LAPS interface from the Start menu and use it to retrieve the password (as shown in the following screenshot). Alternatively, I can run the Get-ADComputer Windows PowerShell cmdlet to retrieve the password.

Get-ADComputer [YourComputerName] -Properties ms-Mcs-AdmPwd | select name, ms-Mcs-AdmPwd

Summary

In this blog post, I demonstrated how you can deploy LAPS with an AWS Microsoft AD directory. I then showed how to install the LAPS binaries by using EC2 Run Command. Using the sample LDIF file I provided, I showed you how to extend the schema, which is a requirement because LAPS relies on new AD attributes to store the encrypted password and its expiration time. Finally, I showed how to complete the LAPS setup by configuring the necessary AD permissions and creating the GPO that starts the LAPS password change.

If you have comments about this post, submit them in the “Comments” section below. If you have questions about or issues implementing this solution, please start a new thread on the Directory Service forum.

– Dragos

Powering your Amazon ECS Cluster with Amazon EC2 Spot Instances

2017-06-07 Nathan Taber

Post Syndicated from Nathan Taber original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/powering-your-amazon-ecs-cluster-with-amazon-ec2-spot-instances/

This post was graciously contributed by:


Chad Schmutzer Solutions Architect	Shawn O’Connor Solutions Architect

Today we are excited to announce that Amazon EC2 Container Service (Amazon ECS) now supports the ability to launch your ECS cluster on Amazon EC2 Spot Instances directly from the ECS console.

Spot Instances allow you to bid on spare Amazon EC2 compute capacity. Spot Instances typically cost 50-90% less than On-Demand Instances. Powering your ECS cluster with Spot Instances lets you reduce the cost of running your existing containerized workloads, or increase your compute capacity by two to ten times while keeping the same budget. Or you could do a combination of both!

Using Spot Instances, you specify the price you are willing to pay per instance-hour. Your Spot Instance runs whenever your bid exceeds the current Spot price. If your instance is reclaimed due to an increase in the Spot price, you are not charged for the partial hour that your instance has run.

The ECS console uses Spot Fleet to deploy your Spot Instances. Spot Fleet attempts to deploy the target capacity you request (expressed in terms of instances or a vCPU count) for your containerized application by launching Spot Instances that result in the best prices for you. If your Spot Instances are reclaimed due to a change in Spot prices or available capacity, Spot Fleet also attempts to maintain its target capacity.

Containers are a natural fit for the diverse pool of resources that Spot Fleet thrives on. Spot Fleet enable you to provision capacity across multiple Spot Instance pools (combinations of instance types and Availability Zones), which helps improve your application’s availability and reduce operating costs of the fleet over time. Combining the extensible and flexible container placement system provided by ECS with Spot Fleet allows you to efficiently deploy containerized workloads and easily manage clusters at any scale for a fraction of the cost.

Previously, deploying your ECS cluster on Spot Instances was a manual process. In this post, we show you how to achieve high availability, scalability, and cost savings for your container workloads by using the new Spot Fleet integration in the ECS console. We also show you how to build your own ECS cluster on Spot Instances using AWS CloudFormation.

Creating an ECS cluster running on Spot Instances

You can create an ECS cluster using the AWS Management Console.

Open the Amazon ECS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ecs/.
In the navigation pane, choose Clusters.
On the Clusters page, choose Create Cluster.
For Cluster name, enter a name.
In Instance configuration, for Provisioning model, choose Spot.

Choosing an allocation strategy

The two available Spot Fleet allocation strategies are Diversified and Lowest price.

The allocation strategy you choose for your Spot Fleet determines how it fulfills your Spot Fleet request from the possible Spot Instance pools. When you use the diversified strategy, the Spot Instances are distributed across all pools. When you use the lowest price strategy, the Spot Instances come from the pool with the lowest price specified in your request.

Remember that each instance type (the instance size within each instance family, e.g., c4.4xlarge), in each Availability Zone, in every region, is a separate pool of capacity, and therefore a separate Spot market. By diversifying across as many different instance types and Availability Zones as possible, you can improve the availability of your fleet. You also make your fleet less sensitive to increases in the Spot price in any one pool over time.

You can select up to six EC2 instance types to use for your Spot Fleet. In this example, we’ve selected m3, m4, c3, c4, r3, and r4 instance types of size xlarge.

You need to enter a bid for your instances. Typically, bidding at or near the On-Demand Instance price is a good starting point. Your bid is the maximum price that you are willing to pay for instance types in that Spot pool. While the Spot price is at or below your bid, you pay the Spot price. Bidding lower ensures that you have lower costs, while bidding higher reduces the probability of interruption.

Configure the number of instances to have in your cluster. Spot Fleet attempts to launch the number of Spot Instances that are required to meet the target capacity specified in your request. The Spot Fleet also attempts to maintain its target capacity if your Spot Instances are reclaimed due to a change in Spot prices or available capacity.

The latest ECS–optimized AMI is used for the instances when they are launched.

Configure your storage and network settings. To enable diversification and high availability, be sure to select subnets in multiple Availability Zones. You can’t select multiple subnets in the same Availability Zone in a single Spot Fleet.

The ECS container agent makes calls to the ECS API actions on your behalf. Container instances that run the agent require the ecsInstanceRole IAM policy and role for the service to know that the agent belongs to you. If you don’t have the ecsInstanceRole already, you can create one using the ECS console.

If you create a managed compute environment that uses Spot Fleet, you must create a role that grants the Spot Fleet permission to bid on, launch, and terminate instances on your behalf. You can also create this role using the ECS console.

That’s it! In the ECS console, choose Create to spin up your new ECS cluster running on Spot Instances.

Using AWS CloudFormation to deploy your ECS cluster on Spot Instances

We have also published a reference architecture AWS CloudFormation template that demonstrates how to easily launch a CloudFormation stack and deploy your ECS cluster on Spot Instances.

The CloudFormation template includes the Spot Instance termination notice script mentioned earlier, as well as some additional logging and other example features to get you started quickly. You can find the CloudFormation template in the Amazon EC2 Spot Instances GitHub repo.

Give it a try and customize it as needed for your environment!

Handling termination

With Spot Instances, you never pay more than the price you specified. If the Spot price exceeds your bid price for a given instance, it is terminated automatically for you.

The best way to protect against Spot Instance interruption is to architect your containerized application to be fault-tolerant. In addition, you can take advantage of a feature called Spot Instance termination notices, which provides a two-minute warning before EC2 must terminate your Spot Instance.

This warning is made available to the applications on your Spot Instance using an item in the instance metadata. When you deploy your ECS cluster on Spot Instances using the console, AWS installs a script that checks every 5 seconds for the Spot Instance termination notice. If the notice is detected, the script immediately updates the container instance state to DRAINING.

A simplified version of the Spot Instance termination notice script is as follows:

#!/bin/bash

while sleep 5; do
  if [ -z $(curl -Isf http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/spot/termination-time) ]; then
    /bin/false
  else
    ECS_CLUSTER=$(curl -s http://localhost:51678/v1/metadata | jq .Cluster | tr -d \")
    CONTAINER_INSTANCE=$(curl -s http://localhost:51678/v1/metadata \
      | jq .ContainerInstanceArn | tr -d \")
    aws ecs update-container-instances-state --cluster $ECS_CLUSTER \
      --container-instances $CONTAINER_INSTANCE --status DRAINING
  fi
done

When you set a container instance to DRAINING, ECS prevents new tasks from being scheduled for placement on the container instance. If the resources are available, replacement service tasks are started on other container instances in the cluster. Container instance draining enables you to remove a container instance from a cluster without impacting tasks in your cluster. Service tasks on the container instance that are in the PENDING state are stopped immediately.

Service tasks on the container instance that are in the RUNNING state are stopped and replaced according to the service’s deployment configuration parameters, minimumHealthyPercent and maximumPercent.

ECS on Spot Instances in action

Want to see how customers are already powering their ECS clusters on Spot Instances? Our friends at Mapbox are doing just that.

Mapbox is a platform for designing and publishing custom maps. The company uses ECS to power their entire batch processing architecture to collect and process over 100 million miles of sensor data per day that they use for powering their maps. They also optimize their batch processing architecture on ECS using Spot Instances.

The Mapbox platform powers over 5,000 apps and reaches more than 200 million users each month. Its backend runs on ECS, allowing it to serve more than 1.3 billion requests per day. To learn more about their recent migration to ECS, read their recent blog post, We Switched to Amazon ECS, and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next. Then, in their follow-up blog post, Caches to Cash, learn how they are running their entire platform on Spot Instances, allowing them to save upwards of 50–90% on their EC2 costs.

Conclusion

We hope that you are as excited as we are about running your containerized applications at scale and cost effectively using Spot Instances. For more information, see the following pages:

If you have comments or suggestions, please comment below.

Raspberry Pi Looper-Synth-Drum…thing

2017-06-06 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-looper/

To replace his iPad for live performance, Colorado-based musician Toby Hendricks built a looper, complete with an impressive internal sound library, all running on a Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi Looper/synth/drum thing

Check out the guts here: https://youtu.be/mCOHFyI3Eoo My first venture into raspberry pi stuff. Running a custom pure data patch I’ve been working on for a couple years on a Raspberry Pi 3. This project took a couple months and I’m still tweaking stuff here and there but it’s pretty much complete, it even survived it’s first live show!

Toby’s build is a pretty mean piece of kit, as this video attests. Not only does it have a multitude of uses, but the final build is beautiful. Do make sure to watch to the end of the video for a wonderful demonstration of the kit.

Inside the Raspberry Pi looper

Alongside the Raspberry Pi and Behringer U-Control sound card, Toby used Pure Data, a multimedia visual programming language, and a Teensy 3.6 processor to complete the build. Together, these allow for playback of a plethora of sounds, which can either be internally stored, or externally introduced via audio connectors along the back.

This guy is finally taking shape. DIY looper/fx box/sample player/synth. #teensy #arduino #raspberrypi #puredata

98 Likes, 6 Comments – otem rellik (@otem_rellik) on Instagram: “This guy is finally taking shape. DIY looper/fx box/sample player/synth. #teensy #arduino…”

Delay, reverb, distortion, and more are controlled by sliders along one side, while pre-installed effects are selected and played via some rather beautiful SparkFun buttons on the other. Loop buttons, volume controls, and a repurposed Nintendo DS screen complete the interface.

Raspberry Pi Looper Guts

Thought I’d do a quick overview of the guts of my pi project. Seems like many folks have been interested in seeing what the internals look like.

Code for the looper can be found on Toby’s GitHub here. Make sure to continue to follow him via YouTube and Instagram for updates on the build, including these fancy new buttons.

Casting my own urethane knobs and drum pads from 3D printed molds! #3dprinted #urethanecasting #diy

61 Likes, 4 Comments – otem rellik (@otem_rellik) on Instagram: “Casting my own urethane knobs and drum pads from 3D printed molds! #3dprinted #urethanecasting #diy”

I got the music in me

If you want to get musical with a Raspberry Pi, but the thought of recreating Toby’s build is a little daunting, never fear! Our free GPIO Music Box resource will help get you started. And projects such as Mike Horne’s fabulous Raspberry Pi music box should help inspire you to take your build further.

Raspberry Pi Looper post image of Mike Horne's music box

Mike’s music box boasts wonderful flashy buttons and turny knobs for ultimate musical satisfaction!

If you use a Raspberry Pi in any sort of musical adventure, be sure to share your project in the comments below!

The post Raspberry Pi Looper-Synth-Drum…thing appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Нов сървър, нов късмет

2017-06-06 Боян Юруков

Post Syndicated from Боян Юруков original https://yurukov.net/blog/2017/nov-sarvar/

Както писах вече в социалките, през последните дни обнових сървъра, на който се намира този и останалите ми сайтове. Хостингът ми все още е Superhosting.bg и нямам намерение да се местя. Наложи се обаче да обновя операционната система на самия сървър и за целта трябваше да прехвърля всичките си сайтове, както и процесите отварящи данни от страниците на държавната администрация.

Единственото нещо, което се е промени при блога е, че вече работи под HTTPS. Това означава, че връзката е криптирана. Макар да няма чувствителна информация на този сайт, минавайки на HTTPS е добра практика по принцип. Glasuvam.org, например, отдавна има сертификат. Скоро ще добавя такъв и на останалите сайтове, както и на мейл сървъра. При събирането на данните като тези за GovAlert.eu и производството на ток имаше пауза от около 10 мин. При данните за замърсяването на въздуха и раждаемостта нямаше отражение това.

Изчистих доста неща от сървъра – стари сайтове, тестове, пробни инсталации, „временни“ файлове, които съм споделял. Затова може да забележите, че някои линкове не работят. Ще възстановявам някои от файловете, ако реша, че са нужни. Ще се радвам да ми пишете, ако забележите проблеми с този сайт или другите услуги.

How The Intercept Outed Reality Winner

2017-06-06 Robert Graham

Post Syndicated from Robert Graham original http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-reality-winner.html

Today, The Intercept released documents on election tampering from an NSA leaker. Later, the arrest warrant request for an NSA contractor named “Reality Winner” was published, showing how they tracked her down because she had printed out the documents and sent them to The Intercept. The document posted by the Intercept isn’t the original PDF file, but a PDF containing the pictures of the printed version that was then later scanned in.

As the warrant says, she confessed while interviewed by the FBI. Had she not confessed, the documents still contained enough evidence to convict her: the printed document was digitally watermarked.

The problem is that most new printers print nearly invisibly yellow dots that track down exactly when and where documents, any document, is printed. Because the NSA logs all printing jobs on its printers, it can use this to match up precisely who printed the document.

In this post, I show how.

You can download the document from the original article here. You can then open it in a PDF viewer, such as the normal “Preview” app on macOS. Zoom into some whitespace on the document, and take a screenshot of this. On macOS, hit [Command-Shift-3] to take a screenshot of a window. There are yellow dots in this image, but you can barely see them, especially if your screen is dirty.

We need to highlight the yellow dots. Open the screenshot in an image editor, such as the “Paintbrush” program built into macOS. Now use the option to “Invert Colors” in the image, to get something like this. You should see a roughly rectangular pattern checkerboard in the whitespace.

It’s upside down, so we need to rotate it 180 degrees, or flip-horizontal and flip-vertical:

Now we go to the EFF page and manually click on the pattern so that their tool can decode the meaning:

This produces the following result:

The document leaked by the Intercept was from a printer with model number 54, serial number 29535218. The document was printed on May 9, 2017 at 6:20. The NSA almost certainly has a record of who used the printer at that time.

The situation is similar to how Vice outed the location of John McAfee, by publishing JPEG photographs of him with the EXIF GPS coordinates still hidden in the file. Or it’s how PDFs are often redacted by adding a black bar on top of image, leaving the underlying contents still in the file for people to read, such as in this NYTime accident with a Snowden document. Or how opening a Microsoft Office document, then accidentally saving it, leaves fingerprints identifying you behind, as repeatedly happened with the Wikileaks election leaks. These sorts of failures are common with leaks. To fix this yellow-dot problem, use a black-and-white printer, black-and-white scanner, or convert to black-and-white with an image editor.

Copiers/printers have two features put in there by the government to be evil to you. The first is that scanners/copiers (when using scanner feature) recognize a barely visible pattern on currency, so that they can’t be used to counterfeit money, as shown on this $20 below:

The second is that when they print things out, they includes these invisible dots, so documents can be tracked. In other words, those dots on bills prevent them from being scanned in, and the dots produced by printers help the government track what was printed out.

Yes, this code the government forces into our printers is a violation of our 3rd Amendment rights.

While I was writing up this post, these tweets appeared first:

oh wow, @knowtheory just pointed out the microdots on the first and late page of the intercept’s docs. printer dots kill puppies, folks. pic.twitter.com/w8qxJ9zvhf

— Quinn’s internet 👻 (@quinnnorton) June 6, 2017

The date in the microdots is 6:20 2017/05/09 from a printer with serial number #5429535218, according to https://t.co/PVVm7AAjlL pic.twitter.com/6BY7Y3MFhL

— Tim Bennett (@flashman) June 6, 2017

Comments:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14494818

“Only a year? It’s felt like forever”: a twelve-month retrospective

2017-06-05 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/12-months-raspberry-pi/

This weekend saw my first anniversary at Raspberry Pi, and this blog marks my 100th post written for the company. It would have been easy to let one milestone or the other slide had they not come along hand in hand, begging for some sort of acknowledgement.

Alex, Matt, and Courtney in a punt on the Cam

The day Liz decided to keep me

So here it is!

Joining the crew

Prior to my position in the Comms team as Social Media Editor, my employment history was largely made up of retail sales roles and, before that, bit parts in theatrical backstage crews. I never thought I would work for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, despite its firm position on my Top Five Awesome Places I’d Love to Work list. How could I work for a tech company when my knowledge of tech stretched as far as dismantling my Game Boy when I was a kid to see how the insides worked, or being the one friend everyone went to when their phone didn’t do what it was meant to do? I never thought about the other side of the Foundation coin, or how I could find my place within the hidden workings that turned the cogs that brought everything together.

… when suddenly, as if out of nowhere, a new job with a dream company. #raspberrypi #positive #change #dosomething

12 Likes, 1 Comments – Alex J’rassic (@thealexjrassic) on Instagram: “… when suddenly, as if out of nowhere, a new job with a dream company. #raspberrypi #positive…”

A little luck, a well-written though humorous resumé, and a meeting with Liz and Helen later, I found myself the newest member of the growing team at Pi Towers.

Ticking items off the Bucket List

I thought it would be fun to point out some of the chances I’ve had over the last twelve months and explain how they fit within the world of Raspberry Pi. After all, we’re about more than just a $35 credit card-sized computer. We’re a charitable Foundation made up of some wonderful and exciting projects, people, and goals.

High altitude ballooning (HAB)

Skycademy offers educators in the UK the chance to come to Pi Towers Cambridge to learn how to plan a balloon launch, build a payload with onboard Raspberry Pi and Camera Module, and provide teachers with the skills needed to take their students on an adventure to near space, with photographic evidence to prove it.

All the screens you need to hunt balloons. . We have our landing point and are now rushing to Therford to find the payload in a field. . #HAB #RasppberryPi

332 Likes, 5 Comments – Raspberry Pi (@raspberrypifoundation) on Instagram: “All the screens you need to hunt balloons. . We have our landing point and are now rushing to…”

I was fortunate enough to join Sky Captain James, along with Dan Fisher, Dave Akerman, and Steve Randell on a test launch back in August last year. Testing out new kit that James had still been tinkering with that morning, we headed to a field in Elsworth, near Cambridge, and provided Facebook Live footage of the process from payload build to launch…to the moment when our balloon landed in an RAF shooting range some hours later.

“Can we have our balloon back, please, mister?”

Having enjoyed watching Blue Peter presenters send up a HAB when I was a child, I marked off the event on my bucket list with a bold tick, and I continue to show off the photographs from our Raspberry Pi as it reached near space.

Spend the day launching/chasing a high-altitude balloon. Look how high it went!!! #HAB #ballooning #space #wellspacekinda #ish #photography #uk #highaltitude

13 Likes, 2 Comments – Alex J’rassic (@thealexjrassic) on Instagram: “Spend the day launching/chasing a high-altitude balloon. Look how high it went!!! #HAB #ballooning…”

You can find more information on Skycademy here, plus more detail about our test launch day in Dan’s blog post here.

Dear Raspberry Pi Friends…

My desk is slowly filling with stuff: notes, mementoes, and trinkets that find their way to me from members of the community, both established and new to the life of Pi. There are thank you notes, updates, and more from people I’ve chatted to online as they explore their way around the world of Pi.

Letter of thanks to Raspberry Pi from a young fan

*heart melts*

By plugging myself into social media on a daily basis, I often find hidden treasures that go unnoticed due to the high volume of tags we receive on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on. Kids jumping off chairs in delight as they complete their first Scratch project, newcomers to the Raspberry Pi shedding a tear as they make an LED blink on their kitchen table, and seasoned makers turning their hobby into something positive to aid others.

It’s wonderful to join in the excitement of people discovering a new skill and exploring the community of Raspberry Pi makers: I’ve been known to shed a tear as a result.

Meeting educators at Bett, chatting to teen makers at makerspaces, and sharing a cupcake or three at the birthday party have been incredible opportunities to get to know you all.

You’re all brilliant.

The Queens of Robots, both shoddy and otherwise

Last year we welcomed the Queen of Shoddy Robots, Simone Giertz to Pi Towers, where we chatted about making, charity, and space while wandering the colleges of Cambridge and hanging out with flat Tim Peake.

Queen of Robots @simonegiertz came to visit #PiTowers today. We hung out with cardboard @astro_timpeake and ate chelsea buns at @fitzbillies #Cambridge. . We also had a great talk about the educational projects of the #RaspberryPi team, #AstroPi and how not enough people realise we’re a #charity. . If you’d like to learn more about the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the work we do with #teachers and #education, check out our website – www.raspberrypi.org. . How was your day? Get up to anything fun?

597 Likes, 3 Comments – Raspberry Pi (@raspberrypifoundation) on Instagram: “Queen of Robots @simonegiertz came to visit #PiTowers today. We hung out with cardboard…”

And last month, the wonderful Estefannie ‘Explains it All’ de La Garza came to hang out, make things, and discuss our educational projects.

Estefannie on Twitter

Ahhhh!!! I still can’t believe I got to hang out and make stuff at the @Raspberry_Pi towers!! Thank you thank you!!

Meeting such wonderful, exciting, and innovative YouTubers was a fantastic inspiration to work on my own projects and to try to do more to help others discover ways to connect with tech through their own interests.

Those ‘wow’ moments

Every Raspberry Pi project I see on a daily basis is awesome. The moment someone takes an idea and does something with it is, in my book, always worthy of awe and appreciation. Whether it be the aforementioned flashing LED, or sending Raspberry Pis to the International Space Station, if you have turned your idea into reality, I applaud you.

Some of my favourite projects over the last twelve months have not only made me say “Wow!”, they’ve also inspired me to want to do more with myself, my time, and my growing maker skill.

Museum in a Box on Twitter

Great to meet @alexjrassic today and nerd out about @Raspberry_Pi and weather balloons and @Space_Station and all things #edtech ⛅🛰🤖

Projects such as Museum in a Box, a wonderful hands-on learning aid that brings the world to the hands of children across the globe, honestly made me tear up as I placed a miniaturised 3D-printed Virginia Woolf onto a wooden box and gasped as she started to speak to me.

Jill Ogle’s Let’s Robot project had me in awe as Twitch-controlled Pi robots tackled mazes, attempted to cut birthday cake, or swung to slap Jill in the face over webcam.

Jillian Ogle on Twitter

@SryAbtYourCats @tekn0rebel @Beam Lol speaking of faces… https://t.co/1tqFlMNS31

Every day I discover new, wonderful builds that both make me wish I’d thought of them first, and leave me wondering how they manage to make them work in the first place.

Space

We have Raspberry Pis in space. SPACE. Actually space.

Raspberry Pi on Twitter

New post: Mission accomplished for the European @astro_pi challenge and @esa @Thom_astro is on his way home https://t.co/ycTSDR1h1Q

Twelve months later, this still blows my mind.

And let’s not forget…

The chance to visit both the Houses of Parliment and St James’s Palace

Going to a Doctor Who pre-screening and meeting Peter Capaldi, thanks to Clare Sutcliffe

There’s no need to smile when you’re #DoctorWho.

13 Likes, 2 Comments – Alex J’rassic (@thealexjrassic) on Instagram: “There’s no need to smile when you’re #DoctorWho.”

Going to VidCon!

We’re here. Where are you? . . . . . #raspberrypi #vidconeu #vidcon #pizero #zerow #travel #explore #adventure #youtube

1,944 Likes, 30 Comments – Raspberry Pi (@raspberrypifoundation) on Instagram: “We’re here. Where are you? . . . . . #raspberrypi #vidconeu #vidcon #pizero #zerow #travel #explore…”

Making a GIF Cam and other builds, and sharing them with you all via the blog

Made a Gif Cam using a Raspberry Pi, Pi camera, button and a couple LEDs. . When you press the button, it takes 8 images and stitches them into a gif file. The files then appear on my MacBook. . Check out our Twitter feed (Raspberry_Pi) for examples! . Next step is to fit it inside a better camera body. . #DigitalMaking #Photography #Making #Camera #Gif #MakersGonnaMake #LED #Creating #PhotosofInstagram #RaspberryPi

19 Likes, 1 Comments – Alex J’rassic (@thealexjrassic) on Instagram: “Made a Gif Cam using a Raspberry Pi, Pi camera, button and a couple LEDs. . When you press the…”

The next twelve months

Despite Eben jokingly firing me near-weekly across Twitter, or Philip giving me the ‘Dad glare’ when I pull wires and buttons out of a box under my desk to start yet another project, I don’t plan on going anywhere. Over the next twelve months, I hope to continue discovering awesome Pi builds, expanding on my own skills, and curating some wonderful projects for you via the Raspberry Pi blog, the Raspberry Pi Weekly newsletter, my submissions to The MagPi Magazine, and the occasional video interview or two.

It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for joining me on the ride!

The post “Only a year? It’s felt like forever”: a twelve-month retrospective appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Torrents Help Researchers Worldwide to Study Babies’ Brains

2017-06-03 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/torrents-help-researchers-worldwide-to-study-babies-brains-170603/

One of the core pillars of academic research is sharing.

By letting other researchers know what you do, ideas are criticized, improved upon and extended. In today’s digital age, sharing is easier than ever before, especially with help from torrents.

One of the leading scientific projects that has adopted BitTorrent is the developing Human Connectome Project, or dHCP for short. The goal of the project is to map the brain wiring of developing babies in the wombs of their mothers.

To do so, a consortium of researchers with expertise ranging from computer science, to MRI physics and clinical medicine, has teamed up across three British institutions: Imperial College London, King’s College London and the University of Oxford.

The collected data is extremely valuable for the neuroscience community and the project has received mainstream press coverage and financial backing from the European Union Research Council. Not only to build the dataset, but also to share it with researchers around the globe. This is where BitTorrent comes in.

Sharing more than 150 GB of data with researchers all over the world can be quite a challenge. Regular HTTP downloads are not really up to the task, and many other transfer options have a high failure rate.

Baby brain scan (Credit: Developing Human Connectome Project)

This is why Jonathan Passerat-Palmbach, Research Associate Department of Computing Imperial College London, came up with the idea to embrace BitTorrent instead.

“For me, it was a no-brainer from day one that we couldn’t rely on plain old HTTP to make this dataset available. Our first pilot release is 150GB, and I expect the next ones to reach a couple of TB. Torrents seemed like the de facto solution to share this data with the world’s scientific community.” Passerat-Palmbach says.

The researchers opted to go for the Academic Torrents tracker, which specializes in sharing research data. A torrent with the first batch of images was made available there a few weeks ago.

“This initial release contains 3,629 files accounting for 167.20GB of data. While this figure might not appear extremely large at the moment, it will significantly grow as the project aims to make the data of 1,000 subjects available by the time it has completed.”

Torrent of the first dataset

The download numbers are nowhere in the region of an average Hollywood blockbuster, of course. Thus far the tracker has registered just 28 downloads. That said, as a superior and open file-transfer protocol, BitTorrent does aid in critical research that helps researchers to discover more about the development of conditions such as ADHD and autism.

Interestingly, the biggest challenges of implementing the torrent solution were not of a technical nature. Most time and effort went into assuring other team members that this was the right solution.

“I had to push for more than a year for the adoption of torrents within the consortium. While my colleagues could understand the potential of the approach and its technical inputs, they remained skeptical as to the feasibility to implement such a solution within an academic context and its reception by the world community.

“However, when the first dataset was put together, amounting to 150GB, it became obvious all the HTTP and FTP fallback plans would not fit our needs,” Passerat-Palmbach adds.

Baby brain scans (Credit: Developing Human Connectome Project)

When the consortium finally agreed that BitTorrent was an acceptable way to share the data, local IT staff at the university had to give their seal of approval. Imperial College London doesn’t allow torrent traffic to flow freely across the network, so an exception had to be made.

“Torrents are blocked across the wireless and VPN networks at Imperial. Getting an explicit firewall exception created for our seeding machine was not a walk in the park. It was the first time they were faced with such a situation and we were clearly told that it was not to become the rule.”

Then, finally, the data could be shared around the world.

While BitTorrent is probably the most efficient way to share large files, there were other proprietary solutions that could do the same. However, Passerat-Palmbach preferred not to force other researchers to install “proprietary black boxes” on their machines.

Torrents are free and open, which is more in line with the Open Access approach more academics take today.

Looking back, it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park to share the data via BitTorrent. Passerat-Palmbach was frequently confronted with the piracy stigma torrents have amoung many of his peers, even among younger generations.

“Considering how hard it was to convince my colleagues within the project to actually share this dataset using torrents (‘isn’t it illegal?’ and other kinds of misconceptions…), I think there’s still a lot of work to do to demystify the use of torrents with the public.

“I was even surprised to see that these misconceptions spread out not only to more senior scientists but also to junior researchers who I was expecting to be more tech-aware,” Passerat-Palmbach adds.

That said, the hard work is done now and in the months and years ahead the neuroscience community will have access to Petabytes of important data, with help from BitTorrent. That is definitely worth the effort.

Finally, we thought it was fitting to end with Passerat-Palmbach’s “pledge to seed,” which he shared with his peers. Keep on sharing!

—

On the importance of seeding

Dear fellow scientist,

Thank for you very much for the interest you are showing in the dHCP dataset!

Once you start downloading the dataset, you’ll notice that your torrent client mentions a sharing / seeding ratio. It means that as soon as you start downloading the dataset, you become part of our community of sharers and contribute to making the dataset available to other researchers all around the world!

There’s no reason to be scared! It’s perfectly legal as long as you’re allowed to have a copy of the dataset (that’s the bit you need to forward to your lab’s IT staff if they’re blocking your ports).

You’re actually providing a tremendous contribution to dHCP by spreading the data, so thank you again for that!

With your help, we can make sure this data remains available and can be downloaded relatively fast in the future. Over time, the dataset will grow and your contribution will be more and more important so that each and everyone of you can still obtain the data in the smoothest possible way.

We cannot do it without you. By seeding, you’re actually saying “cheers!” to your peers whom you downloaded your data from. So leave your client open and stay tuned!

All this is made possible thanks to the amazing folks at academictorrents and their infrastructure, so kudos academictorrents!

You can learn more about their project here and get some help to get started with torrent downloading here.

Jonathan Passerat-Palmbach

—

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

How to track that annoying pop-up

2017-06-03 Robert Graham

Post Syndicated from Robert Graham original http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-to-track-that-annoying-pop-up.html

In a recent update to their Office suite on Windows, Microsoft made a mistake where every hour, for a fraction of a second, a black window pops up on the screen. This leads many to fear their system has been infected by a virus. I thought I’d document how to track this down.

The short answer is to use Mark Russinovich’s “sysinternals.com” tools. He’s Windows internals guru at Microsoft and has been maintaining a suite of tools that are critical for Windows system maintenance and security. Copy all the tools from “https://live.sysinternals.com“. Also, you can copy with Microsoft Windows Networking (SMB).

Of these tools, what we want is something that looks at “processes”. There are several tools that do this, but focus on processes that are currently running. What we want is something that monitors process creation.

The tool for that is “sysmon.exe”. It can monitor not only process creation, but a large number of other system events that a techy can use to see what the system has been doing, and if you are infected with a virus.

Sysmon has a fairly complicated configuration file, and if you enabled everything, you’d soon be overwhelmed with events. @SwiftOnSecurity has published a configuration file they use in the real world in real environment that cuts down on the noise, and focuses on events that are really important. It enables monitoring of “process creation”, but filters out know good processes that might fill up your logs. You grab the file here. Save it to the same directory to where you saved Sysmon:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SwiftOnSecurity/sysmon-config/master/sysmonconfig-export.xml

Once you’ve done it, run the following command to activate the Sysmon monitoring service using this configuration file by running the following command as Administrator. (Right click on the Command Prompt icon and select More/Run as Administrator).

sysmon.exe -accepteula -i sysmonconfig-export.xml

Now sit back and relax until that popup happens again. Right after it does, go into the “Event Viewer” application (click on Windows menu and type “Event Viewer”, or run ‘eventvwr.exe’. Now you have to find where the sysmon events are located, since there are so many things that log events.

The Sysmon events are under the path:

Applications and Services Logs\Microsoft\Windows\Sysmon\operational

When you open that up, you should see the top event is the one we are looking for. Actually, the very top event is launching the process “eventvwr.exe”, but the next one down is our event. It looks like this:

Drilling down into the details, we find the the offending thing causing those annoying popups is “officebackgroundtask.exe” in Office.

We can see it’s started by the “Schedule” service. This means we can go look at it with “autoruns.exe”, another Sysinternals tool that looks at all the things configured to automatically start when you start/login to your computer.

They are pink, which [update] is how autoruns shows they are “unsigned” programs (Microsoft’s programs should, normally, always be signed, so this should be suspicious). I’m assuming the suspicious thing is that they run in the user’s context, rather than system context, creating popup screens.

Autoruns allows you to do a bunch of things. You can click on the [X] box and disable it from running in the future. You can [right-click] in order to upload to Virus Total and check if it’s a known virus.

You can also double-click, to open the Task Scheduler, and see the specific configuration. You can see here that this thing is scheduled to run every hour:

Conclusion

So the conclusions are this.

To solve this particular problem of identifying what’s causing a process to flash a screen occasionally, use sysmon.

To solve generation problems like this, use Sysinternals suite of applications.

I haven’t been, but I am now, using @SwiftOnSecurity’s sysmon configuration just to monitor the security of my computers. I should probably install something to move a copy of the logs off the system.

Some Notes

Some URLs:

Some tweets:

Sysmon

— Mark Russinovich (@markrussinovich) June 2, 2017

To disable it, open Task Scheduler, go to Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Office, disable “OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration” https://t.co/mROwfzUMBT

— MalwareTech (@MalwareTechBlog) May 28, 2017

Nice writeup. Pink means unsigned.

— Mark Russinovich (@markrussinovich) June 3, 2017

Database Continuous Integration and Automated Release Management Workflow with AWS and Datical DB

2017-06-02 Balaji Iyer

Post Syndicated from Balaji Iyer original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/database-continuous-integration-and-automated-release-management-workflow-with-aws-and-datical-db/

Just as a herd can move only as fast as its slowest member, companies must increase the speed of all parts of their release process, especially the database change process, which is often manual. One bad database change can bring down an app or compromise data security.

We need to make database code deployment as fast and easy as application release automation, while eliminating risks that cause application downtime and data security vulnerabilities. Let’s take a page from the application development playbook and bring a continuous deployment approach to the database.

By creating a continuous deployment database, you can:

Discover mistakes more quickly.
Deliver updates faster and frequently.
Help developers write better code.
Automate the database release management process.

The database deployment package can be promoted automatically with application code changes. With database continuous deployment, application development teams can deliver smaller, less risky deployments, making it possible to respond more quickly to business or customer needs.

In our previous post, Building End-to-End Continuous Delivery and Deployment Pipelines in AWS, we walked through steps for implementing a continuous deployment and automated delivery pipeline for your application.

In this post, we walk through steps for building a continuous deployment workflow for databases using AWS CodePipeline (a fully managed continuous delivery service) and Datical DB (a database release automation application). We use AWS CodeCommit for source code control and Amazon RDS for database hosting to demonstrate end-to-end database change management — from check-in to final deployment.

As part of this example, we will show how a database change that does not meet standards is rejected automatically and actionable feedback is provided to the developer. Just like a code unit test, Datical DB evaluates changes and enforces your organization’s standards. In the sample use case, database table indexes of more than three columns are disallowed. In some cases, this type of index can slow performance.

Prerequisites

You’ll need an AWS account, an Amazon EC2 key pair, and administrator-level permissions for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeCommit, Amazon RDS, Amazon EC2, and Amazon S3.

From Datical DB, you’ll need access to software.datical.com portal, your license key, a database, and JDBC drivers. You can request a free trial of Datical here.

Overview

Here are the steps:

Install and configure Datical DB.
Create an RDS database instance running the Oracle database engine.
Configure Datical DB to manage database changes across your software development life cycle (SDLC).
Set up database version control using AWS CodeCommit.
Set up a continuous integration server to stage database changes.
Integrate the continuous integration server with Datical DB.
Set up automated release management for your database through AWS CodePipeline.
Enforce security governance and standards with the Datical DB Rules Engine.

1. Install and configure Datical DB

Navigate to https://software.datical.com and sign in with your credentials. From the left navigation menu, expand the Common folder, and then open the Datical_DB_Folder. Choose the latest version of the application by reviewing the date suffix in the name of the folder. Download the installer for your platform — Windows (32-bit or 64-bit) or Linux (32-bit or 64-bit).

Verify the JDK Version

In a terminal window, run the following command to ensure you’re running JDK version 1.7.x or later.

# java –version
java version "1.7.0_75"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_75-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 24.75-b04, mixed mode, sharing)

The Datical DB installer contains a graphical (GUI) and command line (CLI) interface that can be installed on Windows and Linux operating systems.

Install Datical DB (GUI)

Double-click on the installer
Follow the prompts to install the application.
When prompted, type the path to a valid license.

Install JDBC drivers

Open the Datical DB application.
From the menu, choose Help, and then choose Install New Software.
From the Work with drop-down list, choose Database Drivers – http://update.datical.com/drivers/updates.
Follow the prompts to install the drivers.

Install Datical DB (CLI)

Datical DB (CLI only) can be installed on a headless Linux system. Select the correct 32-bit or 64-bit Linux installer for your system.

Run the installer as root and install it to /usr/local/DaticalDB.
```
sudo java -jar ../installers/<Datical Installer>.jar -console
```
Follow the prompts to install the application.
When prompted, type the path to a valid license.

Install JDBC drivers

Copy JDBC drivers to /usr/local/DaticalDB/jdbc_drivers.

sudo mkdir /usr/local/DaticalDB/jdbc_drivers
copy JDBC Drivers from software.datical.com to /usr/local/DaticalDB/jdbc_drivers

Copy the license file to /usr/local/DaticalDB/repl.

sudo cp <license_filename> /usr/local/DaticalDB/repl
sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/DaticalDB/repl/<license_filename>

2. Create an RDS instance running the Oracle database engine

Datical DB supports database engines like Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and IBM DB2. The example in this post uses a DB instance running Oracle. To create a DB instance running Oracle, follow these steps.
Make sure that you can access the Oracle port (1521) from the location where you will be using Datical DB. Just like SQLPlus or other database management tools, Datical DB must be able to connect to the Oracle port. When you configure the security group for your RDS instance, make sure you can access port 1521 from your location.

3. Manage database changes across the SDLC

This one-time process is required to ensure databases are in sync so that you can manage database changes across the SDLC:

Create a Datical DB deployment plan with connections to the databases to be managed.
Baseline the first database (DEV/CI). This must be the original or best configured database – your reference database.
For each additional database (TEST and PROD):
a. Compare databases to ensure the application schema are in sync.
b. Resolve any differences.
c. Perform a change log sync to get each setup for Datical DB management.

Datical DB creates an initial model change log from one of the databases. It also creates in each database a metadata table named DATABASECHANGELOG that will be used to track the state. Now the databases look like this:

Note: In the preceding figure, the Datical DB model and metadata table are a representation of the actual model.

Create a deployment plan

1. In Datical DB, right-click Deployment Plans, and choose New.
2. On the New Deployment Plan page, type a name for your project (for example, AWS-Sample-Project), and then choose Next.
3. Select Oracle 11g Instant Client, type a name for the database (for example, DevDatabase), and then choose Next.
4. On the following page, provide the database connection information.
  1. For Hostname, enter the RDS endpoint..
  2. Select SID, and then type ORCL.
  3. Type the user name and password used to connect to the RDS instance running Oracle.
  4. Before you choose Finish, choose the Test Connection button.

When Datical DB creates the project, it also creates a baseline snapshot that captures the current state of the database schema. Datical DB stores the snapshot in Datical change sets for future forecasting and modification.

Create a database change set

A change set describes the change/refactoring to apply to the database.
From the AWS-Sample-Project project in the left pane, right-click Change Log, select New, and then select Change Set. Choose the type of change to make, and then choose Next. In this example, we’re creating a table. For Table Name, type a name. Choose Add Column, and then provide information to add one or more columns to the new table. Follow the prompts, and then choose Finish.

The new change set will be added at the end of your current change log. You can tag change sets with a sprint label. Depending on the environment, changes can be deployed based on individual labels or by the higher-level grouping construct.
Datical DB also provides an option to load SQL scripts into a database, where the change sets are labeled and captured as objects. This makes them ready for deployment in other environments.

Best practices for continuous delivery

Change sets are stored in an XML file inside the Datical DB project. The file, changelog.xml, is stored inside the Changelog folder. (In the Datical DB UI, it is called Change Log.)

Just like any other files stored in your source code repository, the Datical DB change log can be branched and merged to support agile software development, where individual work spaces are isolated until changes are merged into the parent branch.

To implement this best practice, your Datical DB project should be checked into the same location as your application source code. That way, branches and merges will be applied to your Datical DB project automatically. Use unique change set IDs to avoid collisions with other scrum teams.

4. Set up database version control using AWS CodeCommit

To create a new CodeCommit repository, follow these steps.

Note: On some versions of Windows and Linux, you might see a pop-up dialog box asking for your user name and password. This is the built-in credential management system, but it is not compatible with the credential helper for AWS CodeCommit. Choose Cancel.

Commit the contents located in the Datical working directory (for example, ~/datical/AWS-Sample-Project) to the AWS CodeCommit repository.

5. Set up a continuous integration server to stage database changes

In this example, Jenkins is the continuous integration server. To create a Jenkins server, follow these steps. Be sure your instance security group allows port 8080 access.

sudo wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/jenkins.repo http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/redhat/jenkins.repo

For more information about installing Jenkins, see the Jenkins wiki.

After setup, connect to your Jenkins server, and create a job.

Install the following Jenkins plugins:
For this project, you will need to install the following Jenkins plugins:
1. AWS CodeCommit plugin
2. DaticalDB4Jenkins plugin
3. Hudson Post Build Task plugin
4. HTML Publisher plugin
To configure Jenkins for AWS CodeCommit, follow these steps.
To configure Jenkins with Datical DB, navigate to Jenkins, choose Manage Jenkins, and then choose Configure System. In the Datical DB section, provide the requested directory information.

For example:

Add a build step:

Go to your newly created Jenkins project and choose Configure. On the Build tab, under Build, choose Add build step, and choose Datical DB.

In Project Dir, enter the Datical DB project directory (in this example, /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/demo/MyProject). You can use Jenkins environment variables like $WORKSPACE. The first build action is Check Drivers. This allow you to verify that Datical DB and Jenkins are configured correctly.

Choose Save. Choose Build Now to test the configuration.

After you’ve verified the drivers are installed, add forecast and deploy steps.

Add forecast and deploy steps:

Choose Save. Then choose Build Now to test the configuration.

6. Configure the continuous integration server to publish Datical DB reports

In this step, we will configure Jenkins to publish Datical DB forecast and HTML reports. In your Jenkins project, select Delete workspace before build starts.

Add post-build steps

1. Archive the Datical DB reports, logs, and snapshots

To expose Datical DB reports in Jenkins, you must create a post-build task step to copy the forecast and deployment HTML reports to a location easily published, and then publish the HTML reports.

2. Copy the forecast and deploy HTML reports

mkdir /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/Demo/MyProject/report
cp -rv /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/Demo/MyProject/Reports/*/*/*/forecast*/* /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/Demo/MyProject/report 2>NUL
cp -rv /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/Demo/MyProject/Reports/*/*/*/deploy*/deployReport.html /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/Demo/MyProject/report 2>NUL

3. Publish HTML reports

Use the information in the following screen shot. Depending on the location where you configured Jenkins to build, your details might be different.

Note: Datical DB HTML reports use CSS, so update the JENKINS_JAVA_OPTIONS in your config file as follows:

Edit /etc/sysconfig/jenkins and set JENKINS_JAVA_OPTIONS to:

JENKINS_JAVA_OPTIONS="-Djava.awt.headless=true -Dhudson.model.DirectoryBrowserSupport.CSP= "

7. Enable automated release management for your database through AWS CodePipeline

To create an automated release process for your databases using AWS CodePipeline, follow these instructions.

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS CodePipeline console at http://console.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline.
On the introductory page, choose Get started. If you see the All pipelines page, choose Create pipeline.
In Step 1: Name, in Pipeline name, type DatabasePipeline, and then choose Next step.
In Step 2: Source, in Source provider, choose AWS CodeCommit. In Repository name, choose the name of the AWS CodeCommit repository you created earlier. In Branch name, choose the name of the branch that contains your latest code update. Choose Next step.
In Step 3: Build, chose Jenkins.

To complete the deployment workflow, follow steps 6 through 9 in the Create a Simple Pipeline Tutorial.

8. Enforce database standards and compliance with the Datical DB Rules Engine

The Datical DB Dynamic Rules Engine automatically inspects the Virtual Database Model to make sure that proposed database code changes are safe and in compliance with your organization’s database standards. The Rules Engine also makes it easy to identify complex changes that warrant further review and empowers DBAs to efficiently focus only on the changes that require their attention. It also provides application developers with a self-service validation capability that uses the same automated build process established for the application. The consistent evaluation provided by the Dynamic Rules Engine removes uncertainty about what is acceptable and empowers application developers to write safe, compliant changes every time.

Earlier, you created a Datical DB project with no changes. To demonstrate rules, you will now create changes that violate a rule.

First, create a table with four columns. Then try to create an index on the table that comprises all four columns. For some databases, having more than three columns in an index can cause performance issues. For this reason, create a rule that will prevent the creation of an index on more than three columns, long before the change is proposed for production. Like a unit test that will fail the build, the Datical DB Rules Engine fails the build at the forecast step and provides feedback to the development team about the rule and the change to fix.

Create a Datical DB rule

To create a Datical DB rule, open the Datical DB UI and navigate to your project. Expand the Rules folder. In this example, you will create a rule in the Forecast folder.

Right-click the Forecast folder, and then select Create Rules File. In the dialog box, type a unique file name for your rule. Use a .drl extension.

In the editor window that opens, type the following:

package com.datical.hammer.core.forecast
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils;
import org.apache.commons.collections.ListUtils;
import com.datical.db.project.Project;
import com.datical.hammer.core.rules.Response;
import com.datical.hammer.core.rules.Response.ResponseType;

// ************************************* Models *************************************

// Database Models

import com.datical.dbsim.model.DbModel;
import com.datical.dbsim.model.Schema;
import com.datical.dbsim.model.Table;
import com.datical.dbsim.model.Index;
import com.datical.dbsim.model.Column;
import org.liquibase.xml.ns.dbchangelog.CreateIndexType;
import org.liquibase.xml.ns.dbchangelog.ColumnType;


/* @return false if validation fails; true otherwise */

function boolean validate(List columns)
{

// FAIL If more than 3 columns are included in new index
if (columns.size() > 3)
return false;
else
return true;

}

rule "Index Too Many Columns Error"
salience 1
when
$createIndex : CreateIndexType($indexName: indexName, $columns: columns, $tableName: tableName, $schemaName: schemaName)
eval(!validate($columns))
then
String errorMessage = "The new index [" + $indexName + "] contains more than 3 columns.";
insert(new Response(ResponseType.FAIL, errorMessage, drools.getRule().getName()));
end

Save the new rule file, and then right-click the Forecast folder, and select Check Rules. You should see “Rule Validation returned no errors.”

Now check your rule into source code control and request a new build. The build will fail, which is expected. Go back to Datical DB, and change the index to comprise only three columns. After your check-in, you will see a successful deployment to your RDS instance.

The following forecast report shows the Datical DB rule violation:

To implement database continuous delivery into your existing continuous delivery process, consider creating a separate project for your database changes that use the Datical DB forecast functionality at the same time unit tests are run on your code. This will catch database changes that violate standards before deployment.

Summary:

In this post, you learned how to build a modern database continuous integration and automated release management workflow on AWS. You also saw how Datical DB can be seamlessly integrated with AWS services to enable database release automation, while eliminating risks that cause application downtime and data security vulnerabilities. This fully automated delivery mechanism for databases can accelerate every organization’s ability to deploy software rapidly and reliably while improving productivity, performance, compliance, and auditability, and increasing data security. These methodologies simplify process-related overhead and make it possible for organizations to serve their customers efficiently and compete more effectively in the market.

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you have any feedback, please leave a comment below.

About the Authors

Balaji Iyer is an Enterprise Consultant for the Professional Services Team at Amazon Web Services. In this role, he has helped several Fortune 500 customers successfully navigate their journey to AWS. His specialties include architecting and implementing highly scalable distributed systems, serverless architectures, large scale migrations, operational security, and leading strategic AWS initiatives. Before he joined Amazon, Balaji spent more than a decade building operating systems, big data analytics solutions, mobile services, and web applications. In his spare time, he enjoys experiencing the great outdoors and spending time with his family.

Robert Reeves is a Chief Technology Officer at Datical. In this role, he advocates for Datical’s customers and provides technical architecture leadership. Prior to cofounding Datical, Robert was a Director at the Austin Technology Incubator. At ATI, he provided real-world entrepreneurial expertise to ATI member companies to aid in market validation, product development, and fundraising efforts. Robert cofounded Phurnace Software in 2005. He invented and created the flagship product, Phurnace Deliver, which provides middleware infrastructure management to multiple Fortune 500 companies. As Chief Technology Officer for Phurnace, he led technical evangelism efforts, product vision, and large account technical sales efforts. After BMC Software acquired Phurnace in 2009, Robert served as Chief Architect and lead worldwide technology evangelism.