Copr is a build system for anyone in the Fedora community. It hosts thousands of projects for various purposes and audiences. Some of them should never be installed by anyone, some are already being transitioned to the official Fedora Linux repositories, and the rest are somewhere in between. Copr gives you the opportunity to install third-party software that is not available in Fedora Linux repositories, try nightly versions of your dependencies, use patched builds of your favorite tools to support some non-standard use cases, and just experiment freely.
You may be aware the DNF team is working on DNF5. There is a change proposal for Fedora Linux 38. The benefit is that every package management software — including PackageKit, and DNFDragora — should use a common libdnf library. If you have an application that handles RPM packages, you should definitely check out this project.
Hare is a systems programming language designed to be simple, stable and robust. Hare uses a static type system, manual memory management, and a minimal runtime. It is well suited to writing operating systems, system tools, compilers, networking software, and other low-level, high-performance tasks. A detailed overview can be found in these slides.
My summary is: Hare is simpler than C. It can be easy. But if you insist on shooting in your legs, Hare will allow you to do it.
These packages are available for Fedora Linux 35, 36 and Rawhide. They are also available for OpenSUSE Leap and Tumbleweed. To install them, enter these commands:
The latest release of Fedora Workstation 36 continues the Fedora Project’s ongoing commitment to delivering the latest innovations in the open source world. This article describes some of the notable user-facing changes that appear in this version.
GNOME 42
Fedora Workstation 36 includes the latest version of the GNOME desktop environment. GNOME 42 includes many improvements and new features. Just some of the improvements include:
Significantly improved input handling, resulting in lower input latency and improved responsiveness when the system is under load. This is particularly beneficial for games and graphics applications.
The Wayland session is now the default for those who use Nvidia’s proprietary graphics driver.
A universal dark mode is now available.
A new interface has been added for taking screenshots and screen video recordings.
In addition, many of the core apps have been ported to GTK 4, and the shell features a number of subtle refinements.
Refreshed look and feel
GNOME 42 as featured in Fedora Workstation 36
GNOME Shell features a refreshed look and feel, with rounder and more clearly separated elements throughout. All the symbolic icons have been updated and the top bar is no longer rounded.
Universal dark mode option
In Settings > Appearance, you can now choose a dark mode option which applies a dark theme to all supported applications. In addition, the pre-installed wallpapers now include dark mode variants. Dark themes can help reduce eye-strain when there is low ambient light, can help conserve battery life on devices with OLED displays, and can reduce the risk of burn-in on OLED displays. Plus, it looks cool!
New screenshot interface
Taking screenshots and screen video recordings is now easier than ever
Previously, pressing the Print Screen key simply took a screenshot of the entire screen and saved it to the Pictures folder. If you wanted to customize your screenshots, you had to remember a keyboard shortcut, or manually open the Screenshots app and use that to take the screenshot you wanted. This was inconvenient.
Now, pressing Print Screen presents you with an all-new user interface that allows you to take a screenshot of either your entire screen, just one window, or a rectangular selection. You can also choose whether to hide or show the mouse pointer, and you can also now take a screen video recording from within the new interface.
Core applications
Apps made in GTK 4 + libadwaita feature a distinct visual style
GNOME’s core applications have seen a number of improvements. A number of them have been ported to GTK 4 and use libadwaita, a new widget library that implements GNOME’s Human Interface Guidelines.
Files now includes the ability to sort files by creation date, and includes some visual refinements, such as a tweaked headerbar design and file renaming interface.
The Software app now includes a more informative update interface, and more prominently features GNOME Circle apps.
The Settings app now has a more visually appealing interface matching the visual tweaks present throughout GNOME Shell.
Text Editor replaces Gedit by default. Text Editor is an all-new app built in GTK 4 and libadwaita. You can always reinstall Gedit by searching for it in the Software app.
Wayland support on Nvidia’s proprietary graphics driver
In previous versions, Fedora Workstation defaulted to the X display server when using Nvidia’s proprietary graphics driver – now, Fedora Workstation 36 uses the Wayland session by default when using Nvidia’s proprietary graphics driver.
If you experience issues with the Wayland session, you can always switch back to the Xorg session by clicking the gear icon at the bottom-right corner of the login screen and choosing “GNOME on Xorg”.
Under-the-hood changes throughout Fedora Linux 36
When installing or upgrading packages with DNF or PackageKit, weak dependencies that have been manually removed will no longer be reinstalled. That is to say: if foo is installed and it has bar as a weak dependency, and bar is then removed, bar will not be reinstalled when foo is updated.
The Noto fonts are now used by default for many languages. This provides greater coverage for different character sets. For users who write in the Malayalam script, the new Meera and RIT Rachana fonts are now the default.
systemd messages now include unit names by default rather than just the description, making troubleshooting easier.
In the good old days, connecting a Linux box to a network was easy. For each of the interface cards connected to a network, the system administrator would drop a configuration file into the /etc directory. That configuration file would describe the addressing configuration for a particular network. On Fedora Linux, the configuration file would actually be a shell script snippet like this:
A shell script executed on startup would read the file and apply the configuration. Simple.
Towards the end of 2004, however, a change was in the air. Quite literally — the Wi-Fi has become ubiquitous. The portable computers of the day could rapidly connect to new networks and the USB bus allowed even the wired network adapters to come and go while the system was up and running. The network configuration became more dynamic than ever before, rendering the existing network configuration tooling impractical. To the rescue came NetworkManager. On a Fedora Linux system, NetworkManager uses configuration like this:
Looks familiar? It should. From the beginning, NetworkManager was intended to work with the existing configuration formats. In fact, it ended up with plugins which would seamlessly convert between NetworkManager’s internal configuration model and the distribution’s native format. On Fedora, it would be the aforementioned ifcfg files.
Let’s take a closer look at them.
Ifcfg files
The legacy network service, now part of the network-scripts package, originally defined the ifcfg file format. Along with the package comes a file called sysconfig.txt that, quite helpfully, documents the format.
As NetworkManager gained traction it often found itself in need of expressing a configuration that was not supported by the old fashioned network service. Given the nature of configuring things with shell scripts, adding new settings is no big deal. The unknown ones are generally just silently ignored. The NetworkManager’s idea of what ifcfg files should look like is described in the nm-settings-ifcfg-rh(5) manual.
In general, NetworkManager tries hard to write ifcfg files that work well with the legacy network service. Nevertheless, sometimes it is just not possible. These days, the number of network connection types that NetworkManager supports vastly outnumber what the legacy network service can configure. . A new format is now used to express what the legacy format can not. This includes VPN connections, broadband modems and more.
Keyfiles
The new format closely resembled the NetworkManager’s native configuration model:
The actual format should be instantly familiar to everyone familiar with Linux systems. It’s the “ini file” or “keyfile” — a bunch of plain text key-value pairs, much like the ifcfg files use, grouped into sections. The nm-settings-ifcfg-keyfile(5) manual documents the format thoroughly.
The main advantage of using this format is that it closely resembles NetworkManager’s idea of how to express network configuration, used both internally and on the D-Bus API. It’s easier to extend without taking into consideration the quirks of the mechanism that was designed in without the benefit of foresight back when the world was young. This means less code, less surprises and less bugs.
In fact there’s nothing the keyfile format can’t express that ifcfg files can. It can express the simple wired connections just as well as the VPNs or modems.
Migrating to keyfiles
The legacy network service served us well for many years, but its days are now long over. Fedora Linux dropped it many releases ago and without it there is seemingly little reason to use the ifcfg files. That is, for new configurations. While Fedora Linux still supports the ifcfg files, it has defaulted to writing keyfiles for quite some time.
Starting with Fedora Linux 36, the ifcfg support will no longer be present in new installations. If you’re still using ifcfg files, do not worry — the existing systems will keep it on upgrades. Nevertheless, you can still decide to uninstall it and carry your configuration over to keyfiles. Keep on reading to learn how.
If you’re like me, you installed your system years ago and you have a mixture of keyfiles and ifcfg files. Here’s how can you check:
$ nmcli -f TYPE,FILENAME,NAME conn
TYPE FILENAME NAME
ethernet /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 eth0
wifi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-Guest Guest
wifi /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/Base48 Base48
vpn /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/VPN.ovpn My VPN
This example shows a VPN connection that must have always used a keyfile and a Wi-Fi connection presumably created after Fedora Linux switched to writing keyfiles by default. There’s also an Ethernet connection and Wi-Fi one from back in the day that use the ifcfg plugin. Let’s see how we can convert those to keyfiles.
The NetworkManager’s command line utility, nmcli(1), acquired a new connection migrate command, that can change the configuration backend used by a connection profile.
It’s a good idea to make a backup of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* files, in case anything goes wrong. Once you have the backup you can try migrating a single connection to a different configuration backend (keyfile by default):
Connecting industrial machinery to the internet has given birth to infinite opportunities that range from performance improvements and predictive maintenance to data modelling that can lead to novel solutions and use cases. The possibilities are endless. Connecting machinery on such a scale can test the limits of cloud connectivity, depending on your location and network limitations.
An edge device is any piece of hardware that sits at the boundary between two networks. When initial computation happens on servers at the edge, it speeds up user’s interactions with the cloud. Therefore, adding edge devices provides opportunities to optimize performance, shorten the journey, and lighten the load on your cloud connection.
As amazing as it sounds, managing all of this functionality demands continuous attention from administrators. Having a reliable solution to distribute, deploy, and update systems for edge devices from the outset will help you spend time on things that matter.
In this article, we look at how OSTree is well-positioned for upgrading and updating edge devices with versioned updates of Linux-based operating systems. Furthermore, we’ll explore how Pulp facilitates managing and preparing updates of the OSTree content, as well as making it available to edge devices. Together, they provide a powerful free and open-source solution for administering edge devices.
How does OSTree help manage Edge devices?
If you need to deploy hundreds of operating systems to edge devices, safe in the knowledge that you can easily manage future updates and maintenance, an OSTree’s immutable and image-based operating system is ready for the task.
OSTree functions like git, but for operating system binaries. It has git-like content-addressed repositories. The ability to commit and branch entire root filesystem trees resembles the way you submit changes in git. With OSTree, you build an operating system with pre-installed packages, known as an operating system image. After you build the operating system image, it is possible to track it, sign it, test it, and deploy it. These images function as immutable file system trees. When the time comes to change or update, you simply build a new image and deploy it. By atomically switching between different versions of images, you are completely replacing filesystem trees.
OSTree also has a simple CLI that you can use for managing simple workflows, for example, for switching between different versions of images/filesystem trees.
Where do Fedora-IoT Images feature?
As a standalone tool, the base OSTree CLI is not the most feature-rich utility for managing repository content. To make life easier, in the following demo, we will use rpm-ostree. rpm-ostree is a hybrid image/package system that combines the standard OSTree technology as a base image format and accepts RPM on both the client and server-side.
rpm-ostree integrates with Fedora IoT. In comparison to other ecosystems, instead of installing packages via DNF, you install packages with rpm-ostree. After rebooting all changes are applied to a new version of the image.
You can also upgrade or install a new Fedora IoT image with the rpm-ostree utility.
Where and how does Pulp come into this?
Pulp is a platform that handles content management workflows. Using Pulp, you can sync packages from remote repositories such as an RPM server, PyPI, Docker Hub, Ansible Galaxy, and many more. You can host and modify synced packages in repositories inside the Pulp server. You can publish repositories that contain packages available for deployment to production environments.
In our scenario, Pulp provides a platform for storing particular versions of OSTree content, promoting approved content through the content management lifecycle, for example from dev to test, and from test to prod. Pulp also provides a method for publishing content that is consumed by edge devices. Using Pulp, you can pull the latest packages, test, and publish only when safe to do so. Pulp ensures the safety, security, and repeatability of your content supply chain.
The following diagram provides a simplified overview of Pulp. On the left are shown different content types that are mirrored into Pulp from remote sources. These repositories are then served, for instance, to different CI/CD or production environments.
A simplified overview of Pulp. The content is mirrored from remote repositories and made available to different types of environments.
Pulp creates a new repository version automatically when updating or removing packages in a repository. You can distribute each repository version independently.
Pulp has a plugin-based architecture, which means that you must add a plugin for each content type you want to use. For managing OSTree content, you need the OSTree plugin. You can then mirror content from a remote repository, import content from a local tarball, and modify content within a Pulp repository while preserving the integrity of the original content. You can move commits and refs from one repository to another or delete them. Pulp ensures that you are safe to experiment while your production environment remains pinned to a particular version.
Putting it all together
In this section, let’s look at how to build an image with an OSTree commit.
Building a Customized Fedora-IoT Image
We start by booting a new virtual machine (VM) that will have an installed Fedora-IoT OS. For the purposes of this example, it is best to have the same version of the OS installed as the running edge devices have.
All commands in this section are executed on the main admin VM (Fedora IoT 35 OS). On this admin VM, we will build the images that we will then distribute to the edge devices.
Before you begin:
First, ensure that the VM is accessible via SSH. To test, enter the following command from within the target OS:
$ systemctl is-active sshd
Next, ensure that the following tools for composing operating system images are installed:
Now, apply the installed packages by rebooting the system.
In this example a nano editor package is installed on all edge devices. We need to build an image containing a commit with the package.
Create a blueprint file that describes what changes you want to make to the image as shown here:
$ cat install-nano.toml name = "nano-commit"
description = "Installing nano"
version = "0.0.1" [[packages]]
name = "nano"
version = "*"
Push this blueprint to the os build composer utility, which is a tool for composing operating system images. composer-cli communicates with osbuild composer through the CLI:
The composer will use resources available in your current OS (such as a default operating system version).
Regularly check the status of the build:
$ composer-cli compose status
When the build finishes, download the image:
$ composer-cli compose image ${IMAGE_UUID}
The downloaded image is basically an OSTree repository packed into a tarball. When you extract the archived content, you will notice that one ref is referencing the checksum of a commit. You can find it inside the refs/heads/ directory.
Publishing the Customized Image with Pulp
All commands shown in this section are executed on the main admin VM (Fedora IoT 35 OS).
Before you begin:
Ensure that you have installed Pulp and the Pulp CLI for managing OSTree repositories:
Now configure a proxy server or SSH port forwarding to enable network communication between the VM and Pulp. Ensure that you can ping the Pulp server from the VM.
First, create a new OSTree repository:
$ pulp ostree repository create --name fedora-iot
The following command will import the tarball created in the previous section into Pulp:
Distributing the Customized Image to an Edge Device
The Edge device can be another VM or a real device running Fedora IoT.
All commands shown in this section are executed on an Edge device (Fedora IoT 35 OS).
Before you begin:
Configure a proxy server or SSH port forwarding to enable network communication between an Edge device and Pulp. Ensure that you can ping the Pulp server from the Edge device.
Ensure that the Edge device is accessible with SSH:
$ systemctl is-active sshd
The nano package should NOT come pre-installed with the official bare Fedora IoT 35 image. Verify that by attempting to run nano inside your terminal.
In Fedora IoT, updates are retrieved from the URL defined in /etc/ostree/remotes.d/fedora-iot.conf. This file can be modified manually or by adding a new remote repository. Learn more at Adding and Removing Remote Repositories.
You can automate the upgrade procedure with an upgrade policy that will be configured at the beginning of deployment. This is done by writing a kickstart file that will boot up an edge device into a headless state. However, for demonstrative purposes, let’s act like a villain and update the aforementioned configuration file manually to have the following content:
Fedora Server Edition works on Single Board Computers (SBC) like Raspberry Pi. This article is aimed at data backup and restoration of personal data for users who want to take advantage of solid server systems and built-in tools like Cockpit. It describes 3 levels of backup.
Pre-requisites
To use this guide, all you need is a working Fedora Linux workstation and the following items.
You should read, understand, and practice the requirements as documented in the Fedora Docs for server installation and administration
An SBC (Single Board Computer), tested for Fedora Linux. Check hardware status here.
A choice of microSD Card (64 GB / Class 10) and SSD device
Ethernet cable / DHCP reserved IP or static IP
A Linux client workstation with ssh keys prepared
Make a choice of cloud storage services
Have an additional Linux workstation available
With this setup, I opted for Raspberry Pi 3B+/4B+ (one for hot-swap) because of the price and availability at the time of writing this article. While the Pi server is remotely connected using Cockpit, you can position the Pi near the router for a neat set-up.
Harden server security
After following through with server installation and administration on the SBC, it is a good practice to harden the server security with firewalld.
You must configure the firewall as soon as the server is online before connecting the storage device to the server. Firewalld is a zone-based firewall. It creates one pre-defined zone ‘FedoraServer’ after following through with the installation and administration guide in the Fedora Docs.
Rich rules in firewalld
Rich rules are used to block or allow a particular IP address or address range. The following rule accepts SSH connections only from the host with the registered IP (of client workstation) and drops other connections. Run the commands in Cockpit Terminal or terminal in client workstation connect to the server via ssh.
To carry out additional firewall controls, such as managing ports and zones, please refer to the link below. Please be aware that misconfiguring the firewall may make it vulnerable to security breaches.
The next step is to connect a storage device to the SBC and partition a newly attached storage device using Cockpit. With Cockpit’s graphical server management interface, managing a home lab (whether a single server or several servers) is much simpler than before. Fedora Linux server offers Cockpit as standard.
In this setup, an SSD device, powered by the USB port of the SBC, is placed in service without the need for an additional power supply.
Connect the storage device to a USB port of the SBC
After Cockpit is running (as set up in the pre-requisites), visit ip-address-of-machine:9090 in the web browser of your client workstation
After logging into Cockpit, click ‘Turn on administrative access’ at the top of the Cockpit page
Click the “Storage” on the left pane
Select the device under “Drives” section to format and partition a blank storage device
Cockpit Storage management
On the screen of the selected storage device create a new partition table or format and create new partitions. When prompted to initialize disk, in the “Partitioning” type, select GPT partition
For a file system type from the drop-down list (XFS and ext4), choose ext4. This is suitable for an SBC with limited I/O capability (like USB 2.0 port) and limited bandwidth (less than 200MB/s)
Create a partition in Cockpit
To create a single partition taking up all the storage space on the device, specify its mount point, such as “/media” and click “Ok”
Click “Create partition”, which creates a new partition mounted at “/media”.
Create backups and restore from backups
Backups are rarely one-size-fits-all. There are a few choices to make such as where the data is backed up, the steps you take to backup data, identify any automation, and determine how to restore backed-up data.
Backup workflow – version 1.0
Backup 1. rsync from client to file server (Raspberry Pi)
To run rsync with additional options, set the following flags:
Update destination files in-place
--inplace
Append data onto shorter files
--append
Source-side deduplication combined with compression is the most effective way to reduce the size of data to be backed up before it goes to backup storage.
I run this manually at the end of the day. Automation scripts are advantageous once I settled in with the cloud backup workflow.
For details on rsync, please visit the Fedora magazine article here.
Backup 2. rsync from file server to primary cloud storage
Factors to consider when selecting cloud storage are;
Cost: Upload, storage, and download fee
rsync, sftp supported
Data redundancy (RAID 10 or data center redundancy plan in place)
Snapshots
One of the cloud storage fitting these criteria is Hetzner’s hosted Nextcloud – Storage Box. You are not tied to a supplier and are free to switch without an exit penalty.
Generate SSH keys and create authorized key files in the file server
Use ssh-keygen to generate a new pair of SSH keys for the file server and cloud storage.
ssh-keygen Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key . . .
Insert the required public SSH keys into a new local authorized_keys file.
cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub >> storagebox_authorized_keys
Transfer keys to cloud storage
The next step is to upload the generated authorized_keys file to the Storage Box. To do this, create the directory .ssh with permission 700 and create the file authorized_keys with the public SSH keys and permission 600. Run the following command.
Backup 3. Client backup to secondary cloud storage
Deja Dup is in the Fedora software repo, making it a quick backup solution for Fedora Workstation. It handles the GPG encryption, scheduling, and file inclusion (which directories to back up).
Backing up to the secondary cloud
Restoring files from cloud storage
Archive personal data
Not every data needs a 3-2-1 backup strategy. That is personal data share. I repurposed a hand-me-down laptop with a 1TB HDD as an archive of personal data (family photos).
Go to “Sharing” in settings (in my case, the GNOME file manager) and toggle the slider to enable sharing.
Turn on “file sharing”, “Networks” and “Required password”, which allows you to share your public folders with other workstations on your local network using WebDAV.
Prepare fallback options
Untested backups are no better than no backups at all. I take the ‘hot swap’ approach in a home lab environment where disruptions like frequent power outages or liquid damages do happen. However, my recommendations are far from disaster recovery plans or automatic failover in corporate IT.
Dry run restoration of files on a regular basis
Backup ssh/GPG keys onto an external storage device
Copy a raw image of the Fedora ARM server onto an SD card
Keep snapshots of full backups at primary cloud storage
Automate backup process to minimize human error or oversight
Track activity and troubleshoot with Cockpit
As your project grows, so does the number of servers you manage. Activity and alert tracking in Cockpit ease your administrative burden. You can achieve this in three ways using Cockpit’s graphical interface.
SELinux menu
How to diagnose network issues, find logs and troubleshoot in Cockpit
Go to SELinux to check logs
Check “solution details”
Select “Apply this solution” when necessary
View automation script and run it if necessary
SELinux logs
Network or storage logs
Server logs track detailed metrics that correlate CPU load, memory usage, network activity, and storage performance with the system’s journal. Logs are organized under the network or storage dashboard.
Storage logs in Cockpit
Software updates
Cockpit helps security updates on preset time and frequency. You can run all updates when you need them.
Software updates
Congratulations on setting up a file/backup server with the Fedora ARM server edition.
Fedora Linux test days are events where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed to Fedora before, this is a perfect way to get started.
There are six upcoming test events in the next two weeks.
Sunday April03through April 10, is to test the Kernel 5.17 changes in Fedora.
Monday April 04 through April11, this test week is focusing on testing Fedora CoreOS.
Wednesday April 06 , is to test the Fedora IoT Edition.
Friday April 08, is to test Fedora 36 Cloud Base Images.
Wednesday April 13, is to test Audio.
Thursday April 14, is to test Upgrade Path from Fedora 34 and 35to Fedora 36.
Come and test with us to make the upcoming Fedora 36 even better. Read more below on how to do it.
Kernel test week
The kernel team is working on the final integration for kernel 5.17. This version was just recently released and will arrive soon in Fedora.
The Fedora kernel and QA teams have organized a test week for Sunday April03through April 10. Refer to the wiki page for links to the test images you’ll need to participate. This document clearly outlines the steps.
Fedora CoreOS test week
The Fedora CoreOS team released the first Fedora CoreOS next stream based on Fedora 36. They expect to promote this to the testing stream in two weeks, on the usual schedule.
The Fedora CoreOS and QA teams have organized a test week. It begins Monday, April 04 and runs through the end of the week. Refer to the wiki page for links to the test cases and materials you’ll need to participate.
Fedora IoT Edition test day
Fedora Internet of Things is a variant of Fedora focused on IoT ecosystems. Whether you work on a home assistant, industrial gateways, or data storage and analytics, Fedora IoT provides a trusted open source platform to build on. Fedora IoT produces a monthly rolling release to help you keep your ecosystem up-to-date.
The IoT and QA teams will have their test day on Wednesday, April 06. Refer to the wiki page for links and resources to test the IoT Edition.
Fedora Cloud test day
Now that the Fedora Linux 36 is coming close to the release date, the Fedora Cloud SIG would like to get the community together to find and squash some bugs.
The test day is organized for Friday April 08. This event will test Fedora Cloud Base content. See the wiki page for links to the Beta Cloud Base Images. We have qcow, AMI, and ISO images ready for testing.
Audio test day
As part of a recent proposal, Fedora replaced the PulseAudio daemon with a functionally compatible implementation based on PipeWire. This means that all existing clients using the PulseAudio client library will continue to work as before, as well as applications shipped as Flatpak. The last few releases noted significant issues in the community and hence the origin of this regression test day.
See this wiki page for information on testing that everything works as expected. This will occur on Wednesday, April 13.
Upgrade test day
As we come closer to Fedora Linux 36 release dates, it’s time to test upgrades. This release has a lot of changes and it becomes essential that we test the graphical upgrade methods as well as the command line methods.
As a part of this test day, we will test upgrading from a full updated F35 and F34 to F36 for all architectures (x86_64, ARM, aarch64) and variants (WS, cloud, server, silverblue, IoT). See this wiki page for information and details. This test day will happen on Thursday, April 14.
In October 2021, a Fedora Linux user asked a question about licensing. Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller left a response: “Since we don’t have a complete, exploded, searchable repository of all of the packages in Fedora, I don’t have a quick way to check.”
Followed by: “…or possibly pay Sourcegraph to do it for us. They seem like nice people.” He is correct, we (Sourcegraph) are nice people, but we don’t want your money. Instead, we wanted to team up with the Fedora community.
The Fedora Community can now search their universe of open source code—currently over 34,000 repositories and counting.
Introduction to code search
For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of code search, it enables teams to onboard to a new codebase and find answers faster, helps to identify security risks, and many other use cases. Sourcegraph has indexed over two-million repositories across multiple code hosts such as GitHub and GitLab. This article is going to focus strictly on code search for src.fedoraproject.org. Sourcegraph provides both a web app and CLI interface.
Using the Web app
When using the Sourcegraph web app you will need to start each search with repo:^src.fedoraprojects.org before entering any search queries. Using this link to the web app will include this initial string as shown here:
Sourcegraph web app interface
The following sections will provide some web app examples of searches that might be of interest.
Find repositories using popular OSI-approved licenses
The following query will scan all the repositories for software that is compatible with the “Open Source Definition” (OSD).
A co-worker of mine from back in the day told me “FTP is a dead protocol”. Is it? You can add to this query to find any other protocol such as irc, https, etc.
This query will find any files that are possibly vulnerable (false positives can happen) to CVE-2021-44228 aka Log4j. You can also search for other vulnerabilities that can then be reported to project maintainers.
Sourcegraph also has a command-line interface tool called src, which allows you to do everything I just mentioned above, plus other useful commands like getting results in JSON for programmatic consumption.
The examples shown may be a good starting point but are by no means the only queries that may be made. You can view all search query syntaxes and create your own as needed.
Conclusion
As you can see, with Sourcegraph, the Fedora Linux community can now quickly search for all code hosted at src.fedoraproject.org, regardless of whether they are literal or complex regex queries.
I appreciate the Fedora Linux community being so helpful and welcoming. If you have anything you want to add or questions, my team and I will be in the comments section below. You can also join us on Slack.
Various engineers that work on the Fedora Linux product line are brewing up a storm again. To find out more about their plans for world domination, check out this video!
There are two upcoming test weeks in the coming weeks. The first is Monday 28 February through Monday 07 March. It is to test GNOME 42. The second is Monday 07 March through Sunday 13 March. It focuses on testing internationalization. Come and test with us to make the upcoming Fedora 36 even better. Read more below on how to do it.
GNOME test week
GNOME is the default desktop environment for Fedora Workstation and thus for many Fedora users. As a part of the planned change the GNOME megaupdate will land on Fedora which then will be shipped with Fedora 36. To ensure that everything works fine The Workstation Working Group and QA team will have this test week Monday 28 February through Monday 07 March. Refer to the GNOME test week wiki page for links and resources.
i18n test week
i18n test week focuses on testing internationalization features in Fedora Linux. The test week is March 07 through March 13.
How do test days work?
A test day is an event where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed before, this is a perfect way to get started.
To contribute, you only need to be able to download test materials (which include some large files) and then read and follow directions step by step.
Detailed information about both test days are on the wiki pages above. If you’re available on or around the days of the events, please do some testing and report your results.
Fedora test days are events where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed to Fedora before, this is a perfect way to get started.
Again, The two upcoming test days in the upcoming week are:
Monday 28 February through Monday 07 March, to test GNOME 42.
Monday 07 March through Sunday 13 March, focusing on testing internationalization.
Come and test with us to make the upcoming Fedora 36 even better.
We’ve upgraded the Fedora shirt and sweatshirt collection we announced in March 2020.
What’s new?
We do the embroidery with the new Fedora logo, but the old logo is still available as Fedora Classic.
A Fedora hoodie, and crewneck sweatshirt and a long-sleeve t-shirt. The last two are seasonal, only for February.
Faster shipping to the US, Canada and the UK. (We ship from Hungary, Europe.)
OK, but is it made with Linux?
A lot of questions come about as to how exactly do we make the embroidery. Do we use Windows for that? There is a short explanation on our website, but let’s give some more details.
You might have read here at Fedora Magazine that there is a good, fully free (as in freedom) solution to making embroidery designs with Inkscape and Inkstitch. This is the future for us too, and sooner or later we will make all of our embroidery with them. But — mainly because Inkstitch is quite new, and we have been embroidering Linux shirts for a decade — we are still using a manufacturer-independent, but “non-free” program, called Embird. We run it with Wine under Debian. This one is the only proprietary piece of software used here. And it must go, soon…
The other software we use is quite standard for Linux: Inkscape, GIMP, ImageMagick, and of course all of the everyday tools you are using on your Fedora Linux desktop and server.
Check out theembroidered Fedora collection here! Don’t forget to use the FEDORA5 coupon code, for the $5 discount on every shirt and sweatshirt.
