GPL(GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE) FREEDOM 0:
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
FREEDOM 1:
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish.
FREEDOM 2:
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others.
FREEDOM 3:
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.

Today’s announcement of Longhorn 1.1, a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Sandbox project, is exciting news for users of Rancher, SUSE’s Kubernetes management platform and the Kubernetes community. Longhorn is an enterprise-grade, cloud native container storage solution that went GA in June 2020. Since then, adoption has increased by 235 percent. Now Longhorn is the first cloud native storage solution designed and built for the edge, with ARM64 support, new self-healing capabilities […]

The post Compute confidently at the Edge with Rancher and Longhorn 1.1 appeared first on SUSE Communities.

This article explains how to change the default shell in Linux. Using this you can set Bash, sh, Zsh, Csh, Fish, etc. as your shell.

Movim is an open-source decentralized social media platform that relies on XMPP network and can communicate with other applications using XMPP.

The post How to Upgrade a Single Package in Ubuntu appeared first on LinOxide.

Tcl (Tool Command Language) is a dynamic programming/scripting language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells. Here's our recommended free tutorials to learn Tcl.

The post Excellent Free Tutorials to Learn Tcl appeared first on LinuxLinks.

Data loss is one of those worst nightmares. if it comes true, it can lead to dire consequences. A lot of difficult situations may arise like legal ramifications; companies may go out of business or you have to spend a lot of money without even being sure that you will be recovering all the data.

This is why having a backup strategy can always rescue you from such troubles. As we know, it is always better to take precautions rather than searching for a cure. This is why all the corporations go through major undertakings for backing up data and is considered a part of cyber hygiene.

One of the safest ways to ensure that you are being proactive about your data security is simply backing up your data on an external source. So data backup is not only about making a copy, the following data backup tips to avoid data loss can be helpful in creating backups in various ways:

1) Always Backup your data strategically

It is highly recommended to back up your data with a structured backup strategy. Backup your data consistently and regulate backup according to the recovery priority.

Schedule a backup depending on the business needs, as older backups have a high potential of mishandling. Also if your system crashes anytime, you will at least have an updated backup of the data.

Implement the 3-2-1 backup policy. This strategy recommends that the data should be backed up at least in two other storage devices other than the live data i.e. make three copies of the data.

2) Types of backup operations

Full Back up, Incremental Backup, and Differential Backup Strategy

You always have to make sure that you have more than one backup system. Especially when dealing with large amounts of data. A full backup strategy is copying every data from every sector of the specified disk into a different storage medium. This process is very time-consuming and that is why it can be more feasible using automatic backup methods. But full backup is helpful during data restoration.

This can be easily feasible of you take advantage of along with full backup, incremental backup or differential backup can be included as they need less amount of time. Incremental backup makes a copy of all the files that have been changed or renewed since the last full backup or incremental backup.

Similarly, a differential backup can be run every day as it reduces the time and backs up data since the last full backup. In this backup, files are saved on a day that changes are made and updated compared to the previous differential backup.

3) Test backups for integrity

Ensure your backup’s accuracy and availability by testing them. It will give you an idea of how quickly you can recover the data depending upon various data loss scenarios.

4) Create Offsite backup and encrypt them

Even if you have on-site backups of data in hard drives, NAS, and more you should always go for an offsite backup at a secured data center. So in case you face data loss due to a catastrophe, at least you will have your data secured offsite. So, in an individual case an off-site data structure is nothing but a cloud backup.

It is recommended to split your backup locations, keep one set of backup data on-site (in-office) and another set of data off-site. This will ensure that even if there is any physical damage or any disaster that affected the on-site data backup, you will still have the off-site data. Make sure that the backups are encrypted so that you can safeguard them from data theft and breaches.
This can be a part of a disaster recovery plan.

5) Automatic cloud backups

Automating the backups will not let you forget or give extra time for backing up the files. Whenever you are connected to the internet, computer files will be backed up automatically and continuously. It is also quite economic and time-saving as compared to backing up locally. Also, the updated data will be available to you anywhere you need and can be accessed from any device while maintaining all-around security.

6) Maintain Software updates for security

Software updates can tackle the latest security vulnerabilities and can safeguard your data from being lost. Outdated system files and firmware can come in the way of data security. So it is better to avoid postponing the software updates and always check if there are any pending updates. Unpatched software or operating systems can be one of the major culprits for data loss.

7) Establish a standard filing system

There should be standardization in the organization of data. This reduces the time for data retrieval because it’s easier to identify and go for the required data. This can also reduce the risk of potential data loss because a haphazard file organization induces the risk of data deletion by accident.
A sound system of file organization aids the backup process and is an inevitable part of data loss prevention.

8) Determine which files need preservation

Once you start analyzing the data, you will get to know that all the files are not updated or changed regularly. So, every file does not need to be backed up every day. This technique will reduce the time that you invest in backing up unnecessary data. Also, organize the files according to their importance so that you can run a backup for them regularly.

I hope these tips will help you in backing up and safeguarding your data from loss. In case you have lost any data and wondering if it can be recovered as you do not have any backup, you can rely on Remo Data Recovery Software.

Never run the risk of losing your data that may be personal or business-related. Always take measures to make sure that your data is protected.

Top on the list of every IT operation team is ensuring that servers are secure from unauthorized users or malicious scripts. There are a number of solutions that you can apply to ward off attacks and breaches. Among them is the implementation of the Fail2ban software tool.

Fail2ban is an open-source intrusion detection measure that mitigates brute-force attacks that target various services such as SSH, and VSFTPD to mention a few. It comes with an array of filters – including SSH – that you can customize to update the firewall rules and block unauthorized SSH login attempts.

The fail2ban utility monitors the server’s log files for any intrusion attempts and blocks the IP address of the user after a predefined number of failed attempts for a specified duration. The user’s IP is placed in a ‘jail’ which can be set, enabled, or disabled in the /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf configuration file. This way, it helps to secure your Linux server from unauthorized access, and more specifically from botnets and malicious scripts.

What comprises a jail? A jail is made up of the following key elements:

• The log file to be analyzed.
• Filters to be applied on the log file.
• The action to be taken when the filter matches
• Additional parameters to elaborate on the type of matches. For instance, maxtry (maximum try) and bantime (ban time) etc.

In this tutorial, we will walk you through the installation and configuration of Fail2ban on RHEL 8 / CentOS 8.

Step 1) Install EPEL Repository

First up, log in to your server and install the EPEL (Extra Package for Enterprise Linux) package as follows.

For CentOS 8

$ sudo dnf install -y epel-release

For RHEL 8

$ sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm -y

Step 2) Install Fail2ban

To install Fail2ban, run the simple command below:

$ sudo dnf install -y fail2ban

Step 3) Configuring Fail2ban

By design, fail2ban parses the log files and attempts to match the failregex that is specified in the filters. Filters pick up failed authentication attempts for a specific service, for example, SSH login attempts using regular expressions – regex. When the maximum number of ‘maxtry’ times is achieved in the log entries, an action is triggered.

By default, this happens after 3 failed authentication attempts, and the user is banned or put into a ‘jail’ for 10 minutes. These parameters can easily be configured in the /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf file which is the global configuration file.

All the important configuration files are located under /etc/fail2ban/ directory.

Filters are stored under the /etc/fail2ban/filter.d directory. There are dozens of filters for various services including SSH, Webmin, postfix and so much more.

/etc/fail2ban/jail.conf is the main configuration file. However, it’s not recommended to directly modify this file, because as the file spells it out, the configurations are likely to be overwritten or improved at a later distribution update.

A workaround is to create a  jail.local file in the /etc/fail2ban/jail.d directory and add your custom configurations for the desired services that you want to secure.

NOTE: Parameters defined in the jail.local file will override the jail.conf file. Which makes it even more preferable to leave the main configuration file intact.

For demonstration purposes, we are going to create a jail file that will secure SSH connections.

$ sudo vim /etc/fail2ban/jail.local

Here’s the sample configuration file.

[DEFAULT]
ignoreip = 192.168.2.105
bantime  = 86400
findtime  = 300
maxretry = 3
banaction = iptables-multiport
backend = systemd
[sshd]
enabled = true

Let’s breakdown the parameters and see what they stand for.

• ignoreip –  Defines a list of IP addresses or domain names that are not to be banned.
• bantime – As the name suggests, this specifies the duration of time that a remote host gets banned in seconds.
• maxretry – This is the number of failed login attempts before the host is blocked/banned.
• findtime – Time duration in seconds during which a host will be blocked after achieving the maxtry attempts.
• banaction – The banning action.
• backend – The system used to fetch log files

Our configuration implies the following:

When an IP address records 3 failed authentication attempts within the last 5 minutes, then it will be banned for 24 hours with the exception of a host with IP 192.168.2.105.

Save and exit the configuration file.

Step 4)  Start and enable Fail2ban

With the configuration of the jail file for SSH done, we are going to start and enable fail2ban on boot. Usually, the service is not running upon installation

To start and enable fail2ban, run the command:

$ sudo systemctl start fail2ban
$ sudo systemctl enable fail2ban

To reveal the status of fail2ban, invoke the command below:

$ sudo systemctl status fail2ban

This time around, we can observe that fail2ban is running as expected.

Now let us proceed and see how Fail2ban works.

Step 4) Fail2ban in action

Let’s now go a step further and see Fail2ban in action. To keep an eye on banned IP addresses, the fail2ban-client utility comes in handy. For example, to get the status of ssh jail, run the command:

$ sudo fail2ban-client status sshd

At the moment, there are no banned IP entries because we have not logged in remotely to the server yet.

We are going to attempt to log in from putty SSH client from a Windows PC with an IP different from the one specified in jail.local configuration file.

From the output, we can clearly see that we cannot get access to the server. When we check the status again, we find that one IP has been banned as shown.

To remove the IP from the banned list, unban it as follows.

$ sudo fail2ban-client unban 192.168.2.101

To gather more information about fail2ban rules and policies, visit the jail.conf manpages as shown

$ man jail.conf

Any comment or feedback? Feel free to reach out and we’ll get back to you.

Also Read: 12 IP Command Examples for Linux Users

The team behind Wine, a compatibility layer to run Windows applications and games on systems such as Linux or Mac OS, has released Wine 6.0 to the public. Downloads, a compatibility database, and other information is available on the official project website.

Wine 6.0 is available as source code and as binaries. Major changes in Wine 6.0 include DirectShow and Media Foundation support, improved handling of certain game copy protections, and support for an experimental Vulkan renderer for WineD3D.

Wine 6.0 is the first major release in 2021; it follows the one major release per year release schedule of the team that is  developing Wine. You can check out our reviews of the last major releases, Wine 5.0 in 2020 and Wine 4.0 in 2019, in case you are interested.

What is new in Wine 6.0

Work on building modules in PE format continued in Wine 6.0. The format helps deal with certain copy protection schemes that verify that memory-loaded DLL files and their disk counterparts are identical. Wine 6.0 includes a new option to link Unix libraries to PE modules to support functions that the Win32 APIs cannot handle.

The new Wine version includes support for a Vulkan renderer for WineD3D. It is labeled as experimental at this stage as support is limited to shader model 4 and 5 shaders. The team notes that this limits the "usefulness to Direct3D 10 and 11 applications" in this release.

Wine users may enable experimental support by switching the Direct3D renderer setting to vulkan.

The release notes provide instructions on making the change:

1. Set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D\renderer to "vulkan" to enable the functionality. Other values that are supported are gl and no3d
   • gl = default, OpenGL
   • no3d = GDI
   • vulkan = vulkan

Certain Direct 3D 11 features are supported in Wine 6.0, including dual-source blending and per render-target according to the release notes.

Additionally, graphics card support has improved in the new release as more graphics cards are supported.

Other major changes in Wine 6.0:

• Support for drawing text using ID3DXFont, ID3D12ShaderReflection and D3DX10GetImageInfoFromMemory().
• Support for "drawing arcs, ellipses, and rounded rectangles using the Direct2D API" added.
• WindowsCodecs support decoding images in DirectDraw Surface and JPEG-XR formats, and encoding images to GIF.
• Vulkan driver supports version 1.2.162 of the Vulkan spec.
• Improved Media Foundation Framework support.
• Video Mixing Renderer improvements.
• Improved Media Detections API support.
• Text console support is reimplemented.

You can check out the entire -- huge -- release notes of Wine 6.0 here.

Closing Words

Each year, Wine's new version is a major step in regards to compatibility; this year is no exception to that. Valve's Proton is based on Wine, and it too will eventually be upgraded to the new version to improve compatibility with games. Linux gamers who install Steam on their devices can play thousands of Windows games using Proton. You can check out our guide on using Proton with Steam to play Steam games. Proton lags behind in releases when compared to vanilla Wine.

Still, if you are using Linux predominantly but want to play Windows games or run Windows apps on the device, Wine and/or Proton are your best bet of doing so.

Now You: Do you use Wine / Proton on Linux?

Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Wine 6.0 is out with better Direct3D support and other improvements appeared first on gHacks Technology News.

Wine is an open-source, free and easy-to-use program that enables Linux users to run Windows-based applications on Unix-like operating systems. Wine is a compatibility layer for installing almost all versions of Windows programs. Wine

The MX Linux team has been released and announced the second point release of its MX Linux 19 “Patito Feo” series with KDE Plasma desktop environment edition for the first time.

MX Linux 19.2 KDE edition ship with KDE Plasma 5.14.5 on top of Debian 10 “buster”, refreshes its new 64-bit ISO edition, AHS (Advanced Hardware Support) which featured first in the previous MX-19.1 release. It comes with the latest Debian kernel 5.6, Mesa 20, and an updated firmware package.

MX Linux 19.2 KDE also includes the usual MX tools, antiX-live-USB-system, and snapshot technology that our users have come to expect from our standard flagship Xfce releases. Adding KDE/plasma to the existing Xfce/MX-Fluxbox desktops will provide for a wider range of user needs and wants.

Download MX Linux 19.2:
Direct : https://sourceforge.net/projects/mx-linux/Final
mirror : https://mxlinux.org/wiki/system/iso-download-mirrors/
Torrent: https://mxlinux.org/torrent-files/

The post MX Linux 19.2 KDE – Features KDE Plasma 5.14 and Based On Debian 10.4 appeared first on Linux Scoop.