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At last week’’s Open Source Summit North America, Robin Ginn, Executive Director of the OpenJS Foundation, relayed a principle her mentor taught: “1+1=3”. No, this isn’t ‘new math,’ it is demonstrating the principle that, working together, we are more impactful than working apart. Or, as my wife and I say all of the time, teamwork makes the dream work. 

This principle is really at the core of open source technology. Turns out it is also how I look at the Open Programmable Infrastructure project. 

Stepping back a bit, as “the new guy” around here, I am still constantly running across projects where I want to dig in more and understand what it does, how it does it, and why it is important. I had that very thought last week as we launched another new project, the Open Programmable Infrastructure Project. As I was reading up on it, they talked a lot about data processing units (DPUs) and infrastructure processing units (IPUs), and I thought, I need to know what these are and why they matter. In the timeless words of The Bobs, “What exactly is it you do here?” 

What are DPUs/IPUs? 

First – and this is important – they are basically the same thing, they just have different names. Here is my oversimplified explanation of what they do.

In most personal computers, you have a separate graphic processing unit(s) that helps the central processing unit(s) (CPU) handle the tasks related to processing and displaying the graphics. They offload that work from the CPU, allowing it to spend more time on the tasks it does best. So, working together, they can achieve more than each can separately. 

Servers powering the cloud also have CPUs, but they have other tasks that can consume tremendous computing  power, say data encryption or network packet management. Offloading these tasks to separate processors enhances the performance of the whole system, as each processor focuses on what it does best. 

In order words, 1+1=3. 

DPUs/IPUs are highly customizable

While separate processing units have been around for some time, like your PC’s GPU, their functionally was primarily dedicated to a particular task. Instead, DPUs/IPUs combine multiple offload capabilities that are highly  customizable through software. That means a hardware manufacturer can ship these units out and each organization uses software to configure the units according to their specific needs. And, they can do this on the fly. 

Core to the cloud and its continued advancement and growth is the ability to quickly and easily create and dispose of the “hardware” you need. It wasn’t too long ago that if you wanted a server, you spent thousands of dollars on one and built all kinds of infrastructure around it and hoped it was what you needed for the time. Now, pretty much anyone can quickly setup a virtual server in a matter of minutes for virtually no initial cost. 

DPUs/IPUs bring this same type of flexibility to your own datacenter because they can be configured to be “specialized” with software rather than having to literally design and build a different server every time you need a different capability. 

What is Open Programmable Infrastructure (OPI)?

OPI is focused on utilizing  open software and standards, as well as frameworks and toolkits, to allow for the rapid adoption and use of DPUs/IPUs. The OPI Project is both hardware and software companies coming together to establish and nurture an ecosystem to support these solutions. It “seeks to help define the architecture and frameworks for the DPU and IPU software stacks that can be applied to any vendor’s hardware offerings. The OPI Project also aims to foster a rich open source application ecosystem, leveraging existing open source projects, such as DPDK, SPDK, OvS, P4, etc., as appropriate.”

In other words, competitors are coming together to agree on a common, open ecosystem they can build together and innovate, separately, on top of. The are living out 1+1=3.

I, for one, can’t wait to see the innovation.

A special thanks to Yan Fisher of Red Hat for helping me understand open programmable infrastructure concepts. He and his colleague, Kris Murphy, have a more technical blog post on Red Hat’s blog. Check it out. 

For more information on the OPI Project, visit their website and start contributing at https://github.com/opiproject/opi.  

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The post Open Programmable Infrastructure: 1+1=3 appeared first on Linux Foundation.

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Google engineers are working on the notion of "memory modes" for the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) with the intent on introducing a "low memory" mode for storage devices that would alter its behavior. Presumably Google is working on this new F2FS feature for low-end Android devices...

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Make a temporary file on Linux with Bash Seth Kenlon Mon, 06/27/2022 - 03:00 Register or Login to like Register or Login to like

When programming in the Bash scripting language, you sometimes need to create a temporary file. For instance, you might need to have an intermediary file you can commit to disk so you can process it with another command. It's easy to create a file such as temp or anything ending in .tmp. However, those names are just as likely to be generated by some other process, so you could accidentally overwrite an existing temporary file. And besides that, you shouldn't have to expend mental effort coming up with names that seem unique. The mktemp command on Fedora-based systems and tempfile on Debian-based systems are specially designed to alleviate that burden by making it easy to create, use, and remove unique files.

Create a temporary file

Both mktemp and tempfile create a temporary file as their default action and print the name and location of the file as output:

$ tempfile
/tmp/fileR5dt6r

$ mktemp
/tmp/tmp.ojEfvMaJEp

Unless you specify a different path, the system places temporary files in the /tmp directory. For mktemp, use the -p option to specify a path:

$ mktemp -p ~/Demo
/home/tux/Demo/tmp.i8NuhzbEJN

For tempfile, use the --directory or -d option:

$ tempfile --directory ~/Demo/
/home/sek/Demo/fileIhg9aX

More Linux resources Linux commands cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Free online course: RHEL technical overview Linux networking cheat sheet SELinux cheat sheet Linux common commands cheat sheet What are Linux containers? Our latest Linux articles Find your temporary file

The problem with using an auto-generated temporary file is that you have no way of knowing what its name is going to be. That's why both commands return the generated file name as output. You can use an interactive shell such as Konsole, GNOME Terminal, or rxvt to use the filename displayed on your terminal to interact with the file.

However, if you're writing a script, there's no way for you to intervene by reading the name of the file and using it in the following commands.

The authors of mktemp and tempfile thought of that problem, and there's an easy fix. The terminal sends output to a stream called stdout. You can capture stdout by setting a variable to the results of a command launched in a subshell:

$ TMPFILE=$(mktemp -p ~/Demo)

$ echo $TMPFILE
/home/tux/Demo/tmp.PjP3g6lCq1

Use $TMPFILE when referring to the file, and it's the same as interacting directly with the file itself.

Create a temporary directory with mktemp

You can also use the mktemp command to create a directory instead of a file:

$ mktemp --directory -p ~/Demo/
/home/tux/Demo/tmp.68ukbuluqI

$ file /home/tux/Demo/tmp.68ukbuluqI
/home/tux/Demo/tmp.68ukbuluqI: directoryCustomize temporary names

Sometimes you might want an element of predictability in even your pseudo-randomly generated filenames. You can customize the names of your temporary files with both commands.

With mktemp, you can add a suffix to your filename:

$ mktemp -p ~/Demo/ --suffix .mine
/home/tux/Demo/tmp.dufLYfwJLO.mine

With tempfile, you can set a prefix and a suffix:

$ tempfile --directory ~/Demo/ \
--prefix tt_ --suffix .mine
/home/tux/Demo/tt_0dfu5q.mineTempfile as touch

You can also set a custom name with tempfile:

$ tempfile --name not_random
not_random

When you use the --name option, it's absolute, ignoring all other forms of customization. In fact, it even ignores the --directory option:

$ tempfile --directory ~/Demo \
--prefix this_is_ --suffix .all \
--name not_random_at
not_random_at

In a way, tempfile can be a substitute for touch and test because it refuses to create a file that already exists:

$ tempfile --name example.txt
open: file exists

The tempfile command isn't installed on all Linux distributions by default, so you must ensure that it exists before you use it as a hack around test in a script.

Install mktemp and tempfile

GNU Core Utils includes the mktemp command. Major distributions include Core Utils by default (it's the same package that contains chmod, cut, du, and other essential commands).

The Debian Utils package includes the tempfile command and is installed by default on most Debian-based distributions and Slackware Linux.

Wrap up

Temporary files are convenient because there's no confusion about whether they're safe to delete. They're temporary, meant to be used as needed and discarded without a second thought. Use them when you need them, and clear them out when you're done.

The mktemp command on Fedora-based systems and tempfile on Debian-based systems are specially designed to alleviate that burden by making it easy to create, use, and remove unique files.

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