Lightning Talks

Lightning talks of the Minidebconf Hamburg 2018

Right, good afternoon

It is the lightning talks sessions at
DebConf Hamburg 2018

We've got seven speakers, and I guess
we'll just get going

Starting with Tobias Platn???,
talking about Debian on Power9.

Yesterday I, hm no, on friday,
I received my new Power9 machine.

A Talos 9

And it has an IBM Power9 processor

So, the only distro that I know that will
work is Debian.

Then, this is a new PowerPC 64 bits
architecture,

that can run in little-endian mode.

I downloaded a Debian installer.

First, I chosed the stable version, but

that crashed during install.

And, then I retried a different version,
a daily version.

And this one, which is based on Buster,
correctly installed.

I can even have a graphical environment,
working out of the box.

And, the installer then complained that
there is no boot partition

for older PowerPCs, and this boot partition is
not needed, since the TalosII

has other newer systems starting with
power7 used petitboot.

So, that needs to be fixed in the Debian
installer,

that it doesn't produce the warning
on Power machines.

And now I have a working Debian
installation,

which I can use.

(thanks) [applause]

Thank you very much, that was very quick.

Next up is Thimothée Jaussoin,

talking about Movim, the XMPP social
platform.

Give him a moment to get set up.

I think it's a bit better this way.

Who already heard about the platform Movim?

OK, so we have a couple of people that
know about the project here.

Just to present you what it could be a
parallel universe

but is actually the current universe we're
living with.

Lots of different chat platforms.

The same thing on social networks.

We keep reinventing the wheel
all the time.

We don't have this problem with e-mails

hopefully actually the e-mail standards
came way before before all of those

proprietary solutions

So we have ??? and Google and Microsoft
are still using SMTP, IMAP, for now.

So everything is compatible, and we have
a lot of clients on top of that.

But for chat, and social networks, it's
not the case.

So the idea of Movim is to build a
social platform.

In there, we can put a little couple of
ingredients.

First, it needs to be Open-Source, for the
transparency, for the fact that you can

have feedback and improvements,
for the security part. Bring some trust

I think that you guys here know about the
advantages of Free Software, and

specially on the communication part,
on social networks, but it's not enough.

We also need to bring control, actually
in this social network.

So it need to be simple and transparent

on the UI but also on the protocol level.

On the really deep below stacks.

So we'll need to have a strong and reliable
encryption,

so don't reinvent also an encryption
- talking about Telegram, here -

And, yeah, need some trusts in sights
here.

I mean a community, and not a company
that you will blindly trust

to take care of all of your communications.

But it's not enough.

It needs to be decentralized. Because
centralized social networks,

even if it's opensource,

if it's only one instance, you have to
still trust the instance. So would like to

deploy your instance, you would like to
trust someone else,

you can only, sometimes, trust only
yourself in seldom cases

Decentralization also brings robustness

So that's too many times that actually
one server is failing, think Signal

had an issue recently, about this kind
of thing there.

The issue was with the Amazon servers,
the whole thing didn't worked

for a couple of hours.

And then, resist against censorship and
control.

Same thing with Telegram, I think in
Russia.

I'm talking more about the IM part, but
it's also applicable to social networks.

It's exactly the same thing, just that the
exchanges of information are a bit different.

So, you need these steps but

all those platforms here

(I just made this conference 3 years
ago, just added Mastodon recently)

Ya! different sorts
of platforms

There is communication between those
platforms, kind of standards that are

starting to come in, especially between
Diaspora and Mastodon,

but there is still a lot of work to do
there.

So, the secret ingredient is about
compatibility, about extensibility.

Don't try to reinvent the wheel again,

don't try to create another social network,

or another IM platform that will have all
those communication troubles.

So, I mean a long-term vision.

And, actually, the secret ingredient
is standardization, in these things.

So, this secret ingredients should
add a couple of features,

support news feeds, communities, IM, chatroom
presences, know who's online, profiles,

video conferencing security, bridges to the Web.

And then it will be real-time.

And, 1 minute?

This protocol actually exists, it's called
XMPP.

So the goal of the project is:
- take XMPP implemented

- and doing a lot of innovation on
top of the project

So, server-side it's a simple XMPP
client, webserver, simple to install

(PHP, MySQL PostgreSQL)

And user-side, it's also super simple
to use, you need simply a browser,

it's responsive, it's light, it's fast and
is built actually for small communities.

There are pods all around the world.

You're really invited to deploy your own
pods.

There is already ten thousands accounts
on the official pod

30 languages

Debian packages coming soon

Thanks to the help of some people
in this room.

And, that's it !

So if you want more information,
everything is on the website,

you can join the chat room.

Or, the twitter.

[applause]

Thank you very much.

Next up is Thomas Lange, Mrfai,
talking about dracut.

Today, I'm not talking about FAI
but about dracut.

dracut is a replacement for initramfs
which is used by most other distributions.

If I'm correct, only Ubuntu and Debian
and derivatives are using initramfs-tools

All other distributions already moved
to dracut.

Today I want to show how you can get
an experience with dracut

without deinstalling initramfs-tools.

Ben Hutchings did some patches, I think
two years ago, so it's possible.

What you have to do, there's a package
called "dracut-core",

which does not conflict with
initramfs-tools.

I have a virtual machine.

So, debian/fai…

On this machine, I will now install
the dracut-core package

and that's it.

We still have one initrd.

And now I can say…

Oh no, first I have to copy the dracut version
and then I can generate

a new initrd with dracut.

dracut uses the usual hooks or module
system,

it does not use the hooks from the initramfs
things but it already includes

a lot of hooks, so for example if you have
a cryptsetup,

you do not need the hooks for
initramfs-tools from the cryptsetup package

because dracut already includes this
and a lot of other things.

After generating a new initrd,
you update your grub and you see

we have now two entries in the grub.

One with the old initrd which was created
by…

the default one is the initrd which is
created by initramfs-tools

and here you have the boot entry for
the new dracut initrd

and it boots up and works.

What we need is that more people are
using it and giving it a try.

In your environment, on your hardware,
does dracut work?

We had a discussion, like 5 years ago, if
Debian…

When will Debian switch from initramfs-tools
to dracut?

And still there's no real need because
initramfs-tools works for everybody

but I think in the long term, we will
switch it,

so please help us, write bug reports

or just give it a try, if it works for you
or not.

That's it.

[Applause]

Next up is TecKids talking about
their organization.

Ok, those of you who attended the
Skolelinux talk already heard about TecKids.

I want to give a few details about what
else we do.

TecKids is a non-profit organization based
in Germany, but

we're working internationally and

we are completely centered around free
software and we do basically everything

concerning free software in education in
the context of children and adolescents,

young people.

More than 50% of our active members
are minors.

There's an "s" missing, sorry.

They are of course not minor but they are
minors.

Sorry, kids, if you are watching this.

They're minors and we are a fully
democratic organization

like in the FOSS spirit

and the most important thing is that we
get children involved with all the parts

of the organization, both operational and
tutoring and workshops

and working with free software projects,
giving presentations.

Normally some children would be here but
as this conference was right in the middle of

schooltime, this was not so easy.

So what do we do.

First of all, we want to get children
interested in programming, in coding,

in technical stuff and also in free software.

This we do by running youth programs
at free software conferences

like the FrOSCon where normally around
100 to 120 children attend and

use Debian and all that cool stuff and
learn what they can do with it.

We do peer learning, so those children
who already know many things and

are very interested, they start tutoring
other children.

Of course we have non-tech fun together,
we are outside,

there is a social program with staying
over night, having a barbecue and

all that stuff that helps building
a community.

Those who are even more interested can get
actively involved in preparing workshops,

organizing events, preparing talks, looking
at open source projects,

helping others get a free messenger
instead of WhatsApp,

working on HowTo, how to spread the word
among youths and all of that.

And then visit conferences and raise
awareness,

this is our presentation team from
the Chemnitz Linux Days

and they are presenting the whole
"can" of free software in education

at our SchulFrei booth which is
"School free" in German.

They are presenting all projects that are
involved in this common booth and

care for free software education.

If you are interested in that, maybe
because you have children or

want to have children or are involved
in education in some way,

there are quite a few things that you
can do.

You can help working on projects, you
can work with mentoring the children

in coding or organisational activities.

You can help spreading the word, also
raising awareness that

many many software projects do have
some involvement with children,

even indirectly, like a web browser
like Firefox,

such applications are used by children and
they may have other needs,

and they may have other views on that,

so it's very important to at least think
about what children or schools or

teachers as well do with this software.

Pardon? One minute, thank you.

We need help with presentations at
conferences,

so not every time the same people have to
get a day off at work and travel to conferences

there's much more manpower needed.

And of course, every ngo, every non-profit
organization is lacking money,

so if you have already donated to Debian
and still have money left,

you might want to give your money to
the future, which is children.

Don't forget donating to Debian.

I don't know if I am shot if I don't say that.

And there's also liberapay, it's a free
donation platform,

just have a look at it and if you want to
help us, actively just go to our web site,

find some communication means or just
talk to someone you find

at any conference who is wearing this
shirt with our logo.

Thank you.

[Applause]

Next up is Thomas Koch, talking about
containers.

Almost ready.

We do have one more space at the end
if anybody feels, you know,

inspired to tell us all the things.

I mean, we did have one very last minute
sign up.

Meanwhile, I guess I can make
announcements while I'm here.

Front desk will be available again
after lunch, as will t-shirts.

Anybody who hasn't had a t-shirt yet,

basically, if you signed up, you're allowed
to get a t-shirt, come see me,

yes, free of charge,

come see me at front desk when it's
open again after lunch.

Because I do know some people been
reticent to come up and, you know,

ask one…

I've probably given effectively
a lightning talk on not giving…

Hello, I'm Thomas Koch, I work for Google,

I work in support for Google Container
Engine, Google kubernetes engine.

Who knows what Kubernetes is?

Oh, so few, ok.

It's a thing to orchestrate containers
on many many nodes,

up to thousands of nodes.

It was started by Google, open sourced
by Google in 2015 I believe.

First contributor was Red Hat, it is 100%
open source, it's written in Go

and by now it has won the market of
managing containers on large nodes.

I just was at the KubeCon in Copenhagen
with 4300 participants and

every company you can imagine has
an offering about Kubernetes.

Just some logos of companies that use or
contribute to Kubernetes

and even more logos and these slides are
outdated, so there are even more.

Kubernetes, you have some masters that
control kubelet on every node.

A kubelet can start containers and can
set up networking stuff

and can set up volumes and the basic
concept of computation,

the basic primitive is a pod.

A pod is one to many containers running
together in one environment

so that you have the possibility to have
sidecars running beside your main containers

that does additional stuff.

It has proven useful in Google's internal
??? container management engine

that you want to have certain containers
always running containers

and sharing resources.

An other important primitive is volumes.

Kubernetes can manage your storage and
provision storage to be accessible

to your containers.

You can combine many parts that provide
the same service to be accessible

under the same IP address and so have
failover enable like this

and of course then you have controlers
that scale your services,

scale down your services, restart failed
pods

or drain nodes that you want to take away

And my question now is what is the role
of Debian in a world where

Kubernetes becomes more and more popular
even if not that many of you have heard about it

I believe that Kubernetes will become
even more popular

and even as a Debian Maintainer, I'm
enthusiastic about how easy it becomes now

to run your stuff in Kubernetes.

But you only need a very minimal host
operating system to install Kubernetes

on your servers, afterwards you need
a bare image, a base image for your container

which is normally also a very minimal image

and you don't do "apt-get install apache2"
anymore to have a web server,

you take an apache container image and then
you extend this image and

put your app onto this image, so you don't
need an apache Debian image anymore

in such a world.

Will we still need this in Debian?

However, nothing is perfect.

On KubeCon, I also saw companies offering

"Oh, we scan you container images for
outdated libraries" and

you have long times to update your cluster
because all the containers need to be stopped

you download new images, you start whole
new environments

so there are optimizations possible there

and people are wondering

"Ok, where does my stuff come from?
Is it from a trusted source?"

And my crazy thoughts, maybe it's an
opportunity here

if Debian would become a source of trusted
binaries or even container images.

Thank you.

[Applause]

Next up, Pierre Pronchery, talking about
Manticore, DeepState and DeforaOS

Are you pretty much ready?

I think so.

Meanwhile, does anybody know any
dance routines, you know,

just to bridge over the time, because
I'm not going to.

I don't think I know any Jerks.

Hopefully nearly there.

You fling my phone from me.

It's ok, nobody calls me anyway.

I'm afraid I haven't got any more
announcements.

We are pleased to announce that there
are no current announcements available.

The news has been called off.

Do you actually have slides?

I'm wondering if we should swap you around

Ok, right, we have the interval act, an
interpretive dance by Andrew Shadura

on the nature of git crecord being
for the win.

Well, you know, anything to bridge
the time, right?

If in doubt, make the font bigger.

Maybe I should give a lightning talk
about that.

I think I might, just at the very end, I'll
just disguise it as an announcement.

Ready?

There, no.

I prefer that.

Yes, but we don't.

Why?

Did you see what happened earlier?

What happened earlier?

Please use the hand microphone.

Ok.

Alright, listen to a man but not me.

[laughter]

Can you hear me?

So, I'm just going to show you a small
utility I wrote.

Actually, I didn't write it from scratch,
I just ported it from… Anyway.

Let's see, we've got a git diff of

things with a Debian package.

Lot's of changes, and I forgot to commit
them individually.

There's lots of patches and things,

I just want to, somehow, sort this out.

So I just run "git crecord" and suddenly
I can see all the things here.

I can unwrap the diffs…

What's happening with the ???

I can basically select individual bits
of the diff and…

Let's just deselect all things, commit
those, just a few.

There were just a few patches refreshed

so I'm going to commit them now,
yes, like refresh patches.

Let's say just "Refresh", just enough.

Oh, mmh.

It's not going to work, because I haven't
got a card

and I forgot to disable the…

I don't think I can, I don't remember,
I probably can't disable PGP signing unfortunately

it's not implemented yet.

Anyway.

Using this thing you can, it's better than…

How is it properly called.

It's better than the builtin git thing ...

I can't even remember it's name.

That one

I didn't exactly hear exactly what he said,
like "git patch something"

"git add --patch"

And there's an other one which is…

There's one a bit more interactive and
one which is a bit less interactive.

This is mega interactive and there
will be more features.

It is actually, it was originally written
for mercurial

and this was a thing I really missed
when I had to use git

and now I don't have to anymore.

This is it.

It's in Debian, you can apt install it
if you prefer.

It's in Debian, you can apt install it
if you prefer,

or you can install it from source and
there would be more features later.

That's it.

Thank you

[Applause]

Now, Pierre Pronchery talking about
all the things that I said

he was going to talk about earlier.

One moment please.

[Applause]

Sorry about that, I didn't really plan
for this,

so I made the slides 5 minutes ago.

So, I'm Pierre Pronchery, thank you
for having me,

even if I'm actually an officiel NetBSD
developer,

but I'm been using Debian since 1999,
so maybe I'm alowed,

I'm also a security consultant, interested
in Kernel development,

security integration, and so on.

What you cannot see on the slides
right now is that

I'm also on the board of directors
of NetBSD.

So actually I'm in a good position to talk
about the project if you'd like to.

I would like to talk to you about Manticore
today.

It's a symbolic execution tool,

basically, it uses a CPU emulator, which
can be hardware assisted of course,

to run and analyze programs or algorithms,
so parts of programs on a simulated system

and one of the aims is actually
to make them crash

so to make extensive fuzzing and be very
efficient at fuzzing by possibly tracing

instructions and so on, whatever is going
on inside the program.

It supports static Linux binaries in 32-bits
and 64-bits modes,

also it supports ARM 32-bits, support is
ongoing for ARM 64-bits,

it also works with Ethereum bytecode.

There are official releases on GitHub,
it's already packaged in PkgSrc by myself

and I'm actually looking for volunteers
to package it for Debian

or possibly help me to do so.

I'm actually sponsored by Trail of Bits,
the developer of Manticore,

to work on this, which is also why
I'm here.

The companion to Manticore is called
DeepState,

it's specifically meant for Unit Testing
with symbolic execution.

It supports not just Manticore but also
an other backend for analyzing

running binaries,

It's called angr, this other backend,
which was developed as a side node

for the Cyber Grand challenge
of DARPA last year.

DeepState is currently packaged
in 2 separate packages in PkgSrc

by myself again,

unfortunately not yet fully upstream
in PkgSrc,

but basically I made one package with
??? binaries and then the Python bindings.

This is also on GitHub but with no official
release yet,

because this is a very young project still

so I'm also for a volunteer in Debian
to help me package that.

And then, a shameless addition, I'm also
a developer of, the main developer of

DeforaOS, an open source desktop
environment, and with some more parts

in the project,

I have about 50 repositories now in this.

I'm therefore also looking for volunteers
to package that into Debian,

there are still projects we haven't
packaged yet, as far as I know.

So, since I'm here, I figured I could
as well get my PGP key signed,

I suppose it's one of the steps to become
a developer

and if there are more, I've heard
there are plenty,

then please help me out with this, I'll
welcome any assistance doing that.

Alright. Thank you.

[Applause]

Thank you very much.

I guess that's it.

The next lightning talk session that I'm
aware of is at DebConf18 in Taiwan.

I hope to see as many of you as possible
there.

Off you go, lunch time.

[Applause]