Introduction

Embroidered shirts are great custom gifts and can also be a great way to show your love for open source. This tutorial will demonstrate how to design your own custom embroidered polo shirt using Inkscape and Ink/Stitch. Polo shirts are often used for embroidery because they do not tear as easily as t-shirts when pierced by embroidery needles, though with care t-shirts can also be embroidered. This tutorial is a follow on article to Make More with Inkscape and Ink/Stitch and provides complete steps to create your design.

Logo on Front of Shirt

Pictures with only a few colors work well for embroidery. Let us use a public domain black and white SVG image of Tux created by Ryan Lerch and Garret LeSage.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><figcaption>Black and white image of Tux</figcaption></figure>

Download this public domain image, tux-bw.svg, to your computer, and import it into your document as an editable SVG image using File>Import...

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Image of Tux with text to be embroidered</figcaption></figure>

Use a Transparent Background

It is helpful to have a checkerboard background to distinguish background and foreground colors. Click File>Document Properties… and then check the box to enable a checkerboard background.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Dialog box to enable checkerboard document background</figcaption></figure>

Then close the document properties dialog box. You can now distinguish between colors used on Tux and the background color.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Tux can be distinguished from the document background</figcaption></figure>

Use a Single Color For Tux

Type s to use the Select and Transform objects tool, and click on the image of Tux to select it. Then click on Object>Fill and Stroke, in the menu. Type n to use the Edit paths by Nodes tool and click on a white portion of Tux. Within the Fill and Stroke pane change the fill to No paint to make this portion of Tux transparent.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Tux in one color</figcaption></figure>

Thi leaves the black area to be embroidered.

Enable Embroidering of Tux

Now convert the image for embroidery. Type s to use the Select and Transform objects tool and click on the image of Tux to select it again. Choose Extensions>Ink/Stitch>Fill Tools>Break Apart Fill Objects … In the resulting pop up, choose Complex, click Apply, and wait for the operation to complete.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Dialog to Break Apart Fill Objects</figcaption></figure>

For further explanation of this operation, see the Ink/Stitch documentation.

Resize Document

Now resize the area to be embroidered. A good size is about 2.75 inches by 2.75 inches. Press s to use the Select and Transform objects tool, and select Tux, hold down the shift key, and also select any text area. Then choose Object>Transform …, click on Scale in the dialogue box, change the measurements to inches, check the Scale proportionally box and choose a width of 2.75 inches, and click Apply.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Resized drawing</figcaption></figure>

Before saving the design, reduce the document area to just fit the image. Press s to use the Select and Transform objects tool, then select Tux.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Objects selected to determine resize area</figcaption></figure>

Choose File>Document Properties… then choose Resize to content: or press Ctrl+Shift+R

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Dialog to resize page</figcaption></figure>

The document is resized.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Resized document</figcaption></figure>

Save Your Design

You now need to convert your file to an embroidery file. A very portable format is the DST (Tajima Embroidery Format) format, which unfortunately does not have color information, so you will need to indicate color information for the embroidery separately. First save your design as an Inkscape SVG file so that you retain a format that you can easily edit again. Choose File>Save As, then select the Inkscape SVG format and enter a name for your file, for example AnotherAwesomeFedoraLinuxUserFront.svg and save your design. Then choose File>Save As and select the DST file format and save your design. Generating this file requires calculation of stitch locations, this may take a few seconds. You can preview the DST file in Inkscape, but another very useful tool is vpype-embroidery

Install vpype-embroidery on the command line using a Python virtual environment via the following commands:

virtualenv test-vpype
source test-vpype/bin/activate
pip install matplotlib
pip install vpype-embroidery
pip install vpype[all]

Preview your DST file (in this case named AnotherAwesomeFedoraLinuxUserFront.dst which should be replaced by the filename you choose if it is different), using this command:

vpype eread AnotherAwesomeFedoraLinuxUserFront.dst show

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Preview of design created by vpype-embroidery</figcaption></figure>

Check the dimensions of your design, if you need to resize it, you should resize the SVG design file before exporting it as a DST file. Resizing the DST file is not recommended since it contains stitch placement information, regenerate this placement information from the resized SVG file to obtain a high quality embroidered result.

Text on the Back of the Shirt

Now create a message to put on the back of your polo shirt. Create a new Inkscape document using File>New. Then choose Extensions>Ink/Stitch>Lettering.

Choose a font, for example Geneva Simple Sans created by Daniel K. Schneider in Geneva. If you want to resize your text, do so at this point using the scale section of the dialog box since resizing it once it is in Inkscape will distort the resulting embroidered pattern. Add your text,

Another Awesome 
Fedora Linux User

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Lettering creation dialog box</figcaption></figure>

A preview will appear, click on Quit

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Preview image of text to be embroidered</figcaption></figure>

Then click on Apply and Quit in the lettering creation dialog box. Your text should appear in your Inkscape document.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Resulting text in Inkscape document</figcaption></figure>

Create a checkered background and resize the document to content by opening up the document properties dialog box File>Document Properties…

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Document properties dialog box</figcaption></figure>

Your document should now be a little larger than your text.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Text in resized document</figcaption></figure>

Clean Up Stitches

Many commercial embroidery machines support jump instructions which can save human time in finishing the embroidered garment. Examine the text preview image. A single continuous thread sews all the letters. Stitches joining the letters are typically removed. These stitches can either be cut by hand after the embroidery is done, or they can be cut by the embroidery machine if it supports jump instructions. Ink/Stitch can add these jump instructions.

Add jump instructions by selecting View>Zoom>Zoom Page to enlarge the view of the drawing. Press s to choose the Select and transform objects tool. Choose Extensions>Ink/Stitch>Commands>Attach Commands to Selected Objects. A dialog box should appear, check just the Trim thread after sewing this object option.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><figcaption>Attach commands dialog</figcaption></figure>

Then click in the drawing area and select the first letter of the text

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><figcaption>Select first letter of the text</figcaption></figure>

Then click Apply, and some cut symbols should appear above the letter.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><figcaption>Scissor symbols above first letter</figcaption></figure>

Repeat this process for all letters.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><figcaption>Separately embroidered letters</figcaption></figure>

Now save your design, as before, in both SVG and DST formats. Check the likely quality of the embroidered text by previewing your DST file (in this case named AnotherAwesomeFedoraLinuxUserBack.dst – replaced this by the filename you chose), using

vpype eread AnotherAwesomeFedoraLinuxUserBack.dst show

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><figcaption>Preview of text to be embroidered created by vpype-embroidery</figcaption></figure>

Check the dimensions of your design, if you need to resize it, you should resize the SVG design file before exporting it as a DST file.

Create a Mockup

To show the approximate placement of your design on the polo shirt create a mockup. You can then send this to an embroidery company with your DST file. The Fedora Design Team has a wiki page with examples of mockups. An example mockup made using Kolourpaint is below.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><figcaption>Mockup image of polo shirt with design</figcaption></figure>

You can also use an appropriately licensed drawing of a polo shirt, for example from Wikimedia Commons.

Example Shirt

Pictures of a finished embroidered polo shirt are below

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><figcaption>Front of embroidered shirt</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><figcaption>Back of embroidered shirt</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><figcaption>Closeup of embroidered Tux</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><figcaption>Closeup of embroidered text</figcaption></figure>

Further Information

A three color image of Tux is also available, but single colors are easiest to achieve good embroidered results with. Adaptation of this shaded multiple color image is required to use it for embroidery. Additional tutorial information is available on the Ink/Stitch website.

Some companies that can do embroidery given a DST file include:

• Pappagallo Clothing Industry based in Cyprus
• Target Solutions based in Ghana
• Marvel Ark based in Kenya
• Core Digital based in South Africa
• Embroidery Your Way based in the USA

Search the internet for machine embroidery services close to you or a hackerspace with an embroidery machine you can use.

This article has benefited from many helpful suggestions from Michael Njuguna of Marvel Ark and Brian Lee of Embroidery Your Way.

The first concerted effort to support accessibility under Linux was undertaken by Sun Microsystems when they decided to use GNOME for Solaris. Sun put together a team focused on building the pieces to make GNOME 2 fully accessible and worked with hardware makers to make sure things like Braille devices worked well. I even heard claims that GNOME and Linux had the best accessibility of any operating system for a while due to this effort. As Sun started struggling and got acquired by Oracle this accessibility effort eventually trailed off with the community trying to pick up the slack afterwards. Especially engineers from Igalia were quite active for a while trying to keep the accessibility support working well.

But over the years we definitely lost a bit of focus on this and we know that various parts of GNOME 3 for instance aren’t great in terms of accessibility. So at Red Hat we have had a lot of focus over the last few years trying to ensure we are mindful about diversity and inclusion when hiring, trying to ensure that we don’t accidentally pre-select against underrepresented groups based on for instance gender or ethnicity. But one area we realized we hadn’t given so much focus recently was around technologies that allowed people with various disabilities to make use of our software. Thus I am very happy to announce that Red Hat has just hired Lukas Tyrychtr, who is a blind software engineer, to lead our effort in making sure Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Workstation has excellent accessibility support!

Anyone who has ever worked for a large company knows that getting funding for new initiatives is often hard and can take a lot of time, but I want to highlight how I was extremely positively surprised at how quick and easy it was to get support for hiring Lukas to work on accessibility. When Jiri Eischmann and I sent the request to my manager, Stef Walter, he agreed to champion the same day, and when we then sent it up to Mike McGrath who is the Vice President of Linux Engineering he immediately responded that he would bring this to Tim Cramer who is our Senior Vice President of Software Engineering. Within a few days we had the go ahead to hire Lukas. The fact that everyone just instantly agreed that accessibility is important and something we as a company should do made me incredibly proud to be a Red Hatter.

What we hope to get from this is not only a better experience for our users, but also to allow even more talented engineers like Lukas to work on Linux and open source software at Red Hat. I thought it would be a good idea here to do a quick interview with Lukas Tyrychtr about the state of accessibility under Linux and what his focus will be.

Christian: Hi Lukas, first of all welcome as a full time engineer to the team! Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Lukas: Hi, Christian. For sure. I am a completely blind person who can see some light, but that’s basically it. I started to be interested in computers around 2009 or so, around my 15th or 16th birthday. First, because of circumstances, I started tinkering with Windows, but Linux came shortly after, mainly because of some pretty good friends. Then, after four years the university came and the Linux knowledge paid off, because going through all the theoretical and practical Linux courses there was pretty straightforward (yes, there was no GUI involved, so it was pretty okay, including some custom kernel configuration tinkering). During that time, I was contacted by Red Hat associates whether I’d be willing to help with some accessibility related presentation at our faculty, and that’s how the collaboration began. And, yes, the hire is its current end, but that’s actually, I hope, only the beginning of a long and productive journey.

Christian: So as a blind person you have first hand experience with the state of accessibility support under Linux. What can you tell us about what works and what doesn’t work?

Lukas: Generally, things are in pretty good shape. Braille support on text-only consoles basically just always works (except for some SELinux related issues which cropped up). Having speech there is somewhat more challenging, the needed kernel module (Speakup for the curious among the readers) is not included by all distributions, unfortunately it is not included by Fedora, for example, but Arch Linux has it. When we look at the desktop state of affairs, there is basically only a single screen reader (an application which reads the screen content), called Orca, which might not be the best position in terms of competition, but on the other hand, stealing Orca developers would not be good either. Generally, the desktop is usable, at least with GTK, Qt and major web browsers and all recent Electron based applications. Yes, accessibility support receives much less testing than I would like, so for example, a segmentation fault with a running screen reader can still unfortunately slip through a GTK release. But, generally, the foundation works well enough. Having more and naturally sounding voices for speech synthesis might help attract more blind users, but convincing all the players is no easy work. And then there’s the issue of developer awareness. Yes, everything is in some guidelines like the GNOME ones, however I saw much more often than I’d like to for example a button without any accessibility labels, so I’d like to help all the developers to fix their apps so accessibility regressions don’t get to the users, but this will have to improve slowly, I guess.

Christian: So you mention Orca, are there other applications being widely used providing accessibility?

Lukas: Honestly, only a few. There’s Speakup – a kernel module which can read text consoles using speech synthesis, e.g. a screen reader for these, however without something like Espeakup (an Espeak to Speakup bridge) the thing is basically useless, as it by default supports hardware synthesizers, however this piece of hardware is basically a think of the past, e.g. I have never seen one myself. Then, there’s BRLTTY. This piece of software provides braille output for screen consoles and an API for applications which want to output braille, so the drivers can be implemented only once. And that’s basically it, except for some efforts to create an Orca alternative in Rust, but that’s a really long way off. Of course, utilities for other accessibility needs exist as well, but I don’t know much about these.

Christian: What is your current focus for things you want to work on both yourself and with the larger team to address?

Lukas: For now, my focus is to go through the applications which were ported to GTK 4 as a part of the GNOME development cycle and ensure that they work well. It includes adding a lot of missing labels, but in some cases, it will involve bigger changes, for example, GNOME Calendar seems to need much more work. During all that, educating developers should not be forgotten either. With these things out of the way, making sure that no regressions slip to the applications should be addressed by extending the quality assurance and automated continuous integration checks, but that’s a more distant goal.

Christian: Thank you so much for talking with us Lukas, if there are other people interested in helping out with accessibility in Fedora Workstation what is the best place to reach you?

Actually for now the easiest way to reach me is by email at ltyrycht@redhat.com. Be happy to talk to anyone wanting to help with making Workstation great for accessibility.

It is bittersweet to announce that I have decided to move on from my role as the Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator (FCAIC). For me, this role has been full of growth, unexpected challenges, and so much joy. It has been a privilege to help guide our wonderful community through challenges of the last three years. I’m excited to see what the next FCAIC can do for Fedora. If you’re interested in applying, see the FCAIC job posting on Red Hat Jobs and read more about the role below. 

Adapting to Uncertain Times

When I applied back in 2019, a big part of the job description was to travel the globe, connecting with and supporting Fedora communities worldwide. As we all know, that wasn’t possible with the onset of COVID-19 and everything that comes with a pandemic. 

Instead, I learned how to create virtual experiences for Fedora, connect with people solely in a virtual environment, and support contributors from afar. Virtual events have been a HUGE success for Fedora. The community has shown up for those events in such a wonderful way. We have almost tripled our participation in our virtual events since the first Release Party in 2020. We have more than doubled the number of respondents to the Annual Contributor Survey over last year’s turnout. I am proud of the work I have accomplished and even more so how much the community has grown and adapted to a very challenging couple of years.

What’s next for me

As some of you may know, I picked up the Code of Conduct (CoC) work that my predecessor Brian Exelbierd (Bex) started for Fedora. After the Fedora Council approved the new CoC, I then got started on additional pieces of related work: Supplemental Documentation and Moderation Guidelines. I am also working on expanding the small Code of Conduct Committee(CoCC) to include more community members. As a part of the current CoCC, I have helped to deal with the majority of the incidents throughout my time as FCAIC. 

Because of my experience with all this CoC work, I will be moving into a new role inside of Red Hat’s OSPO: Code of Conduct Specialist. I will be assisting other Community Architects (like the FCAIC role) to help roll out CoC’s and governance around them, as well as collaborating with other communities to develop a Community of Practice around this work. I am excited and determined to take on this new challenge and very proud to be a part of an organization that values work that prioritizes safety and inclusion. 

What’s next for Fedora

This is an amazing opportunity for the Fedora community to grow in new and exciting ways. Every FCAIC brings their own approach to this role as well as their own ideas, strengths, and energy. I will be working with Matthew Miller, Ben Cotton, and Red Hat to help hire and onboard the new Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator. I will continue as FCAIC until we hire someone new, and will help transition them into the role. Additionally, I will offer support, advice, and guidance as others who have moved on have done for me. I am eager to see who comes next and how I can help them become a success. And, as I have for years prior to my tenure as FCAIC, I will continue to participate in the community, albeit in different ways. 

This means we are looking for a new FCAIC! Do you love Fedora? Do you want to help support and grow the community full time? This is the core of what the FCAIC does. The job description has a list of the primary job responsibilities and required skills- but that is just a taste of what is required and what it is to support the Fedora community full time. Day-to-day work includes working with the Mindshare Committee, managing the Fedora budget, and being a part of many other teams and in many places. You should be ready and excited to write about Fedora’s achievements, policies, as well as generate strategies to help the community succeed. And, of course, there is event planning and support (Flock, Nest, Hatch, Release Parties, etc). It can be tough work, but it is a lot of fun and wonderfully rewarding to help Fedora thrive. 

How to apply

Do you enjoy working with people all over the world, with a variety of skills and interests? Are you good at setting long term goals and seeing them through to completion? Can you set priorities, follow through, and know when to say “no” in order to focus on the most important tasks for success? Are you excited about building not only a successful Linux distribution, but also a healthy project? Is Fedora’s mission deeply important to you? If you said “yes” to these questions, you might be a great candidate for the FCAIC role. If you think you’re a great fit, please apply online, or contact Marie Nordin, or Jason Brooks.

One of the key aspects of system security is encrypting storage at rest. Without encrypted storage, any time a storage device leaves your presence it can be at risk. The most obvious scenario where this can happen is if a storage device (either just the storage device or the entire system, server, or laptop) is lost or stolen.

However, there are other scenarios that are a concern as well: perhaps you have a storage device fail, and it is replaced under warranty — many times the vendor will ask you to return the original device. If the device was encrypted, it is much less of a concern to return it back to the hardware vendor.

Another concern is anytime your storage device is out of sight there is a risk that the data is copied or cloned off of the device without you even being aware. Again, if the device is encrypted, this is much less of a concern.

Fedora (and other Linux distributions) include the Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) functionality to support disk encryption. LUKS is easy to use, and is even integrated as an option in the Fedora Anaconda installer.

However there is one challenge that frequently prevents people from implementing LUKS on a large scale, especially for the root filesystem: every single time you reboot the host you generally have to manually access the console and type in the LUKS passphrase so the system can boot up.

If you are running Fedora on a single laptop, this might not be a problem, after all, you probably are sitting in front of your laptop any time you reboot it. However, if you have a large number of Fedora instances, this quickly becomes impractical to deal with.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><figcaption>If you have hundreds of systems, it is impractical to manually type the LUKS passphrase on each system on every reboot</figcaption></figure>

You might be managing Fedora systems that are at remote locations, and you might not even have good or reliable ways to access a console on them. In this case, rebooting the hosts could result in them not coming up until you or someone else travels to their location to type in the LUKS passphrase.

This article will cover how to implement a solution to enable automated LUKS volume unlocking (and the process to implement these features will be done using automation as well!)

Overview of Clevis and Tang

Clevis and Tang are an innovative solution that can help with the challenge of having systems with encrypted storage boot up without manual user intervention on every boot. At a high level, Clevis, which is installed on the client systems, can enable LUKS volumes to be unlocked without user intervention as long as the client system has network access to a configurable number of Tang servers.

The basic premise is that the Tang server(s) are on an internal/private or otherwise secured network, and if the storage devices are lost, stolen, or otherwise removed from the environment, that they would no longer have network access to the Tang server(s), and thus no longer automatically unlock automatically at boot.

Tang is stateless and doesn’t require authentication or even TLS, which means it is very lightweight and easy to configure, and can run from a container. In this article, I’m only setting up a single Tang server, however it is also possible to have multiple Tang servers in an environment, and to configure the number Tang servers the Clevis clients must connect to in order to unlock the encrypted volume. For example, you could have three Tang servers, and require the Clevis clients to be able to connect to at least two of the three Tang servers.

For more information on how Tang and Clevis work, refer to the GitHub pages: Clevis and Tang, or for an overview of the inner workings of Tang and Clevis, refer to the Securing Automated Decryption New Cryptography and Techniques FOSDEM talk.

Overview of Linux System Roles

Linux System Roles is a set of Ansible Roles/Collections that can help automate the configuration and management of many aspects of Fedora, CentOS Stream, RHEL, and RHEL derivatives. Linux System Roles is packaged in Fedora as an RPM (linux-system-roles) and is also available on Ansible Galaxy (as both roles and as a collection). For more information on Linux System Roles, and to see a list of included roles, refer to the Linux System Roles project page.

Included in the list of Linux System Roles are the nbde_client, nbde_server, and firewall roles that will be used in this article. The nbde_client and nbde_server roles are focused on automating the implementation of Clevis and Tang, respectively. The “nbde” in the role names stands for network bound disk encryption, which is another term to refer to using Clevis and Tang for automated unlocking of LUKS encrypted volumes. The firewall role can automate the implementation of firewall settings, and will be used to open a port in the firewall on the Tang server.

Demo environment overview

In my environment, I have a Raspberry Pi, running Fedora 36 that I will install Linux System Roles on and use as my Ansible control node. In addition, I’ll use this same Raspberry Pi as my Tang server. This device is configured with the pi.example.com hostname.

In addition, I have four other systems in my environment: two Fedora 36 systems, and two CentOS Stream 9 systems, named fedora-server1.example.com, fedora-server2.example.com, c9s-server1.example.com, and c9s-server2.example.com. Each of these four systems has a LUKS encrypted root filesystem and currently the LUKS passphrase must be manually typed in each time the systems boot up.

I’ll use the nbde_server and firewall roles to install and configure Tang on my pi.example.com system, and use the nbde_client role to install and configure Clevis on my four other systems, enabling them to automatically unlock their encrypted root filesystem if they can connect to the pi.example.com Tang system.

Installing Linux System Roles and Ansible on the Raspberry Pi

I’ll start by installing the linux-system-roles package on the pi.example.com host, which will act as my Ansible control node. This will also install ansible-core and several other packages as dependencies. These packages do not need to be installed on the other four systems in my environment (which are referred to as managed nodes).

$ sudo dnf install linux-system-roles

SSH keys and sudo configuration need to be configured so that the control node host can connect to each of the managed nodes in the environment and escalate to root privileges.

Defining the Ansible inventory file

Still on the pi.example.com host, I’ll create an Ansible inventory file to group the five systems in my environment into two Ansible inventory groups. The nbde_servers group will contain a list of hosts that I would like to configure as Tang servers (which in this example is only the pi.example.com host), and the nbde_clients group will contain a list of hosts that I would like to configure as Clevis clients. I’ll name this inventory file inventory.yml and it contains the following content:

all:
  children:
    nbde_servers:
      hosts:
        pi.example.com:
    nbde_clients:
      hosts:
        fedora35-server1.example.com:
        fedora35-server2.example.com:
        c9s-server1.example.com:
        c9s-server2.example.com:

Creating Ansible Group variable files

Ansible variables are set to specify what configuration should be implemented by the Linux System Roles. Each role has a README.md file that contains important information on how to use each role, including a list of available role variables. The README.md files for the nbde_server, nbde_client, and firewall roles are available in the following locations, respectively:

• /usr/share/doc/linux-system-roles/nbde_server/README.md
• /usr/share/doc/linux-system-roles/nbde_client/README.md
• /usr/share/doc/linux-system-roles/firewall/README.md

I’ll create a group_vars directory with the mkdir group_vars command. Within this directory, I’ll create a nbde_servers.yml file and nbde_clients.yml file, which will define, respectively, the variables that should be set for systems listed in the nbde_servers inventory group and the nbde_clients inventory group.

The nbde_servers.yml file contains the following content, which will instruct the firewall role to open TCP port 80, which is the default port used by Tang:

firewall:
  - port: ['80/tcp']
    state: enabled

The nbde_clients.yml file contains the following content:

nbde_client_bindings:
  - device: /dev/vda2
    encryption_password: !vault |
          $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
          62666465373138636165326639633...
    servers:
      - http://pi.example.com

Under nbde_client_bindings, device specifies the backing device of the encrypted root filesystem on the four managed nodes. The encryption_password specifies a current LUKS passphrase that is required to configure Clevis. In this example, I’ve used ansible-vault to encrypt the string rather than place the LUKS passphrase in clear text. And finally, under servers, a list of Tang servers that Clevis should bind to are specified. In this example, the Clevis clients will be configured to bind to the pi.example.com Tang server.

Creating the playbook

I’ll create a simple Ansible playbook, named nbde.yml that will call the firewall and nbde_server roles for systems in the nbde_servers inventory group, and call the nbde_client role for systems in the nbde_clients group:

- name: Open firewall for Tang
  hosts: nbde_servers
  roles:
    - linux-system-roles.firewall

- name: Deploy NBDE Tang server
  hosts: nbde_servers
  roles:
    - linux-system-roles.nbde_server

- name: Deploy NBDE Clevis clients
  hosts: nbde_clients
  roles:
    - linux-system-roles.nbde_client

At this point, I have the following files and directories created:

• inventory.yml
• nbde.yml
• group_vars/nbde_clients.yml
• group_vars/nbde_servers.yml

Running the playbook

The nbde.yml playbook can be run with the following command:

$ ansible-playbook nbde.yml -i inventory.yml --ask-vault-pass -b

The -i flag specifies which inventory file should be used, the –ask-vault-pass flag will prompt for the Ansible Vault password to decrypt the encryption_password variable, and the -b flag specifies that Ansible should escalate to root privileges.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><figcaption>play recap output from ansible-playbook command showing playbook successfully completed</figcaption></figure>

Validating the configuration

To validate the configuration, I rebooted each of my four managed nodes that were configured as Clevis clients of the Raspberry Pi Tang server. Each of the four managed nodes boots up and briefly pauses on the LUKS passphrase prompt:

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><figcaption>Systems boot up to LUKS passphrase prompt, and automatically continue booting after a brief pause</figcaption></figure>

However, after the brief delay, each of the four systems continued booting up without requiring me to enter the LUKS passphrase.

Conclusion

If you would like to secure your data at rest with LUKS encryption, but need a solution that enables systems to boot up without intervention, consider implementing Clevis and Tang. Linux System Roles can help you implement Clevis and Tang, as well as a number of other aspects of your system, in an automated manner.

First-person shooter video games are a great proving ground for strategies that make you finish on the top, reflexes that help you to shoot before getting shot and agility that adjusts you to whatever a situation throws at you. Add the open-ended nature brought in by large intricately-designed worlds into the mix, and it dials the player experience to eleven and, with that, it also becomes great evidence of what a platform is capable of. Needless to say, I have been a great fan of open-world first-person shooter games. And Ubisoft’s Far Cry series happens to be the one which remains closest to my heart. So I tried the (second) most recent release in the long-running series, Far Cry 5 which came out in 2018, on Fedora Workstation 35 to see how it performs.

Just like in my previous case study, the testing hardware has an AMD RDNA2-based GPU, where the video game was configured to the highest possible graphical preset to stress the hardware into performing as much as its limiting factor. To ensure that we have a fair comparison, I set up two environments – one with Windows 10 Pro 21H2 and one with Fedora Workstation 35, both having up-to-date drivers and support software such as MSI Afterburner or MangoHUD for monitoring, Steam or Lutris for video game management and OBS Studio for footage recording. Adding to that, the benchmarks were ensured to be both representatives of a common gameplay scenario and variable enough to address resolution scaling and HD textures.

<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><figcaption>Cover art for “Far Cry 5”, Ubisoft, fair use, via Wikimedia Commons</figcaption></figure>

Before we get into some actual performance testing and comparison results, I would like to go into detail about the video game that is at the centre of this case study. Far Cry 5 is a first-person action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Toronto. The player takes the role of an unnamed junior deputy sheriff who is trapped in Hope County, a fictional region based in Montana and has to fight against a doomsday cult to take back the county from the grasp of its charismatic and powerful leader. The video game has been well received for the inclusion of branching storylines, role-playing elements and side quests, and is optimized enough to be a defining showcase of what the underlying hardware and platform are capable of.

Preliminary

Framerate

The first test that was performed had a direct implication on how smooth the playing experience would be across different platforms but on the same hardware configuration.

Without HD textures

On a default Far Cry 5 installation, I followed the configuration stated above but opted out of the HD textures pack to warm up the platforms with a comparatively easier test. Following are the results.

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1. On average, the video game had around a whopping 59.25% more framerate on Fedora Workstation 35 than on Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
2. To ensure an overall consistent performance, both the minimum and maximum framerates were also noted to monitor dips and rises.
3. The minimum framerates on Fedora Workstation 35 were ahead by a big 49.10% margin as compared to those on Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
4. The maximum framerates on Fedora Workstation 35 were ahead by a big 62.52% margin as compared to those on Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
5. The X11 display server had roughly 0.52% more minimum framerate as compared to Wayland, which can be taken as a margin of error.
6. The Wayland display server had roughly 3.87% more maximum framerate as compared to X11, which can be taken as a margin of error.

With HD textures

On a default Far Cry 5 installation, I followed the configuration stated above, but this time I enabled the HD textures pack to stress the platforms with a comparatively harder test. Following are the results.

1. On average, the video game had around a whopping 65.63% more framerate on Fedora Workstation 35 than on Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
2. To ensure an overall consistent performance, both the minimum and maximum framerates were also noted to monitor dips and rises.
3. The minimum framerates on Fedora Workstation 35 were ahead by a big 59.11% margin as compared to those on Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
4. The maximum framerates on Fedora Workstation 35 were ahead by a big 64.21% margin as compared to those on Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
5. The X11 display server had roughly 9.77% more minimum framerate as compared to Wayland, which is big enough to be considered.
6. The Wayland display server had roughly 1.12% more maximum framerate as compared to X11, which can be taken as a margin of error.

Video memory usage

The second test that was performed had less to do with the playing experience and more with the efficiency of graphical resource usage. Following are the results.

Without HD textures

On a default Far Cry 5 installation, I followed the configuration stated above but opted out of the HD textures pack to use comparatively lesser video memory across the platforms. Following are the results.

1. On average, Fedora Workstation 35 uses around 31.94% lesser video memory as compared to Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
2. The Wayland display server uses roughly 1.78% more video memory as compared to X11, which can be taken as a margin of error.
3. The video game usage estimated is closer to the actual readings on Fedora Workstation 35 than they are those on Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
4. Adding this to the previous results speaks about how Fedora Workstation 35 performs better while using fewer resources.

With HD textures

On a default Far Cry 5 installation, I followed the configuration stated above but this time I enabled the HD textures pack to stress the platforms by occupying more video memory. Following are the results.

1. On average, Fedora Workstation 35 uses around 22.79% lesser video memory as compared to Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
2. The Wayland display server uses roughly 2.73% more video memory as compared to X11, which can be taken as a margin of error.
3. The video game usage estimated is closer to the actual readings on Fedora Workstation 35 than they are those on Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
4. Adding this to the previous results speaks about how Fedora Workstation 35 performs better while using fewer resources.

System memory usage

The third test that was performed had less to do with the playing experience and more with how other applications can fit in the available memory while the video game is running. Following are the results.

Without HD textures

On a default Far Cry 5 installation, I followed the configuration stated above but opted out of the HD textures pack to warm up the platforms with a comparatively easier test. Following are the results.

1. On average, Fedora Workstation 35 uses around 38.10% lesser system memory as compared to Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
2. The Wayland display server uses roughly 4.17% more system memory as compared to X11, which can be taken as a margin of error.
3. Adding this to the previous results speaks about how Fedora Workstation 35 performs better while using fewer resources.
4. Lesser memory usage by the video game leaves out extra headroom for other applications to run simultaneously with no compromises.

With HD textures

On a default Far Cry 5 installation, I followed the configuration stated above, but this time I enabled the HD textures pack to stress the platforms with a comparatively harder test. Following are the results.

1. On average, Fedora Workstation 35 uses around 33.58% lesser system memory as compared to Windows 10 Pro 21H2.
2. The Wayland display server uses roughly 7.28% more system memory as compared to X11, which is big enough to be considered.
3. Adding this to the previous results speaks about how Fedora Workstation 35 performs better while using fewer resources.
4. Lesser memory usage by the video game leaves out extra headroom for other applications to run simultaneously with no compromises.

Advanced

Without HD textures

On a default Far Cry 5 installation, I followed the previously stated configuration without the HD textures pack and ran the tests with varied resolution multipliers. Following are the results.

Minimum framerates recorded

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1. A great deal of inconsistent performance is visible on Fedora Workstation 35 with both display servers in lower resolution scales.
2. The inconsistencies seem to normalize for the resolution multipliers on and beyond the 1.1x resolution scale for Fedora Workstation 35.
3. Resolution multipliers do not seem to have a great effect on the framerate on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 as much as on Fedora Workstation 35.
4. Although Windows 10 Pro 21H2 misses out on potential performance advantages in lower resolution multipliers, it has been consistent.
5. Records on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 in the 2.0x resolution multiplier appear to be marginally better than those on Fedora Workstation 35.

Maximum framerates recorded

<figure class="wp-block-image"></figure>

1. A small amount of inconsistent performance is visible on Fedora Workstation 35 with both display servers in lower resolution scales.
2. The inconsistencies seem to normalize for the resolution multipliers on and beyond the 1.1x resolution scale for Fedora Workstation 35.
3. Resolution multipliers change starts noticeably affecting performance on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 on a 1.6x scale, beyond which it falls greatly.
4. Although Windows 10 Pro 21H2 misses out on potential performance advantages in lower resolution multipliers, it has been consistent.
5. Records on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 in the 1.6x resolution multiplier and beyond appear to be better than those on Fedora Workstation 35.

Average framerates recorded

<figure class="wp-block-image"></figure>

1. A minor amount of inconsistent performance is visible on Fedora Workstation 35 with both display servers in lower resolution scales.
2. The inconsistencies seem to normalize for the resolution multipliers on and beyond the 1.1x resolution scale for Fedora Workstation 35.
3. Resolution multipliers change starts noticeably affecting performance on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 on a 1.6x scale, beyond which it falls greatly.
4. Although Windows 10 Pro 21H2 misses out on potential performance advantages in lower resolution multipliers, it has been consistent.
5. Records on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 in the 1.9x resolution multiplier and beyond appear to be better than those on Fedora Workstation 35.

With HD textures

On a default Far Cry 5 installation, I followed the previously stated configuration with the HD textures pack and ran the tests with varied resolution multipliers. Following are the results.

Minimum framerates recorded

<figure class="wp-block-image"></figure>

1. A great deal of inconsistent performance is visible on Fedora Workstation 35 with both display servers in lower resolution scales.
2. The inconsistencies seem to normalize for the resolution multipliers on and beyond the 1.5x resolution scale for Fedora Workstation 35.
3. Resolution multipliers do not seem to have a great effect on the framerate on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 as much as on Fedora Workstation 35.
4. Although Windows 10 Pro 21H2 misses out on potential performance advantages in lower resolution multipliers, it has been consistent.
5. Records on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 in the 2.0x resolution multiplier appear to be marginally better than those on Fedora Workstation 35.

Maximum framerates recorded

<figure class="wp-block-image"></figure>

1. A great deal of inconsistent performance is visible on Fedora Workstation 35 with both display servers in lower resolution scales.
2. The inconsistencies seem to normalize for the resolution multipliers on and beyond the 1.0x resolution scale for Fedora Workstation 35.
3. Resolution multipliers change starts noticeably affecting performance on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 on a 1.6x scale, beyond which it falls greatly.
4. Although Windows 10 Pro 21H2 misses out on potential performance advantages in lower resolution multipliers, it has been consistent.
5. Records on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 in the 1.6x resolution multiplier and beyond appear to be better than those on Fedora Workstation 35.

Average framerates recorded

<figure class="wp-block-image"></figure>

1. A minor amount of inconsistent performance is visible on Fedora Workstation 35 with both display servers in lower resolution scales.
2. The inconsistencies seem to normalize for the resolution multipliers on and beyond the 1.1x resolution scale for Fedora Workstation 35.
3. Resolution multipliers change starts noticeably affecting performance on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 on a 1.6x scale, beyond which it falls greatly.
4. Although Windows 10 Pro 21H2 misses out on potential performance advantages in lower resolution multipliers, it has been consistent.
5. Records on Windows 10 Pro 21H2 in the 1.9x resolution multiplier and beyond appear to be better than those on Fedora Workstation 35.

Inferences

If the test results and observations baffle you, please allow me to tell you that you are not the only one who feels like that. For a video game that was created to run on Windows, it is hard to imagine how it ends up performing way better on Fedora Workstation 35, all while using a much lesser amount of system resources at all times. Special attention has been given to noting down the highest highs and lowest lows of framerates to ensure that consistent performance is made available.

But wait a minute – how is it that Fedora Workstation 35 manages to make this possible? Well, while I do not have a clear idea of what exactly goes on behind the scenes, I do have a certain number of assumptions that I suspect might be the reasons attributing to such brilliant visuals, great framerates and efficient resource usage. These can potentially act as starting points for us to understand the features of Fedora Workstation 35 for compatibility layers to make use of.

1. Effective caching of graphical elements and texture assets in the video memory allows for keeping only those data in the memory which are either actively made use of or regularly referenced. The open-source AMD drivers help Fedora Workstation 35 make efficient use of the available frame buffer.
2. Quick and frequent cycling of data elements from the video memory helps to bring down total occupancy per application at any point in time. The memory clocks and shader clocks are left at the application’s disposal by the open-source AMD drivers, and firmware bandwidth limits are all but absent.
3. With AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM) enabled, the CPU is no longer restricted to using only 256MiB of the video memory at a time. A combination of leading-edge kernel and up-to-date drivers makes it available on Fedora Workstation 35 and capable of harnessing the technology to its limits.
4. Extremely low system resource usage by supporting software and background services leaves out a huge majority of them to be used by the applications which need it the most. Fedora Workstation 35 is a lightweight distribution, which does not get in your way and puts the resources on what’s important.
5. Faster loading of data elements to and from the physical storage devices to the system memory is greatly enhanced with the use of high-capacity modern copy-on-write file systems like BTRFS and journaling file systems like EXT4, which happens to be the suggested file system for Fedora Workstation 35.

Performance improvements like these only make me want to indulge more in testing and finding out what else Fedora Workstation is capable of. Do let me know what you think in the comments section below.