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Infra and RelEng Update – Week 17

Posted by Fedora Community Blog ( Fedora Account System Username

admin ) on 2025-04-25 14:49:57 UTC

This is a weekly report from the I&R (Infrastructure & Release Engineering) Team. We provide you both infographic and text version of the weekly report. If you just want to quickly look at what we did, just look at the infographic. If you are interested in more in depth details look below the infographic.

Week: 21st – 25th April 2025

Infrastructure & Release Engineering

The purpose of this team is to take care of day to day business regarding CentOS and Fedora Infrastructure and Fedora release engineering work.
It’s responsible for services running in Fedora and CentOS infrastructure and preparing things for the new Fedora release (mirrors, mass branching, new namespaces etc.).
List of planned/in-progress issues

Fedora Infra

CentOS Infra including CentOS CI

Release Engineering

List of new releases of apps maintained by I&R Team

If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on matrix.

The post Infra and RelEng Update – Week 17 appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

Enabling system-wide DNS over TLS

Posted by Fedora Magazine ( Fedora Account System Username

admin ) on 2025-04-25 08:00:00 UTC

This article will guide you to enforcing DoT (DNS over TLS) on your running system and at boot time. Support is avaliable in Fedora 42. It will also guide you to set up encrypted DNS for system installation, if you want to try it with current Fedora Rawhide (Fedora 43).

Background

Traditionally, DNS queries are transferred over unencrypted datagrams through UDP port 53. This unencrypted nature provides a potential attack vector when an attacker is able to easily capture and modify DNS requests and responses. This can be mitigated by using encrypted DNS protocols such as DNS over TLS (DoT) and DNS over HTTPS (DoH).

Fedora has built in support for DNS over TLS through systemd-resolved, which is the default DNS resolver since Fedora 33. It is also possible to configure enforced or opportunistic DoT via DNSoverTLS option in resolved.conf. However, this only enables DNS encryption for system runtime. This is not enough on Zero Trust Networks where all DNS communication has to be encrypted for system runtime as well as during boot time for network boots and during system installation.

A Red Hat working group was tasked to deliver system-wide support for encrypted DNS that would satisfy the requirements for Zero Trust Networks. The latest bits landed in Fedora 42. (At this time installation support is present only in current Rawhide, future Fedora 43). While the generic idea is similar to what systemd-resolved does – it runs a local caching DNS resolver that accepts local unencrypted queries and forwards them over an encrypted channel to the upstream DNS servers. At this time systemd-resolved remains controversial and there is not much development activity. Therefore, after discussion with systemd developers, we decided to rely on a different service – unbound. However, we do plan to implement support for systemd-resolved in the future and give users a choice.

Enable DoT during system runtime

Encrypted DNS is fully integrated within NetworkManager using its new dnsconfd DNS plugin. This plugin talks to dnsconfd service, which provides a D-Bus API to configure a local DNS resolver. Only unbound is supported at the moment, but more backends will be added in the future. Dedicating the DNS configuration to a standalone service helps NetworkManager focus solely on obtaining the settings. This leaves the peculiarities of individual DNS backends to be dealt with inside dnsconfd.

Install Required Packages

Only the dnsconfd package needs to be installed as NetworkManager is already installed in Fedora by default. This package will also pull in dependencies such as unbound.

$ sudo dnf install dnsconfd
$ sudo systemctl enable --now dnsconfd

Configure NetworkManager

The next step is to configure the NetworkManager. The following snippet sets the server to Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 and mode to exclusive. This means that this and only this server will be used for all connections.

$ cat /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/global-dot.conf
[main]
dns=dnsconfd

[global-dns]
resolve-mode=exclusive

[global-dns-domain-*]
servers=dns+tls://1.1.1.1#one.one.one.one

$ sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

Installing custom CA certificate

Some DNS servers require a custom CA certificate bundle which can be installed into the default location /etc/pki/dns/extracted/pem/tls-ca-bundle.pem. Note that the dnsconfd service requires restart as well, if this file is changed.

$ cat /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/global-dot.conf
[main]
dns=dnsconfd

[global-dns]
resolve-mode=exclusive

[global-dns-domain-*]
servers=dns+tls://10.0.0.100#custom.dns.example

$ cat <<EOF > /etc/pki/dns/extracted/pem/tls-ca-bundle.pem
----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
… custom.dns.example CA certificate
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
EOF

$ sudo systemctl restart dnsconfd
$ sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

Enable DoT during system boot time

In order to enable encrypted DNS during system boot time, it is necessary to configure the initram DNS using specific kernel arguments and install the dnsconfd-dracut package. After this the initram image must be regenerated.

Install Required Packages

# dnf install dnsconfd-dracut

Set kernel arguments

# Select DoT DNS server
KERNELARGS="rd.net.dns=dns+tls://1.1.1.1#one.one.one.one"

# Only our DoT server will be used for all connections
KERNELARGS+=" rd.net.dns-resolve-mode=exclusive"

# Use dnsconfd NetworkManager plugin
KERNELARGS+=" rd.net.dns-backend=dnsconfd"

# Update kernel arguments
grubby --args "$KERNELARGS" --update-kernel 0

Regenerate the initram image

The initram image can be regenerated with various tools (like dracut), but simply reinstalling the current kernel package is the simplest solution. It will make certain that dnsconfd and any custom CA certificates are included in the image.

# dnf reinstall kernel-core

However, note that this will regenerate initram only for the latest kernel. If an older kernel is required, it is recommended to call dracut directly and pass the desired kernel in its command line arguments.

# dracut -f --kver="$KERNEL_VERSION"

Enable DoT for system installation

It is possible to enable encrypted DNS during system installation in the current Fedora Rawhide (43). The only thing that is required is to pass additional kernel arguments to the installer. The installer will take care of everything and encrypted DNS will be configured for the system installation. The configuration will also be installed on the system so it will be automatically set up for the installed system as well as for the boot process. The arguments are the same as described in “Enable DoT during system boot time”, that is:

… rd.net.dns=dns+tls://1.1.1.1#one.one.one.one rd.net.dns-resolve-mode=exclusive rd.net.dns-backend=dnsconfd"

If required, a custom CA certificate bundle can be installed with a new %certificate kickstart directive.

%certificate --dir /etc/pki/dns/extracted/pem/ --filename tls-ca-bundle.pem
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
... custom CA certificate
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
%end

Enable DoT in FreeIPA

FreeIPA is an open source centralized Identity Management solution that provides its own integrated DNS service. As of Fedora 42, it supports encrypted DNS as well. This is either in a strict mode, where non-encrypted DNS is completely disabled or in a relaxed mode, where both encrypted and non-encrypted protocols are allowed.

For certificate management, Administrators can either provide their own TLS certificates or allow FreeIPA to issue and manage them via its Custodia subsystem. This flexibility enables seamless integration into both enterprise-managed and automated deployments.

Install Required Packages

The integration of DoT into FreeIPA focuses on new deployments and encapsulates the encrypted DNS functionality in dedicated subpackages. These packages are freeipa-client-encrypted-dns and freeipa-server-encrypted-dns. This modular approach ensures that existing installations remain unaffected unless these components are explicitly installed.

$ sudo dnf install freeipa-server-encrypted-dns freeipa-client-encrypted-dns

Fresh installation

To set up FreeIPA with DoT on Fedora, simply install, deploy, and use FreeIPA as usual, but include the relevant encrypted DNS parameters when deploying. This applies to servers, replicas, and clients alike. The new functionality integrates seamlessly into standard installation workflows for new environments.

As mentioned before, administrators can either provide their own TLS certificates or allow FreeIPA to issue and manage them via its Custodia subsystem.

Using your own certificates:

For testing purposes, you can generate certificates using openssl.

$ openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout /etc/pki/tls/certs/privkey.pem -x509 -days 36500 -out /etc/pki/tls/certs/certificate.pem -subj "/C=US/ST=NRW/L=Earth/O=CompanyName/OU=IT/CN=master.ipa.test/emailAddress=email@example.com" && chown named:named /etc/pki/tls/certs/privkey.pem /etc/pki/tls/certs/certificate.pem

Use this generated certificate, as shown below, when deploying FreeIPA server by using –dns-over-tls-cert and –dns-over-tls-key, respectively. If these options are empty, a new certificate will be requested from IPA CA.

$ sudo ipa-server-install \
         --setup-dns \
         --dns-over-tls \
         --no-dnssec-validation \
         --dot-forwarder "1.1.1.1#one.one.one.one" \
         --auto-reverse \
         --domain ipa.test \
         --realm IPA.TEST \
         --hostname master.ipa.test \
         --dns-over-tls-cert /etc/pki/tls/certs/certificate.pem \
         --dns-over-tls-key /etc/pki/tls/certs/privkey.pem \
         -p Secret123 -a Secret123 -U

Existing installations

For existing deployments, administrators must take explicit action to enable DoT. This involves upgrading and installing the required packages (freeipa-client-encrypted-dns and freeipa-server-encrypted-dns). After that the ipa-dns-install commands are issued to include the encrypted DNS options. Care should be taken to evaluate the environment and ensure compatibility before enabling the new functionality.

$ sudo ipa-dns-install --dns-over-tls --dot-forwarder "1.1.1.1#one.one.one.one"

🎲 PHP version 8.3.20RC1 and 8.4.6RC1

Posted by Remi Collet ( Fedora Account System Username

remi ) on 2025-03-28 06:06:00 UTC

Release Candidate versions are available in the testing repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS / Alma / Rocky and other clones) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for parallel installation, the perfect solution for such tests, and as base packages.

RPMs of PHP version 8.4.6RC1 are available

as base packages in the remi-modular-test for Fedora 40-42 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8
as SCL in remi-test repository

RPMs of PHP version 8.3.20RC1 are available

as base packages in the remi-modular-test for Fedora 40-42 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8
as SCL in remi-test repository

ℹ️ The packages are available for x86_64 and aarch64.

ℹ️ PHP version 8.2 is now in security mode only, so no more RC will be released.

ℹ️ Installation: follow the wizard instructions.

ℹ️ Announcements:

Parallel installation of version 8.4 as Software Collection:

yum --enablerepo=remi-test install php84

Parallel installation of version 8.3 as Software Collection:

yum --enablerepo=remi-test install php83

Update of system version 8.4:

dnf module switch-to php:remi-8.4
dnf --enablerepo=remi-modular-test update php\*

Update of system version 8.3:

dnf module switch-to php:remi-8.3
dnf --enablerepo=remi-modular-test update php\*

ℹ️ Notice:

version 8.4.4RC2 is in Fedora rawhide for QA
EL-10 packages are built using RHEL-10.0-beta and EPEL-10.0
EL-9 packages are built using RHEL-9.5
EL-8 packages are built using RHEL-8.10
oci8 extension uses the RPM of the Oracle Instant Client version 23.7 on x86_64 and aarch64
intl extension uses libicu 74.2
RC version is usually the same as the final version (no change accepted after RC, exception for security fix).
versions 8.3.20 and 8.4.6 are planed for April 10th, in 2 weeks.

Software Collections (php83, php84)

Base packages (php)

🎲 PHP version 8.3.21RC1 and 8.4.7RC1

Posted by Remi Collet ( Fedora Account System Username

remi ) on 2025-04-25 05:29:00 UTC

RPMs of PHP version 8.4.7RC1 are available

as base packages in the remi-modular-test for Fedora 40-42 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8
as SCL in remi-test repository

RPMs of PHP version 8.3.21RC1 are available

as base packages in the remi-modular-test for Fedora 40-42 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8
as SCL in remi-test repository

ℹ️ The packages are available for x86_64 and aarch64.

ℹ️ PHP version 8.2 is now in security mode only, so no more RC will be released.

ℹ️ Installation: follow the wizard instructions.

ℹ️ Announcements:

Parallel installation of version 8.4 as Software Collection:

yum --enablerepo=remi-test install php84

Parallel installation of version 8.3 as Software Collection:

yum --enablerepo=remi-test install php83

Update of system version 8.4:

dnf module switch-to php:remi-8.4
dnf --enablerepo=remi-modular-test update php\*

Update of system version 8.3:

dnf module switch-to php:remi-8.3
dnf --enablerepo=remi-modular-test update php\*

ℹ️ Notice:

version 8.4.4RC2 is in Fedora rawhide for QA
EL-10 packages are built using RHEL-10.0-beta and EPEL-10.0
EL-9 packages are built using RHEL-9.5
EL-8 packages are built using RHEL-8.10
oci8 extension uses the RPM of the Oracle Instant Client version 23.7 on x86_64 and aarch64
intl extension uses libicu 74.2
RC version is usually the same as the final version (no change accepted after RC, exception for security fix).
versions 8.3.21 and 8.4.7 are planed for May 8th, in 2 weeks.

Software Collections (php83, php84)

Base packages (php)

Change to the local firewalls and possible Reboots

Posted by Fedora Infrastructure Status ( Fedora Account System Username

admin ) on 2025-04-24 20:00:00 UTC

We will be applying a change to the firewall on most of our servers and possibly rebooting. Services may go down during the outage window, more likely some dropped/denied packets.

Local Voice Assistant Step 1: An ATOM Echo voice satellite

Posted by Jonathan McDowell ( Fedora Account System Username

u1f35c ) on 2025-04-24 18:34:29 UTC

Back when I setup my home automation I ended up with one piece that used an external service: Amazon Alexa. I’d rather not have done this, but voice control is extremely convenient, both for us, and guests. Since then Home Assistant has done a lot of work in developing the capability of a local voice assistant - 2023 was their Year of Voice. I’ve had brief looks at this in the past, but never quite had the time to dig into setting it up, and was put off by the fact a lot of the setup instructions were just “Download our prebuilt components”. While I admire the efforts to get Home Assistant fully packaged for Debian I accept that’s a tricky proposition, and settle for running it in a venv on a Debian stable container. Voice requires a lot more binary components, and I want to have “voice satellites” in more than one location, so I set about trying to understand a bit better what I was deploying, and actually building the binary bits myself.

This is the start of a write-up of that. I’ll break it into a bunch of posts, trying to cover one bit in each, because otherwise this will get massive. Let’s start with some requirements:

All local processing; no call-outs to external services
Ability to have multiple voice satellites in the house
A desire to do wake word detection on the satellites, to avoid lots of network audio traffic all the time
As clean an install on a Debian stable based system as possible
Binaries built locally
No need for a GPU

My house server is an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G, so my expectation was that I’d have enough local processing power to be able to do this. That turned out to be a valid assumption - speech to text really has come a long way in recent years. I’m still running Home Assistant 2024.3.3 - the last one that supports (but complains about) Python 3.11. Trixie has started the freeze process, so once it releases I’ll look at updating the HA install. For now what I have has turned out to be Good Enough, but I know there have been improvements upstream I’m missing.

Finally, before I get into the details, I should point out that if you just want to get started with a voice assistant on Home Assistant and don’t care about what’s under the hood, there are a bunch of more user friendly details on Home Assistant’s site itself, and they have pre-built images you can just deploy.

My first step was sorting out a “voice satellite”. This is the device that actually has a microphone and speaker and communicates with the main Home Assistant setup. I’d seen the post about a $13 voice assistant, and as a result had an ATOM Echo sitting on my desk I hadn’t got around to setting up.

Here, we ignore a bit about delving into exactly what’s going on under the hood, even if we’re compiling locally. This is a constrained embedded device and while I’m familiar with the ESP32 IDF build system I just accepted that using ESPHome and letting it do it’s thing was the quickest way to get up and running. It is possible to do this all via the web with a pre-built image, but I wanted to change the wake word to “Hey Jarvis” rather than the default “Okay Nabu”, and that was a good reason to bother doing a local build. We’ll get into actually building a voice satellite on Debian in later posts.

I started with the default upstream assistant config and tweaked it a little for my setup:

diff of my configuration tweaks

$ diff -u m5stack-atom-echo.yaml assistant.yaml
--- m5stack-atom-echo.yaml    2025-04-18 13:41:21.812766112 +0100
+++ assistant.yaml  2025-01-20 17:33:24.918585244 +0000
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 substitutions:
-  name: m5stack-atom-echo
+  name: study-atom-echo
   friendly_name: M5Stack Atom Echo
-  micro_wake_word_model: okay_nabu  # alexa, hey_jarvis, hey_mycroft are also supported
+  micro_wake_word_model: hey_jarvis  # alexa, hey_jarvis, hey_mycroft are also supported
 
 esphome:
   name: ${name}
@@ -16,15 +16,26 @@
     version: 4.4.8
     platform_version: 5.4.0
 
+# Enable logging
 logger:
+
+# Enable Home Assistant API
 api:
+  encryption:
+    key: "TGlrZVRoaXNJc1JlYWxseUl0Rm9vbGlzaFBlb3BsZSE="
 
 ota:
   - platform: esphome
-    id: ota_esphome
+    password: "itsnotarealthing"
 
 wifi:
+  ssid: "My Wifi Goes Here"
+  password: "AndThePasswordGoesHere"
+
+  # Enable fallback hotspot (captive portal) in case wifi connection fails
   ap:
+    ssid: "Study-Atom-Echo Fallback Hotspot"
+    password: "ThisIsRandom"
 
 captive_portal:

(I note that the current upstream config has moved on a bit since I first did this, but I double checked the above instructions still work at the time of writing. I end up pinning ESPHome to the right version below due to that.)

It turns out to be fairly easy to setup ESPHome in a venv and get it to build + flash the image for you:

Instructions for building + flashing ESPHome to ATOM Echo

noodles@sevai:~$ python3 -m venv esphome-atom-echo
noodles@sevai:~$ . esphome-atom-echo/bin/activate
(esphome-atom-echo) noodles@sevai:~$ cd esphome-atom-echo/
(esphome-atom-echo) noodles@sevai:~/esphome-atom-echo$  pip install esphome==2024.12.4
Collecting esphome==2024.12.4
  Using cached esphome-2024.12.4-py3-none-any.whl (4.1 MB)
…
Successfully installed FontTools-4.57.0 PyYAML-6.0.2 appdirs-1.4.4 attrs-25.3.0 bottle-0.13.2 defcon-0.12.1 esphome-2024.12.4 esphome-dashboard-20241217.1 freetype-py-2.5.1 fs-2.4.16 gflanguages-0.7.3 glyphsLib-6.10.1 glyphsets-1.0.0 openstep-plist-0.5.0 pillow-10.4.0 platformio-6.1.16 protobuf-3.20.3 puremagic-1.27 ufoLib2-0.17.1 unicodedata2-16.0.0
(esphome-atom-echo) noodles@sevai:~/esphome-atom-echo$ esphome compile assistant.yaml 
INFO ESPHome 2024.12.4
INFO Reading configuration assistant.yaml...
INFO Updating https://github.com/esphome/esphome.git@pull/5230/head
INFO Updating https://github.com/jesserockz/esphome-components.git@None
…
Linking .pioenvs/study-atom-echo/firmware.elf
/home/noodles/.platformio/packages/toolchain-xtensa-esp32@8.4.0+2021r2-patch5/bin/../lib/gcc/xtensa-esp32-elf/8.4.0/../../../../xtensa-esp32-elf/bin/ld: missing --end-group; added as last command line option
RAM:   [=         ]  10.6% (used 34632 bytes from 327680 bytes)
Flash: [========  ]  79.8% (used 1463813 bytes from 1835008 bytes)
Building .pioenvs/study-atom-echo/firmware.bin
Creating esp32 image...
Successfully created esp32 image.
esp32_create_combined_bin([".pioenvs/study-atom-echo/firmware.bin"], [".pioenvs/study-atom-echo/firmware.elf"])
Wrote 0x176fb0 bytes to file /home/noodles/esphome-atom-echo/.esphome/build/study-atom-echo/.pioenvs/study-atom-echo/firmware.factory.bin, ready to flash to offset 0x0
esp32_copy_ota_bin([".pioenvs/study-atom-echo/firmware.bin"], [".pioenvs/study-atom-echo/firmware.elf"])
==================================================================================== [SUCCESS] Took 130.57 seconds ====================================================================================
INFO Successfully compiled program.
(esphome-atom-echo) noodles@sevai:~/esphome-atom-echo$ esphome upload --device /dev/serial/by-id/usb-Hades2001_M5stack_9552AF8367-if00-port0 assistant.yaml 
INFO ESPHome 2024.12.4
INFO Reading configuration assistant.yaml...
INFO Updating https://github.com/esphome/esphome.git@pull/5230/head
INFO Updating https://github.com/jesserockz/esphome-components.git@None
…
INFO Upload with baud rate 460800 failed. Trying again with baud rate 115200.
esptool.py v4.7.0
Serial port /dev/serial/by-id/usb-Hades2001_M5stack_9552AF8367-if00-port0
Connecting....
Chip is ESP32-PICO-D4 (revision v1.1)
Features: WiFi, BT, Dual Core, 240MHz, Embedded Flash, VRef calibration in efuse, Coding Scheme None
Crystal is 40MHz
MAC: 64:b7:08:8a:1b:c0
Uploading stub...
Running stub...
Stub running...
Configuring flash size...
Auto-detected Flash size: 4MB
Flash will be erased from 0x00010000 to 0x00176fff...
Flash will be erased from 0x00001000 to 0x00007fff...
Flash will be erased from 0x00008000 to 0x00008fff...
Flash will be erased from 0x00009000 to 0x0000afff...
Compressed 1470384 bytes to 914252...
Wrote 1470384 bytes (914252 compressed) at 0x00010000 in 82.0 seconds (effective 143.5 kbit/s)...
Hash of data verified.
Compressed 25632 bytes to 16088...
Wrote 25632 bytes (16088 compressed) at 0x00001000 in 1.8 seconds (effective 113.1 kbit/s)...
Hash of data verified.
Compressed 3072 bytes to 134...
Wrote 3072 bytes (134 compressed) at 0x00008000 in 0.1 seconds (effective 383.7 kbit/s)...
Hash of data verified.
Compressed 8192 bytes to 31...
Wrote 8192 bytes (31 compressed) at 0x00009000 in 0.1 seconds (effective 813.5 kbit/s)...
Hash of data verified.

Leaving...
Hard resetting via RTS pin...
INFO Successfully uploaded program.

And then you can watch it boot (this is mine already configured up in Home Assistant):

Watching the ATOM Echo boot

$ picocom --quiet --imap lfcrlf --baud 115200 /dev/serial/by-id/usb-Hades2001_M5stack_9552AF8367-if00-port0
I (29) boot: ESP-IDF 4.4.8 2nd stage bootloader
I (29) boot: compile time 17:31:08
I (29) boot: Multicore bootloader
I (32) boot: chip revision: v1.1
I (36) boot.esp32: SPI Speed      : 40MHz
I (40) boot.esp32: SPI Mode       : DIO
I (45) boot.esp32: SPI Flash Size : 4MB
I (49) boot: Enabling RNG early entropy source...
I (55) boot: Partition Table:
I (58) boot: ## Label            Usage          Type ST Offset   Length
I (66) boot:  0 otadata          OTA data         01 00 00009000 00002000
I (73) boot:  1 phy_init         RF data          01 01 0000b000 00001000
I (81) boot:  2 app0             OTA app          00 10 00010000 001c0000
I (88) boot:  3 app1             OTA app          00 11 001d0000 001c0000
I (96) boot:  4 nvs              WiFi data        01 02 00390000 0006d000
I (103) boot: End of partition table
I (107) esp_image: segment 0: paddr=00010020 vaddr=3f400020 size=58974h (362868) map
I (247) esp_image: segment 1: paddr=0006899c vaddr=3ffb0000 size=03400h ( 13312) load
I (253) esp_image: segment 2: paddr=0006bda4 vaddr=40080000 size=04274h ( 17012) load
I (260) esp_image: segment 3: paddr=00070020 vaddr=400d0020 size=f5cb8h (1006776) map
I (626) esp_image: segment 4: paddr=00165ce0 vaddr=40084274 size=112ach ( 70316) load
I (665) boot: Loaded app from partition at offset 0x10000
I (665) boot: Disabling RNG early entropy source...
I (677) cpu_start: Multicore app
I (677) cpu_start: Pro cpu up.
I (677) cpu_start: Starting app cpu, entry point is 0x400825c8
I (0) cpu_start: App cpu up.
I (695) cpu_start: Pro cpu start user code
I (695) cpu_start: cpu freq: 160000000
I (695) cpu_start: Application information:
I (700) cpu_start: Project name:     study-atom-echo
I (705) cpu_start: App version:      2024.12.4
I (710) cpu_start: Compile time:     Apr 18 2025 17:29:39
I (716) cpu_start: ELF file SHA256:  1db4989a56c6c930...
I (722) cpu_start: ESP-IDF:          4.4.8
I (727) cpu_start: Min chip rev:     v0.0
I (732) cpu_start: Max chip rev:     v3.99 
I (737) cpu_start: Chip rev:         v1.1
I (742) heap_init: Initializing. RAM available for dynamic allocation:
I (749) heap_init: At 3FFAE6E0 len 00001920 (6 KiB): DRAM
I (755) heap_init: At 3FFB8748 len 000278B8 (158 KiB): DRAM
I (761) heap_init: At 3FFE0440 len 00003AE0 (14 KiB): D/IRAM
I (767) heap_init: At 3FFE4350 len 0001BCB0 (111 KiB): D/IRAM
I (774) heap_init: At 40095520 len 0000AAE0 (42 KiB): IRAM
I (781) spi_flash: detected chip: gd
I (784) spi_flash: flash io: dio
I (790) cpu_start: Starting scheduler on PRO CPU.
I (0) cpu_start: Starting scheduler on APP CPU.
[I][logger:171]: Log initialized
[C][safe_mode:079]: There have been 0 suspected unsuccessful boot attempts
[D][esp32.preferences:114]: Saving 1 preferences to flash...
[D][esp32.preferences:143]: Saving 1 preferences to flash: 0 cached, 1 written, 0 failed
[I][app:029]: Running through setup()...
[C][esp32_rmt_led_strip:021]: Setting up ESP32 LED Strip...
[D][template.select:014]: Setting up Template Select
[D][template.select:023]: State from initial (could not load stored index): On device
[D][select:015]: 'Wake word engine location': Sending state On device (index 1)
[D][esp-idf:000]: I (100) gpio: GPIO[39]| InputEn: 1| OutputEn: 0| OpenDrain: 0| Pullup: 0| Pulldown: 0| Intr:0 

[D][binary_sensor:034]: 'Button': Sending initial state OFF
[C][light:021]: Setting up light 'M5Stack Atom Echo 8a1bc0'...
[D][light:036]: 'M5Stack Atom Echo 8a1bc0' Setting:
[D][light:041]:   Color mode: RGB
[D][template.switch:046]:   Restored state ON
[D][switch:012]: 'Use listen light' Turning ON.
[D][switch:055]: 'Use listen light': Sending state ON
[D][light:036]: 'M5Stack Atom Echo 8a1bc0' Setting:
[D][light:047]:   State: ON
[D][light:051]:   Brightness: 60%
[D][light:059]:   Red: 100%, Green: 89%, Blue: 71%
[D][template.switch:046]:   Restored state OFF
[D][switch:016]: 'timer_ringing' Turning OFF.
[D][switch:055]: 'timer_ringing': Sending state OFF
[C][i2s_audio:028]: Setting up I2S Audio...
[C][i2s_audio.microphone:018]: Setting up I2S Audio Microphone...
[C][i2s_audio.speaker:096]: Setting up I2S Audio Speaker...
[C][wifi:048]: Setting up WiFi...
[D][esp-idf:000]: I (206) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000]: wifi driver task: 3ffc8544, prio:23, stack:6656, core=0
[D][esp-idf:000]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1238) system_api: Base MAC address is not set

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1239) system_api: read default base MAC address from EFUSE

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1274) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: wifi firmware version: ff661c3
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1274) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: wifi certification version: v7.0
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1286) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: config NVS flash: enabled
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1297) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: config nano formating: disabled
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1317) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: Init data frame dynamic rx buffer num: 32
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1338) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: Init static rx mgmt buffer num: 5
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1348) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: Init management short buffer num: 32
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1368) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: Init dynamic tx buffer num: 32
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1389) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: Init static rx buffer size: 1600
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1399) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: Init static rx buffer num: 10
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1419) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: Init dynamic rx buffer num: 32
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000]: I (1441) wifi_init: rx ba win: 6

[D][esp-idf:000]: I (1441) wifi_init: tcpip mbox: 32

[D][esp-idf:000]: I (1450) wifi_init: udp mbox: 6

[D][esp-idf:000]: I (1450) wifi_init: tcp mbox: 6

[D][esp-idf:000]: I (1460) wifi_init: tcp tx win: 5760

[D][esp-idf:000]: I (1471) wifi_init: tcp rx win: 5760

[D][esp-idf:000]: I (1481) wifi_init: tcp mss: 1440

[D][esp-idf:000]: I (1481) wifi_init: WiFi IRAM OP enabled

[D][esp-idf:000]: I (1491) wifi_init: WiFi RX IRAM OP enabled

[C][wifi:061]: Starting WiFi...
[C][wifi:062]:   Local MAC: 64:B7:08:8A:1B:C0
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1513) phy_init: phy_version 4791,2c4672b,Dec 20 2023,16:06:06

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1599) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: mode : sta (64:b7:08:8a:1b:c0)
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1600) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: enable tsf
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1605) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: Set ps type: 1

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[D][wifi:482]: Starting scan...
[D][esp32.preferences:114]: Saving 1 preferences to flash...
[D][esp32.preferences:143]: Saving 1 preferences to flash: 1 cached, 0 written, 0 failed
[W][micro_wake_word:151]: Wake word detection can't start as the component hasn't been setup yet
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: I (1646) wifi:
[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: Set ps type: 1

[D][esp-idf:000][wifi]: 

[W][component:157]: Component wifi set Warning flag: scanning for networks
…
[I][wifi:617]: WiFi Connected!
…
[D][wifi:626]: Disabling AP...
[C][api:026]: Setting up Home Assistant API server...
[C][micro_wake_word:062]: Setting up microWakeWord...
[C][micro_wake_word:069]: Micro Wake Word initialized
[I][app:062]: setup() finished successfully!
[W][component:170]: Component wifi cleared Warning flag
[W][component:157]: Component api set Warning flag: unspecified
[I][app:100]: ESPHome version 2024.12.4 compiled on Apr 18 2025, 17:29:39
…
[C][logger:185]: Logger:
[C][logger:186]:   Level: DEBUG
[C][logger:188]:   Log Baud Rate: 115200
[C][logger:189]:   Hardware UART: UART0
[C][esp32_rmt_led_strip:187]: ESP32 RMT LED Strip:
[C][esp32_rmt_led_strip:188]:   Pin: 27
[C][esp32_rmt_led_strip:189]:   Channel: 0
[C][esp32_rmt_led_strip:214]:   RGB Order: GRB
[C][esp32_rmt_led_strip:215]:   Max refresh rate: 0
[C][esp32_rmt_led_strip:216]:   Number of LEDs: 1
[C][template.select:065]: Template Select 'Wake word engine location'
[C][template.select:066]:   Update Interval: 60.0s
[C][template.select:069]:   Optimistic: YES
[C][template.select:070]:   Initial Option: On device
[C][template.select:071]:   Restore Value: YES
[C][gpio.binary_sensor:015]: GPIO Binary Sensor 'Button'
[C][gpio.binary_sensor:016]:   Pin: GPIO39
[C][light:092]: Light 'M5Stack Atom Echo 8a1bc0'
[C][light:094]:   Default Transition Length: 0.0s
[C][light:095]:   Gamma Correct: 2.80
[C][template.switch:068]: Template Switch 'Use listen light'
[C][template.switch:091]:   Restore Mode: restore defaults to ON
[C][template.switch:057]:   Optimistic: YES
[C][template.switch:068]: Template Switch 'timer_ringing'
[C][template.switch:091]:   Restore Mode: always OFF
[C][template.switch:057]:   Optimistic: YES
[C][factory_reset.button:011]: Factory Reset Button 'Factory reset'
[C][factory_reset.button:011]:   Icon: 'mdi:restart-alert'
[C][captive_portal:089]: Captive Portal:
[C][mdns:116]: mDNS:
[C][mdns:117]:   Hostname: study-atom-echo-8a1bc0
[C][esphome.ota:073]: Over-The-Air updates:
[C][esphome.ota:074]:   Address: study-atom-echo.local:3232
[C][esphome.ota:075]:   Version: 2
[C][esphome.ota:078]:   Password configured
[C][safe_mode:018]: Safe Mode:
[C][safe_mode:020]:   Boot considered successful after 60 seconds
[C][safe_mode:021]:   Invoke after 10 boot attempts
[C][safe_mode:023]:   Remain in safe mode for 300 seconds
[C][api:140]: API Server:
[C][api:141]:   Address: study-atom-echo.local:6053
[C][api:143]:   Using noise encryption: YES
[C][micro_wake_word:051]: microWakeWord:
[C][micro_wake_word:052]:   models:
[C][micro_wake_word:015]:     - Wake Word: Hey Jarvis
[C][micro_wake_word:016]:       Probability cutoff: 0.970
[C][micro_wake_word:017]:       Sliding window size: 5
[C][micro_wake_word:021]:     - VAD Model
[C][micro_wake_word:022]:       Probability cutoff: 0.500
[C][micro_wake_word:023]:       Sliding window size: 5

[D][api:103]: Accepted 192.168.39.6
[W][component:170]: Component api cleared Warning flag
[W][component:237]: Component api took a long time for an operation (58 ms).
[W][component:238]: Components should block for at most 30 ms.
[D][api.connection:1446]: Home Assistant 2024.3.3 (192.168.39.6): Connected successfully
[D][ring_buffer:034]: Created ring buffer with size 2048
[D][micro_wake_word:399]: Resetting buffers and probabilities
[D][micro_wake_word:195]: State changed from IDLE to START_MICROPHONE
[D][micro_wake_word:107]: Starting Microphone
[D][micro_wake_word:195]: State changed from START_MICROPHONE to STARTING_MICROPHONE
[D][esp-idf:000]: I (11279) I2S: DMA Malloc info, datalen=blocksize=1024, dma_buf_count=4

[D][micro_wake_word:195]: State changed from STARTING_MICROPHONE to DETECTING_WAKE_WORD

That’s enough to get a voice satellite that can be configured up in Home Assistant; you’ll need the ESPHome Integration added, then for the noise_psk key you use the same string as I have under api/encryption/key in my diff above (obviously do your own, I used dd if=/dev/urandom bs=32 count=1 | base64 to generate mine).

If you’re like me and a compulsive VLANer and firewaller even within your own network then you need to allow Home Assistant to connect on TCP port 6053 to the ATOM Echo, and also allow access to/from UDP port 6055 on the Echo (it’ll send audio from that port to Home Assistant, then receive back audio to the same port).

At this point you can now shout “Hey Jarvis, what time is it?” at the Echo, and the white light will turn flashing blue (indicating it’s heard the wake word). Which means we’re ready to teach Home Assistant how to do something with the incoming audio.

My perspective after two years as a research and teaching assistant at FIDIT

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

My perspective after two years as a research and teaching assistant at FIDIT

human statues near white building

Photo source: Darran Shen (@darranshen) | Unsplash

My employment as a research and teaching assistant at Faculty of Informatics and Digital Technologies (FIDIT for short), University of Rijeka (UniRi) ended last month with the expiration of the time-limited contract I had. This moment has marked almost two full years I spent in this institution and I think this is a good time to take a look back at everything that happened during that time. Inspired by the recent posts by the PI of my group, I decided to write my perspective on the time that I hope is just the beginning of my academic career.

Alumni Meeting 2023 at HITS and the reminiscence of the postdoc years

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Alumni Meeting 2023 at HITS and the reminiscence of the postdoc years

a fountain in the middle of a town square

Photo source: Jahanzeb Ahsan (@jahan_photobox) | Unsplash

This month we had Alumni Meeting 2023 at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, or HITS for short. I was very glad to attend this whole-day event and reconnect with my former colleagues as well as researchers currently working in the area of computational biochemistry at HITS. After all, this is the place and the institution where I worked for more than half of my time as a postdoc, where I started regularly contributing code to GROMACS molecular dynamics simulator, and published some of my best papers.

Should I do a Ph.D.?

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Should I do a Ph.D.?

a bike is parked in front of a building

Photo source: Santeri Liukkonen (@iamsanteri) | Unsplash

Tough question, and the one that has been asked and answered over and over. The simplest answer is, of course, it depends on many factors.

As I started blogging at the end of my journey as a doctoral student, the topic of how I selected the field and ultimately decided to enroll in the postgraduate studies never really came up. In the following paragraphs, I will give a personal perspective on my Ph.D. endeavor. Just like other perspectives from doctors of not that kind, it is specific to the person in the situation, but parts of it might apply more broadly.

Don't use RAR

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Don't use RAR

a large white tank

Photo source: Tim Mossholder (@ctimmossholder) | Unsplash

I sometimes joke with my TA Milan Petrović that his usage of RAR does not imply that he will be driving a rari. After all, he is not Devito rapping^Wsinging Uh 😤. Jokes aside, if you search for "should I use RAR" or a similar phrase on your favorite search engine, you'll see articles like 2007 Don't Use ZIP, Use RAR and 2011 Why RAR Is Better Than ZIP & The Best RAR Software Available.

Markdown vs reStructuredText for teaching materials

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Markdown vs reStructuredText for teaching materials

blue wooden door surrounded by book covered wall

Photo source: Eugenio Mazzone (@eugi1492) | Unsplash

Back in summer 2017. I wrote an article explaining why we used Sphinx and reStructuredText to produce teaching materials and not a wiki. In addition to recommending Sphinx as the solution to use, it was general praise for generating static HTML files from Markdown or reStructuredText.

This summer I made the conversion of teaching materials from reStructuredText to Markdown. Unfortunately, the automated conversion using Pandoc didn't quite produce the result I wanted so I ended up cooking my own Python script that converted the specific dialect of reStructuredText that was used for writing the contents of the group website and fixing a myriad of inconsistencies in the writing style that accumulated over the years.

Mirroring free and open-source software matters

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Mirroring free and open-source software matters

gold and silver steel wall decor

Photo source: Tuva Mathilde Løland (@tuvaloland) | Unsplash

Post theme song: Mirror mirror by Blind Guardian

A mirror is a local copy of a website that's used to speed up access for the users residing in the area geographically close to it and reduce the load on the original website. Content distribution networks (CDNs), which are a newer concept and perhaps more familiar to younger readers, serve the same purpose, but do it in a way that's transparent to the user; when using a mirror, the user will see explicitly which mirror is being used because the domain will be different from the original website, while, in case of CDNs, the domain will remain the same, and the DNS resolution (which is invisible to the user) will select a different server.

Free and open-source software was distributed via (FTP) mirrors, usually residing in the universities, basically since its inception. The story of Linux mentions a directory on ftp.funet.fi (FUNET is the Finnish University and Research Network) where Linus Torvalds uploaded the sources, which was soon after mirrored by Ted Ts'o on MIT's FTP server. The GNU Project's history contains an analogous process of making local copies of the software for faster downloading, which was especially important in the times of pre-broadband Internet, and it continues today.

Fly away, little bird

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Fly away, little bird

macro-photography blue, brown, and white sparrow on branch

Photo source: Vincent van Zalinge (@vincentvanzalinge) | Unsplash

The last day of July happened to be the day that Domagoj Margan, a former student teaching assistant and a great friend of mine, set up his own DigitalOcean droplet running a web server and serving his professional website on his own domain domargan.net. For a few years, I was helping him by providing space on the server I owned and maintained, and I was always glad to do so. Let me explain why.

Why we use reStructuredText and Sphinx static site generator for maintaining teaching materials

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Why we use reStructuredText and Sphinx static site generator for maintaining teaching materials

open book lot

Photo source: Patrick Tomasso (@impatrickt) | Unsplash

Yesterday I was asked by Edvin Močibob, a friend and a former student teaching assistant of mine, the following question:

You seem to be using Sphinx for your teaching materials, right? As far as I can see, it doesn't have an online WYSIWYG editor. I would be interested in comparison of your solution with e.g. MediaWiki.

While the advantages and the disadvantages of static site generators, when compared to content management systems, have been written about and discussed already, I will outline our reasons for the choice of Sphinx below. Many of the points have probably already been presented elsewhere.

Enabling HTTP/2, HTTPS, and going HTTPS-only on inf2

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Enabling HTTP/2, HTTPS, and going HTTPS-only on inf2

an old padlock on a wooden door

Photo source: Arkadiusz Gąsiorowski (@ambuscade) | Unsplash

Inf2 is a web server at University of Rijeka Department of Informatics, hosting Sphinx-produced static HTML course materials (mirrored elsewhere), some big files, a WordPress instance (archived elsewhere), and an internal instance of Moodle.

HTTPS was enabled on inf2 for a long time, albeit using a self-signed certificate. However, with Let's Encrpyt coming into public beta, we decided to join the movement to HTTPS.

Celebrating Graphics and Compute Freedom Day

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Celebrating Graphics and Compute Freedom Day

stack of white and brown ceramic plates

Photo source: Elena Mozhvilo (@miracleday) | Unsplash

Hobbyists, activists, geeks, designers, engineers, etc have always tinkered with technologies for their purposes (in early personal computing, for example). And social activists have long advocated the power of giving tools to people. An open hardware movement driven by these restless innovators is creating ingenious versions of all sorts of technologies, and freely sharing the know-how through the Internet and more recently through social media. Open-source software and more recently hardware is also encroaching upon centers of manufacturing and can empower serious business opportunities and projects.

The free software movement is cited as both an inspiration and a model for open hardware. Free software practices have transformed our culture by making it easier for people to become involved in producing things from magazines to music, movies to games, communities to services. With advances in digital fabrication making it easier to manipulate materials, some now anticipate an analogous opening up of manufacturing to mass participation.

The academic and the free software community ideals

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

The academic and the free software community ideals

book lot on black wooden shelf

Photo source: Giammarco Boscaro (@giamboscaro) | Unsplash

Today I vaguely remembered there was one occasion in 2006 or 2007 when some guy from the academia doing something with Java and Unicode posted on some mailing list related to the free and open-source software about a tool he was developing. What made it interesting was that the tool was open source, and he filed a patent on the algorithm.

Free to know: Open access and open source

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Free to know: Open access and open source

yellow and black come in we're open sign

Photo source: Álvaro Serrano (@alvaroserrano) | Unsplash

!!! info Reposted from Free to Know: Open access & open source, originally posted by STEMI education on Medium.

Q&A with Vedran Miletić

In June 2014, Elon Musk opened up all Tesla patents. In a blog post announcing this, he wrote that patents "serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors." In other words, he joined those who believe that free knowledge is the prerequisite for a great society -- that it is the vibrancy of the educated masses that can make us capable of handling the strange problems our world is made of.

The movements that promote and cultivate this vibrancy are probably most frequently associated with terms "Open access" and "open source". In order to learn more about them, we Q&A-ed Vedran Miletić, the Rocker of Science -- researcher, developer and teacher, currently working in computational chemistry, and a free and open source software contributor and activist. You can read more of his thoughts on free software and related themes on his great blog, Nudged Elastic Band. We hope you will join him, us, and Elon Musk in promoting free knowledge, cooperation and education.

I am still not buying the new-open-source-friendly-Microsoft narrative

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

I am still not buying the new-open-source-friendly-Microsoft narrative

black framed window

Photo source: Patrick Bellot (@pbellot) | Unsplash

This week Microsoft released Computational Network Toolkit (CNTK) on GitHub, after open sourcing Edge's JavaScript engine last month and a whole bunch of projects before that.

Even though the open sourcing of a bunch of their software is a very nice move from Microsoft, I am still not convinced that they have changed to the core. I am sure there are parts of the company who believe that free and open source is the way to go, but it still looks like a change just on the periphery.

All the projects they have open-sourced so far are not the core of their business. Their latest version of Windows is no more friendly to alternative operating systems than any version of Windows before it, and one could argue it is even less friendly due to more Secure Boot restrictions. Using Office still basically requires you to use Microsoft's formats and, in turn, accept their vendor lock-in.

Put simply, I think all the projects Microsoft has opened up so far are a nice start, but they still have a long way to go to gain respect from the open-source community. What follows are three steps Microsoft could take in that direction.

AMD and the open-source community are writing history

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

AMD and the open-source community are writing history

a close up of a cpu chip on top of a motherboard

Photo source: Andrew Dawes (@andrewdawes) | Unsplash

Over the last few years, AMD has slowly been walking the path towards having fully open source drivers on Linux. AMD did not walk alone, they got help from Red Hat, SUSE, and probably others. Phoronix also mentions PathScale, but I have been told on Freenode channel #radeon this is not the case and found no trace of their involvement.

AMD finally publically unveiled the GPUOpen initiative on the 15th of December 2015. The story was covered on AnandTech, Maximum PC, Ars Technica, Softpedia, and others. For the open-source community that follows the development of Linux graphics and computing stack, this announcement comes as hardly surprising: Alex Deucher and Jammy Zhou presented plans regarding amdgpu on XDC2015 in September 2015. Regardless, public announcement in mainstream media proves that AMD is serious about GPUOpen.

I believe GPUOpen is the best chance we will get in this decade to open up the driver and software stacks in the graphics and computing industry. I will outline the reasons for my optimism below. As for the history behind open-source drivers for ATi/AMD GPUs, I suggest the well-written reminiscence on Phoronix.

On having leverage and using it for pushing open-source software adoption

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

On having leverage and using it for pushing open-source software adoption

Open 24 Hours neon signage

Photo source: Alina Grubnyak (@alinnnaaaa) | Unsplash

Back in late August and early September, I attended 4th CP2K Tutorial organized by CECAM in Zürich. I had the pleasure of meeting Joost VandeVondele's Nanoscale Simulations group at ETHZ and working with them on improving CP2K. It was both fun and productive; we overhauled the wiki homepage and introduced acronyms page, among other things. During a coffee break, there was a discussion on the JPCL viewpoint that speaks against open-source quantum chemistry software, which I countered in the previous blog post.

But there is a story from the workshop which somehow remained untold, and I wanted to tell it at some point. One of the attendants, Valérie Vaissier, told me how she used proprietary quantum chemistry software during her Ph.D.; if I recall correctly, it was Gaussian. Eventually, she decided to learn CP2K and made the switch. She liked CP2K better than the proprietary software package because it is available free of charge, the reported bugs get fixed quicker, and the group of developers behind it is very enthusiastic about their work and open to outsiders who want to join the development.

What is the price of open-source fear, uncertainty, and doubt?

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

What is the price of open-source fear, uncertainty, and doubt?

turned on red open LED signage

Photo source: j (@janicetea) | Unsplash

The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (JPCL), published by American Chemical Society, recently put out two Viewpoints discussing open-source software:

Open Source and Open Data Should Be Standard Practices by J. Daniel Gezelter, and
What Is the Price of Open-Source Software? by Anna I. Krylov, John M. Herbert, Filipp Furche, Martin Head-Gordon, Peter J. Knowles, Roland Lindh, Frederick R. Manby, Peter Pulay, Chris-Kriton Skylaris, and Hans-Joachim Werner.

Viewpoints are not detailed reviews of the topic, but instead, present the author's view on the state-of-the-art of a particular field.

The first of two articles stands for open source and open data. The article describes Quantum Chemical Program Exchange (QCPE), which was used in the 1980s and 1990s for the exchange of quantum chemistry codes between researchers and is roughly equivalent to the modern-day GitHub. The second of two articles questions the open-source software development practice, advocating the usage and development of proprietary software. I will dissect and counter some of the key points from the second article below.

Joys and pains of interdisciplinary research

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Joys and pains of interdisciplinary research

white and black coffee maker

Photo source: Trnava University (@trnavskauni) | Unsplash

In 2012 University of Rijeka became NVIDIA GPU Education Center (back then it was called CUDA Teaching Center). For non-techies: NVIDIA is a company producing graphical processors (GPUs), the computer chips that draw 3D graphics in games and the effects in modern movies. In the last couple of years, NVIDIA and other manufacturers allowed the usage of GPUs for general computations, so one can use them to do really fast multiplication of large matrices, finding paths in graphs, and other mathematical operations.

Browser wars

Posted by Vedran Miletić ( Fedora Account System Username

vedranm ) on 2025-04-24 16:43:17 UTC

Browser wars

brown fox on snow field

Photo source: Ray Hennessy (@rayhennessy) | Unsplash

Last week in Rijeka we held Science festival 2015. This is the (hopefully not unlucky) 13th instance of the festival that started in 2003. Popular science events were organized in 18 cities in Croatia.

I was invited to give a popular lecture at the University departments open day, which is a part of the festival. This is the second time in a row that I got invited to give popular lecture at the open day. In 2014 I talked about The Perfect Storm in information technology caused by the fall of economy during 2008-2012 Great Recession and the simultaneous rise of low-cost, high-value open-source solutions. Open source completely changed the landscape of information technology in just a few years.

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Infrastructure & Release Engineering

Fedora Infra

CentOS Infra including CentOS CI

Release Engineering

List of new releases of apps maintained by I&R Team

Background

Enable DoT during system runtime

Install Required Packages

Configure NetworkManager

Installing custom CA certificate

Enable DoT during system boot time

Install Required Packages

Set kernel arguments

Regenerate the initram image

Enable DoT for system installation

Enable DoT in FreeIPA

Install Required Packages

Fresh installation

Existing installations

My perspective after two years as a research and teaching assistant at FIDIT

Alumni Meeting 2023 at HITS and the reminiscence of the postdoc years

Should I do a Ph.D.?

Don't use RAR

Markdown vs reStructuredText for teaching materials

Mirroring free and open-source software matters

Fly away, little bird

Why we use reStructuredText and Sphinx static site generator for maintaining teaching materials

Enabling HTTP/2, HTTPS, and going HTTPS-only on inf2

Celebrating Graphics and Compute Freedom Day

The academic and the free software community ideals

Free to know: Open access and open source

Q&A with Vedran Miletić

I am still not buying the new-open-source-friendly-Microsoft narrative

AMD and the open-source community are writing history

On having leverage and using it for pushing open-source software adoption

What is the price of open-source fear, uncertainty, and doubt?

Joys and pains of interdisciplinary research

Browser wars

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