Welcome to the 4th issue of TMPDIR Weekly, a newsletter covering Embedded Linux, IoT systems, and technology in general. Please pass it on to anyone else you think might be interested and send any tips or feedback to our forum or news@tmpdir.org.

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Embedded Linux

Recent updates in the OE/Yocto ecosystem:

• Override Changes - What it means is that the separator for overrides is changed from '' to ':', this would require changes in layers so support current master and newer releases, currently maintained releases have patched bitbake to accept new syntax as well, which means it will work with dunfell(3.1) and hardknott ( 3.3) releases as well. There is a python script scripts/contrib/covert-overrides.py in openembedd-core repo which can be used to convert a layer to use new syntax, this is not straightforward if layer is using its own OVERRIDES, they should be added to this script before running the conversion, so it does not miss them, nevertheless it gives a good starting point to begin the conversion. This change will avoid the conflict where '' is an accepted character in variable names as well as its an override separator, this will now improve the situation in lot of areas.
• MAINTAINERS file added, this lists relevant developers primarily responsible for reviewing patches and contributing, this is however not exclusive -
• READMEs have started using mark down syntax
• The future of BeagleV
• Core system updates - GLIBC 2.34, GCC 11.2
• Several fixes made to make LTO enabled build be reproducible.

IoT

Simple IoT release v0.0.33

This release provides two additions to the SIOT rules engine. 1st is the ability to have schedule driven rule conditions:

Handling time is fairly challenging when dealing with time zones. SIOT display local time in the browser, but stores UTC time in the database so that the system operates correctly, even if configured from a remote location.

The 2nd feature is to play audio in rule actions:

This feature only works on Linux and requires alsa-utils to be installed. The use-case that drove this feature was a building automation system where we wanted to play sounds in the building ceiling speakers.

Other

Analytic Framework for Cyber Security (Keynote)

Very interesting presentation about cyber security and relevant for about any connected computer system. More notes here.

Executive Order | How To Help Companies Generate SBOMs To Enhance Security

In this episode of Let’s Talk, Kate Stewart, VP of Dependable Embedded Systems at The Linux Foundation, joins me to talk about Biden administration’s executive order on cybersecurity that specifically mentions SBOMs (Software Bill of Materials), which has been one of the major focus areas for many Linux Foundation projects, including SPDX and Zephyr, to name a few.

Join our Discourse forum to discuss these or new topics. Listen to previous podcasts at https://tmpdir.org/.

Thanks for reading! Khem and Cliff