November 4, 2016 at 22:11

Canonical Launches New Ubuntu Core for IoT Applications



    Today, Canonical has announced the release of a new version of the embedded Ubuntu OS for IoT applications. It's about Core 16, which is also known as Snappy . From the very beginning, the Core modification contained a minimal set of functions that provided the operation of rack-mount switches, various types of network gateways, radio access networks, and smart devices.

    Mark Shuttleworth held a brief briefing that talked about the main differences between the new version of Core and the old. By the way, Core 15 was released a year and a half ago, so many expected the appearance of the new version. One of the main differences is the distribution of individual files when installing the distribution package in Core 15 and previous versions of the OS.

    According to experts, this situation made it impossible, for example, to verify the signatures of the individual files that make up the operating system. We are also talking about solving the problem of inefficient use of disk space. In Core 16, the situation is somewhat different.

    “In Ubuntu Core 16, we store all the software in the form of compressed and signed files. Attackers are no longer able to modify programs on disk, and any device with our OS works with proven software, ”said Shuttleworth.

    In fact, we are talking about the fact that now the files mentioned by the Canonical manager are fixed by the system as immutable objects archived using squashFS. Therefore, the files are read-only. The device itself will be very difficult, if possible, to hack over the network without any physical access. The base system, the Linux kernel, and system add-ins are supplied in snap format, and you can manage them with snapd.

    The update allows the device to work with different versions of the OS, choose the most current update, or return to the previous version of the software if something went wrong. “Returning to the previous version is more stable, so developers can easily change something in the system’s functionality,” says Shuttleworth.



    Updates, according to developers, are released regularly. Their delivery is carried out in a special OTA (over-the-air) mode, after installation the updates are synchronized with the composition of Ubuntu Linux. The fact that updates are downloaded automatically solves the main problems with maintaining the security of the system when it works on IoT devices. Due to the fact that the base system is separated from applications, it becomes possible to separate the “responsibilities” of Ubuntu developers and third-party program developers. So, the Ubuntu Core code base is kept up to date by the creators of Ubuntu, and application developers are already worried about everything else.

    Ubuntu Core 16 Images Ready Nowto work with systems such as i386, amd64, Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi 3 and Qualcomm Dragonboard 410c. The image size is 311-371 MB, depending on the architecture.

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