Webinar: Hyper Protect Services for Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE, September 4

Abstract
This presentation will give an overview of the services of the Hyper Protect family which exist today, and will explain the basics about the security concept.

Speaker
Fabian Kulmann, Software Architect, Hyper Protect Virtual Servers.

Registration
Register here. You can check the system requirements here.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Replay & Archive
All sessions are recorded. For the archive as well as a replay and handout of this session and all previous webcasts see here.

New Section on Containers on Z

We have started a new section on Containers on Z, with articles on how to build and run a monitoring stack on Z - check it out!

src_vipa v2.1.1 released

src_vipa v2.1.1 is now available for download here.
This is a bugfix release, and we recommend everyone using this package to upgrade to the latest version.

New Release: RHEL 7.7

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 is out! See the announcement and their release notes for Z-specific changes.
Here is a list of some of the highlights from an IBM Z perspective:

• Crypto:
• Support for Pervasive Encryption completed:
• To protect data at-rest with protected key dm-crypt, full support of the LUKS2 format adding missing support for the zkey repository and a function (zkey-cryptsetup) to change the master key in the Crypto Express adapter are provided.
• In addition, you can now encrypt swap disks of KVM hosts with protected key dm-crypt without using a Crypto Express adapter.
• The openCryptoki EP11 token now supports the "Bitcoin curve" and RSA OEAP. In addition, the performance of single step cryptography functions and of all functions including hashes in the EP11 token are improved.
• Access of (Docker) containers to Crypto Express resources can now be controlled on a fine granularity.
• zpcictl: When users suspect that a PCI card is malfunctioning, they can use the new tool zpcictl to trigger an error notification and create log entries.
• OSA-Express7S: Link speed of 25GbE models is reported in ethtool and qethqoat.

Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE Customer Workshop, October 28-29, 2019, Poughkeepsie, NY

In this technical-oriented workshop, you have the chance to interact directly with IBM developers and solution experts about the best exploitation of Linux on Z and LinuxONE.
Besides lectures, we will also have interactive workgroup sessions, hands-on and demo sessions. You have the possibility to enhance your experiences on specific topics with other attendees and IBM experts in small groups.
Further details are available here, and you can register here.

Note: The registration deadline is October 16th!

glibc 2.30 released

glibc 2.30 is out! From an IBM Z perspective, this release contains arch13 specific optimizations for functions strstr, memmem and memmove for better performance. These optimizations were implemented using ifunc, taking advantage of the latest available hardware features if available and if a respective Linux kernel is run.
Likewise, the HWCAP flags vx, vxe and vxe2 are now marked as important HWCAP flags, which allows for differently tuned shared libraries. glibc will automatically choose the best available option depending on the availability of those libraries and the corresponding HWCAP flags.

See this post for general news and a summary of bugfixes, and the release wiki for further details on architecture specific build and test results, as well as general packaging changes.