Canonical has released a new version of Ubuntu Core for IoT applications.

Today, Canonical has announced the release of a new version of the embedded Ubuntu OS for IoT applications. This is a Core 16, which is also known as Snappy . From the outset, the Core modification contained a minimum set of functions that ensured the operation of rack switches, network gateways of various types, radio access networks and smart devices.

Mark Shuttleworth gave a brief briefing on the main differences between the new version of Core and the old one. 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 in Core 15 and previous versions of the OS.

According to experts, this situation made it impossible, for example, to check the signatures of individual files that make up the operating system. We are also talking about solving problems with inefficient use of disk space. In Core 16, the situation is somewhat different.
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“In Ubuntu Core 16, we store all software as compressed and signed files. The attackers no longer have the ability to change the programs on the disk, and any device with our OS works with proven software, ”Shuttleworth said.

In fact, we are talking about the fact that now the files mentioned by the head of Canonical are fixed by the system as unchangeable objects archived with squashFS. Thus, the files are read only. The device itself will be very difficult, if possible, to hack over the network, without having any physical access. The base system, the Linux kernel and system add-ins are shipped in a snap-format, and they can be managed using snapd.

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



Updates, according to the developers, are released regularly. Their delivery is made in a special mode OTA (over-the-air), after installing 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 operating it on IoT devices. Due to the fact that the base system is separate from applications, it becomes possible to separate the “responsibilities” of Ubuntu developers and developers of third-party programs. So, the Ubuntu creators keep up to date with the Ubuntu Core codebase, and application developers are already worried about everything else.

At the moment, the images of Ubuntu Core 16 are ready to work with such systems as i386, amd64, Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi 3 and Qualcomm Dragonboard 410c. The size of the image is 311-371 MB, depending on the architecture.

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