shawnp0wers This won’t be a long, navel-gazing post about all the wisdom I’ve gathered over the past year. Rather, a quick list of things that stuck out to me. And honestly, it’ll probably largely be from the past couple months, because a year is a long time to remember. And I didn’t take notes. 🙂 Happiness is a funny thing. I … Read more
This article covers some grep and regex basics. There are generally two types of coffee drinkers. The first type buys a can of pre-ground beans and uses the included scoop to make their automatic drip coffee in the morning. The second type picks single-origin beans from various parts of the world, accepts only beans that have been roasted within the … Read more
Every year, since our (now adult) girls were tiny, Donna and I have created a scavenger hunt for our kids on Christmas Eve. They follow clues, solve puzzles, and at the end, there’s a group gift/prize for them to enjoy together. It’s not our only family tradition, but it’s by far the biggest and most consistent one we have. Since … Read more
Roles are the most complicated and yet simplest aspect of Ansible to learn. I’ve mentioned before that Ansible’s ad-hoc mode often is overlooked as just a way to learn how to use Ansible. I couldn’t disagree with that mentality any more fervently than I already do. Ad-hoc mode is actually what I tend to use most often on a day-to-day … Read more
Playbooks make Ansible even more powerful than before. To be quite honest, if Ansible had nothing but its ad-hoc mode, it still would be a powerful and useful tool for automating large numbers of computers. In fact, if it weren’t for a few features, I might consider sticking with ad-hoc mode and adding a bunch of those ad-hoc commands to … Read more
Finally, an automation framework that thinks like a sysadmin. Ansible, you’re hired. In my last article, I described how to configure your server and clients so you could connect to each client from the server. Ansible is a push-based automation tool, so the connection is initiated from your “server”, which is usually just a workstation or a server you ssh in to from … Read more
I’ve written about and trained folks on various DevOps tools through the years, and although they’re awesome, it’s obvious that most of them are designed from the mind of a developer. There’s nothing wrong with that, because approaching configuration management programmatically is the whole point. Still, it wasn’t until I started playing with Ansible that I felt like it was … Read more
Ubuntu changed networking. Embrace the YAML. If I’m being completely honest, I still dislike the switch from eth0, eth1, eth2 to names like, enp3s0, enp4s0, enp5s0. I’ve learned to accept it and mutter to myself while I type in unfamiliar interface names. Then I installed the new LTS version of Ubuntu and typed vi /etc/network/interfaces. Yikes. After a technological lifetime of entering my server’s … Read more
If you can remember all of your passwords, they’re not good passwords. I used to teach people how to create “good” passwords. Those passwords needed to be lengthy, hard to guess and easy to remember. There were lots of tricks to make your passwords better, and for years, that was enough. That’s not enough anymore. It seems that another data … Read more
I don’t talk much about mental illness. Not because of any stigma against it, or because I’m ashamed of having and handling mental illness, but rather because I just don’t have much to say on the issue. My car accident (see link above) sparked some serious brain issues for me, including anxiety, depression, OCD, and some symptoms that I’m not … Read more