Last night I had the opportunity to speak for Linux Dominicana, which is the Linux Users Group in the Dominican Republic. I was approached several months ago by a man who has since become a good friend, asking if I would give a webinar-based talk. As most people reading this know, I’m currently trying to produce more and more content, … Read more
I have a 48TB NAS in my basement. Granted, thanks to RAID6 I only (only!) have 36TB of usable space, but still, I assumed that would last me forever. Thanks to ripping DVDs and Blurays, I was so very, very wrong. Rather than spend a few thousand dollars on a new NAS, however, I decided to host my files in … 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
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
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