Automate RPM Builds from Git Sources using COPR

Posted on September 3, 2017 by

The Fedora project COPR service builds/hosts free RPM package repositories and provides useful automation hooks for your Devopsing.  You can combine COPR and any standard Git source (Github, Gitlab, etc) with webhooks for automated package builds when your source repository is updated.

Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Backup and Restore using SpiderOak on Linux

Posted on August 20, 2017 by

Recently the SSD Operating System disk on my primary work desktop failed without warning and no manner of arcane xfsrepair or xfsdump/xfsrestore chicanery would bring it back.  Luckily I had SpiderOak backups as my employer offers this as a service to associates.  Being the first time I’ve needed to restore data with SpiderOak here’s some things I’ve learned and impressions of the service on Linux.

Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Using Italics with Vim in your Terminal

Posted on July 17, 2017 by

I wanted all code, system configuration file comments or in-line replies in neomutt email italicised to stand out easier.  Many terminal emulators (xterm, xfce4-terminal, iterm2) don’t support [3m and [23m designators for italics but you can use a custom terminfo to do the trick.  Here’s how to get it working. Continue reading →

Posted in open source | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Using Offlineimap with the Gmail IMAP API

Posted on July 17, 2017 by

In a previous guide I documented my mutt + offlineimap + notmuch setup.  If you’re using Gmail with IMAP enabled you can still utilize the superpower of this trio but you’ll need to do some things differently.  I’ll show you how to use offlineimap with the Google Gmail OAuth2 API and configure it. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Distributed Remote Backups with Git and Etckeeper

Posted on July 15, 2017 by

Git is a powerful tool for lots of tasks, it makes a wonderful VCS that can drive easy utility and automation.  Recently I used git and remote repositories to deploy code & data fanned out to multiple locations.  Here are some examples along with using Etckeeper, a related wrapper tool for revision control around git (or other VCS) with some extra features. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Shell One-liners and Quick and Dirty Loops

Posted on March 23, 2017 by

Sometimes you just need to get stuff done quickly and there’s nary a replacement better than a quick shell one-liner.  Recently I’ve needed to feed some large, multi-variable commands into an external program for processing.  Here’s some simple shell one-liners and loops that have helped me along the way. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Let’s Encrypt Everything – Setting up the Free, Automated CA

Posted on February 21, 2017 by

le-logo-lockonlyLet’s Encrypt is a free, public SSL certificate authority (CA) you can use to generate and automate SSL certificate renewal.  I co-manage Trystack.org, a free OpenStack sandbox for the general public and our Horizon SSL certificate came up for expiration so we moved to Let’s Encrypt.  Using EFF’s certbot it’s trivial to automate everything.  You can do the same for your own blog or website.

Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment