AI mania is afoot. Useful? Yes. End the world? Probably not. Meanwhile there is a lot of bare-metal GPU hardware sitting idle waiting for its next job. In the same spirit as QUADS, I’ve been working on a new project to maximize the usage of GPU systems: QIIP, a tractor beam for spare GPU capacity.
QIIP: A Tractor Beam for Unused GPU Hardware
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Take the Hassle Out of Nagios with Mozzo
I got tired of opening a browser to ack Nagios alerts so here’s a lightweight CLI for acknowledging and managing Nagios Core alerts, with no browser required. It picks up where my Ansible-based Nagios automation post from 2016 left off, and pairs with the ansible-nagios playbook I still maintain.
Easy Noise Suppression with RNNoise
RNNoise provides an excellent Open Source solution for intelligent microphone noise suppression. I’ve found it performs better than other proprietary AI solutions like Nvidia’s RTX Voice and with no visible performance hit. RNNnoise utilizes a neural network and deep learning to provide microphone noise suppression in real-time and it’s easy to setup system-wide on Linux as a pipewire plugin. Let’s get started.
Slackware on a Thinkpad T61 in Modern Times
Venerable Slackware, the oldest maintained Linux distribution. For many Linux users it was the one you learned on, yours truly included. I recently felt the nostalgic urge to add Slackware back to my armada of Linuxes on an old IBM Thinkpad T61 (which has one of the best keyboards I’ve ever used on a laptop). Here’s my experiences with Slackware 15.0 in 2023-2024 on older hardware.
Posted in open source
Tagged linux, Modern Slackware, Nostalgia, Retro, slackware linux, Slackware on T60, Thinkpad T60
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How to Remove RPM Package GPG Keys
I recently had two packages in Fedora whose package GPG keys had changed but dnf would error out and skip them. After some searching I found a simple solution using RPM to remove the old package keys so upon next update I get prompted for the new keys. I write this in hopes it will save others some time.
Posted in open source, sysadmin
Tagged fedora, how to remove rpm package keys, linux, packaging, rpm
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How to Setup Travis for Quick Ansible Playbook CI
If you’re looking for a quick, easy way to setup repository-based CI for your Ansible playbooks on Github consider Travis CI, it’s also a breeze to set-up for larger projects and not that involved. This takes around 10 minutes to get in place for Ansible Playbooks, let’s get started. Continue reading
Using Rofi for Agnostic Lightweight Window/App Management
Rofi is a super lightweight window switching and application launcher written entirely in C. It’s totally agnostic to your desktop environment or window manager making it ideal to quickly search for or toggle between open windows and applications and other tasks. It’s become an integral part of my daily workflow. Continue reading
Posted in open source, sysadmin
Tagged desktop linux, linux desktop, linux window switching, rofi, task switcher for linux, window switcher, xfce
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Using ProtonVPN for Privacy and Security
Being a long-time user of OpenVPN and generally liking the security approach of ProtonMail I decided to take ProtonVPN for a test drive. These are my experiences using their Linux CLI and a persistent systemd connection, Mac OSX briefly and IOS. This Swiss-based VPN service provides a free tier and reasonably priced paid plans for more benefits. Continue reading
Practical Ansible Solutions, a Video Course
Over the past year chipping away on the weekends I’ve just published an Ansible video course with Packt Publishing. This is a 2.5hour course split across 6 chapters, focusing on getting up and running quickly with Ansible automation. Check it out!
Using VDO on CentOS/RHEL7 for Storage Efficiency
Besides Btrfs, native Linux-based storage solutions have lagged behind the robustness and features of ZFS and the BSDs. Recently Red Hat acquired Permabit which provides an Open Source device-mapper Linux kernel driver and layer that sits between block devices and filesystems providing deduplication, compression and thin provisioning. Here’s my first experiences setting it up and initial returns using it. Continue reading
Run iTunes on Linux via Wine
Recent versions of Wine can run iTunes and Apple Music for Linux with no wizardry required. Having been given a free Apple Music subscription as part of a family plan it’s useful to have additional streaming media options. Below are the steps to use iTunes on Linux via Wine and have access to iTunes and Apple Music.
Fix for Intel i915 GPU Freeze on Recent Linux Kernels
Recently Intel started including their graphics drivers into the mainline Linux kernel. This is great except when it stops working. Having suffered intermittent, sporadic GPU freezes on my Lenovo x270 (Kabylake) work laptop since Kernel 4.12+ I came across a bug report that seemed related. Here’s my temporary fix on Fedora 28 for getting things stable again until it’s fixed for good upstream.
Using Signal Desktop on Fedora with Flatpak
In the 2018 race to re-invent AOL instant messenger Signal comes out on top of the competition for end-to-end encryption and a focus on privacy and security. Signal desktop was recently released for Windows, Mac and only Debian-based Linux distributions with no official RPM available. Here’s how to use app sandboxing with Flatpak to get it running nicely. Continue reading
Posted in open source, sysadmin
Tagged application containers, application sandbox, docker, flatpak, sandbox, security, signal, signal desktop, signal desktop fedora, signal flatpak, signal rpm
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Block Advertising on your Network with Pi-hole and Raspberry Pi
I recently setup Pi-hole on an existing Raspberry Pi running CentOS on my home network to serve as my DNS server and block advertising and unwanted domains for all internet-connected devices. I’m still using an ASUS router with Shibby Tomato firmware for routing, DHCP and private VLANs so I had to make a few changes. This is how I got up and running along with some performance tuning.
Posted in open source, sysadmin
Tagged ad blocking, advertising, blocking, DNS, dnsmasq, docker pi-hole container, free privacy software, home ad blocking, linux, pi-hole, pi-hole centos, pi-hole docker, pi-hole raspberry pi, pi-hole setup guide, privacy, raspberry pi, security, spyware blocking
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Automate RPM Builds from Git Sources using COPR
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.
Posted in open source, sysadmin
Tagged automate rpm from git, automation, CD, CI, copr, copr git setup, COPR linux rpm, devops, fedora, git, github, packaging, rpm
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