Yearly Archives: 2017

Automate RPM Builds from Git Sources using COPR

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

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 | 8 Comments

Backup and Restore using SpiderOak on Linux

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged backups, fedora centos spideroak, linux, linux spideroak guide, spideroak, spideroak cli, spideroak linux, spideroak restore | 6 Comments

Using Italics with Vim in your Terminal

Posted on July 17, 2017 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source | Tagged italics, shell, terminal, vim, xterm | Leave a comment

Using Offlineimap with the Gmail IMAP API

Posted on July 17, 2017 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged email, fedora centos mutt gmail, gmail, gmail mutt linux guide, google, imap, mutt, mutt notmuch guide, notmuch, offlineimap, use gmail with mutt, use offlineimap with gmail | 16 Comments

Distributed Remote Backups with Git and Etckeeper

Posted on July 15, 2017 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged devops, etckeeper, etckeeper linux guide, git, linux, linux git backups, linux git branches, remote, sysadmin | Leave a comment

Shell One-liners and Quick and Dirty Loops

Posted on March 23, 2017 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged bash, for loop, linux, loops, shell, shell example linux, shell examples, shell linux examples, sysadmin, useful shell linux tip | 4 Comments

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

Posted on February 21, 2017 by Will Foster

Let’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 … Continue reading →