Author Archives: Will Foster

About Will Foster

hobo devop/sysadmin/SRE

Slackware on a Thinkpad T61 in 2023

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source | Tagged linux, Nostalgia, Retro, slackware linux, Slackware on T60, Thinkpad T60 | Leave a comment

How to Remove RPM Package GPG Keys

Posted on July 11, 2023 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged fedora, how to remove rpm package keys, linux, packaging, rpm | 4 Comments

How to Setup Travis for Quick Ansible Playbook CI

Posted on August 5, 2019 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged ansible, ansible CI, Ansible Playbook CI, CI, continuous integration, devops, github, How to setup Ansible CI, sysadmin, travis, travis ci, Travis CI Guide Ansible | Leave a comment

Using Rofi for Agnostic Lightweight Window/App Management

Posted on June 1, 2019 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged desktop linux, linux desktop, linux window switching, rofi, task switcher for linux, window switcher, xfce | Leave a comment

Using ProtonVPN for Privacy and Security

Posted on December 27, 2018 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged privacy, ProtonVPN, protonvpn fedora linux, ProtonVPN Linux, ProtonVPN Linux CLI, ProtonVPN Linux Service, ProtonVPN on Linux, security, VPN | 10 Comments

Practical Ansible Solutions, a Video Course

Posted on December 23, 2018 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged ansible linux training, ansible training, ansible video course, packt publishing ansible, practical ansible solutions | 4 Comments

Using VDO on CentOS/RHEL7 for Storage Efficiency

Posted on September 13, 2018 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged centos, container storage deduplication, dedupe compression on linux, how to setup vdo on centos, linux, linux admin, linux storage compression, linux storage dedupe, Permabit, RHEL, storage, VDO on CentOS, VDO on RHEL | 8 Comments

Run iTunes on Linux via Wine

Posted on June 20, 2018 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged Apple Music on Linux, iTunes, iTunes Linux, iTunes on Linux, iTunes wine, linux itunes, Lutris, media streaming, Running iTunes on Linux | 36 Comments

Fix for Intel i915 GPU Freeze on Recent Linux Kernels

Posted on May 18, 2018 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged fedora, fedora intel driver, fix for Intel GPU freeze Linux, i915 linux crash, intel, intel linux GPU hang fix, lenovo intel gpu crash linux, lenovo x270, linux kernel | 56 Comments

Using Signal Desktop on Fedora with Flatpak

Posted on March 16, 2018 by Will Foster

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 … 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 | 15 Comments

Block Advertising on your Network with Pi-hole and Raspberry Pi

Posted on February 27, 2018 by Will Foster

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 … Continue reading →

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 | 56 Comments

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 →