hobo.house

Trick out your Vim Editor

Posted on April 9, 2016 by Will Foster

I’ve been a long-time vim user, dating back to when I figured out how to exit the damn thing. Over the years I’ve tried various vimrc configurations, plugins and looks and even other editors but I’ve always come back to it for a few reasons: the main one being that you’re guaranteed it will be installed on any server you touch. I’m sharing my vim setup here and how to use the same one if you like it. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged code completion, iTerm2, linux, open source, OSX Vim, sysadmin, vim, vim plugins | 2 Comments

Automate Deployment of the ELK/EFK Stack with Ansible

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Will Foster

I recently needed to completely automate deploying a full ELK/EFK stack and clients and didn’t find anything that suited my needs so I wrote the playbooks for this in Ansible. This was my first real foray into automation with Ansible, hope it’s useful to others. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged ansible, automation, devops, elasticsearch, elk, kibana, linux, logging, logstash, sysadmin | 24 Comments

OpenStack Summit 2016 – Trystack, the free OpenStack Sandbox

Posted on April 5, 2016 by Will Foster

Following onto the previous Trystack.org talk at Devconf 2016, we presented at the 2016 Austin OpenStack Summit. Following the same format as the previous talk we covered some exciting updates around RDO Liberty/Mitaka, OpenStackID integration, datacenter hardware and network upgrades/expansion and lots of free OpenStack. Here’s a summary below, updated with resources and slides mentioned during the talk. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged cloud, developers, linux, openstack, openstack summit, sysadmin, trystack | 1 Comment

Installing Fedora on the Raspberry Pi 3

Posted on March 13, 2016 by Will Foster

Recently I setup CentOS on the Raspberry pi 2. Now we’re going to be installing a modern Fedora 23 desktop on the Raspberry Pi 3. I’ve used the Pi 2 instructions from chisight’s blog post so original credit goes to him – I’ve modified them and added some things. Continue reading →

Posted in open source | Tagged armv7, desktop linux, fedora, linux, raspberry pi, raspberry pi 3 | 72 Comments

Build Secure VLAN Networks with ‘Shibby’ Router Firmware

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Will Foster

I’ve been an ardent user of the Tomato Linux Open Source router firmware, specifically on the ASUS RT-N66U home routers using the ‘Shibby’ builds. They let you take full advantage of enterprise (and kitchen sink) features on the broadcom-based residential routers with support for OpenVPN, TOR, VLANs and a litany of other useful functions. We’re going to cover setting up port-based and wireless VLAN support for traffic isolation on a network using the RT-N66U and Shibby build 1.32. Let’s get started. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged asus rt-n66u, IoT, linux, linux home vlan router, networking, security, shibby, tomato, tomato firmware vlan, vlan, wireless vlan | 68 Comments

Trick out your Terminal

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Will Foster

Here are some useful ways to enhance your operating system shell environment. The first will give you a permanent bash history that’s up to date and doesn’t require a logout to update command history, nor does it get reset. The second are some PS1 enhancement examples that have been useful to me. This should work on both Linux or OSX, and is aimed towards the Bash shell – let’s get started. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged linux, shell, sysadmin, terminal | 1 Comment

Installing CentOS on the Raspberry Pi

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Will Foster

I recently acquired a Raspberry Pi 2 and wanted to run CentOS7 on it. Here’s how I got CentOS installed and setup. There are now official Raspberry Pi 2 CentOS ARMv7hl images available for your enjoyment. Let’s get started. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged armv7, centos, centos7, how to install centos on raspberry pi, how to install centos raspberry pi, install centos raspberry pi, installing centos on raspberry pi, linux, open source, raspberry pi, raspberry pi 2 | 9 Comments

How to Manually Clean Indexes from Elasticsearch

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Will Foster

In a previous post we covered getting started with the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana). Now we need to remove old indexes manually from an Elasticsearch datastore sorted by age. We’ll be using the curator tool in a sandbox using pip and virtualenv on a CentOS/EL system. Let’s get started. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged curator, elasticsearch, elk, linux, pip, python, sysadmin | 3 Comments

Hobo’ing it up in NYC

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Will Foster

After 40+ hours of travelling, three long flights and a boat ride from warm, tropical Southeast Asia to Wintertime NYC my luggage containing warmer clothes and pretty much everything needed for survival past a few days was lost. With only my trusty Superdry jumpsuit and some minimal items I made the best of it while still having fun. Here are some of my hobo adventures. Continue reading →

Posted in life, travel | Tagged hobo, life, lost luggage, NYC, pragmatism, sketchy guy, travel | Leave a comment

Creating lots of iSCSI LUNs Quickly on Netapp

Posted on February 15, 2016 by Will Foster

I’ve been using Netapp technology since Ontap 6 before flexible volumes were around, and it’s my favorite commercial storage platform. They provide a robust CLI and you can automate repetitive tasks by using SSH and a bit of creativity. Recently I needed to deploy a large amount of iSCSI LUNs quickly on many hosts on Ontap 8.2 C-Mode. If I had to do this manually via the GUI tools I’d rake my eyes out. This is how I did it, hoping this helps others in a similar situation. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged iscsi, lun, netapp, shell, storage, sysadmin | Leave a comment

How to Make Citrus Chicken with Kale

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Will Foster

Here’s a quick, easy recipe for citrus chicken and kale. It costs around €8, feeds two people and it’s delicious and healthy. Price based in Dublin, Ireland so may vary (I’m sure it’s cheaper elsewhere). Let’s get started. Continue reading →

Posted in food | Tagged citrus chicken and kale, cooking, food, home cooking, organic, recipe | 1 Comment

Linux RAID Disk Replacement with Sans Digital 8-bay eSATA tower

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Will Foster

There’s plenty of useful articles and guides on managing Linux software RAID floating around. I recently had a disk failure in my 8-bay eSATA array and thought I’d add to the mix. Here’s what I did, including some notes specific to the Sans Digital 8-bay eSATA tower and recovery on RHEL6. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, sysadmin | Tagged 8bay sata tower, esata, eSATA Linux, linux, linux raid, mdadm, sans digital, SANS DIGITAL TR8M-B, software raid, sysadmin | 1 Comment

Logitech G933 Wireless Headset on Linux

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Will Foster

I recently came into possession of a Logitech G933 wireless headset and started using it on my Linux work laptop for 100% of my audio and video conferencing needs. There were a few issues out of the box on Linux but I managed to get it all working. Here’s what I did and my experiences with the hardware. Continue reading →

Posted in gaming, open source, sysadmin | Tagged desktop linux, headset, linux, linux gaming headset, linux headset, linux logitech wireless, logitech g933, logitech g933 linux | 25 Comments

Linux Laptop Power Tuning with Powertop and Friends

Posted on December 18, 2015 by Will Foster

There’s an easy way to reduce power usage on Linux laptops using Intel’s Powertop utility. Powertop polls your existing power usage and recommends tunings for your hardware. I’ll show you how to quickly make the most of your battery life using this tool as well as tuned and cpufreq. Continue reading →