Tag Archives: linux

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 … Continue reading →

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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 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 … Continue reading →

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

Posted on February 21, 2017 by

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 →

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Back to the Future: Converting a Server VM to Bare Metal

Posted on December 7, 2016 by

It might seem like stepping back in time, but sometimes you start something with a VM and the desire for resources and usage skyrockets and you need to transplant it onto a bare metal server.  This was my situation with … Continue reading →

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Fun and Automation with Git Hooks

Posted on October 4, 2016 by

Git is more than just an awesome, decentralized version control system (VCS) – it can also drive lots of useful automation by triggering actions to deploy infrastructure and services based on event and commit-based hooks.  You can drive a lot … Continue reading →

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Automate SuperMicro Server Provisioning or Die Trying

Posted on August 10, 2016 by

We use Foreman for systems provisioning and recently received a large shipment of Supermicro for Ceph.  Out of the box they were a lot of trouble to get integrated/automated at the same level of our Dell gear but we managed, … Continue reading →

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Tmux for GNU Screen Refugees and Vim Users

Posted on July 16, 2016 by

I use GNU Screen on servers to manage working sessions and perform long-running or persistent tasks. Lately I’ve been using tmux locally on my work desktop/laptop, finding it better suited for most terminal activity.  Here’s how I set it up … Continue reading →

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