Linux 
Recompiling AbiWord
In my quest to replace Google Docs, I came across AbiWord, Gnome's editor. It looks newer than LibreOffice, appears feature complete, and has footnote support. The only problem is that it does not have keyboard shortcuts for footnotes. This is how I compiled AbiWord from the git source:
Install the dependencies… Read more → Moving to Desktop GNU/Linux from Windows/Mac
There are many curious individuals who tinker with GNU/Linux as a Server OS and want to experience what it is like as a Desktop OS. The switch is often hindered by two obstacles:
- Some daily use programs are not available. (i.e. Photoshop, iTunes, etc.)
- The unknown of what to do if something goes wrong or what do I do to get my… Read more →
Easy unix epoch timestamps from CLI
While working on various projects and ultimately the need for a Unix timestamp for expiring swift objects in OpenStack, I needed a quick way to convert past, present, and future timestamps to the Unix epoch. Traditionally, I went to google, searched for a Unix timestamp converter, and retrieved my seconds that way. Unfortunately in exams, you are n…
Read more →Using Puppet to host a private RPM repository
A repository is a place where files are stored, indexed, and available through a package manager to anyone who has the repository information. With rpm based systems, a repository is created with a tool called createrepo. Most of the time, publicly available repositories already offer the packages your server needs. When y…
Read more →The future without Microsoft Office products
I recently submitted a proposal to remove Microsoft Office from off my network and switch to Google Apps for Work and LibreOffice. This would incur a cost savings of ~$17.50 per user per month (GAFW $5 plan versus Office 2016 Professional Plus, Corporate, Open License, License Only). Some may argue that there are better license options with Microso…
Read more →Puppet with Mac and GNU/Linux
Puppet on Mac is a mixture of Puppet on Linux and Windows. Registry settings are called "secrets" and to make things easier, you need to install homebrew.
Enforcing a local admin is a little bit tedious. In the past few OSX releases, the have changed their password hashing algorithm several times. This causes a few case statements based on r…
Read more →Learn GNU/Linux the easy way
Let's face it, Linux is a kernel and no matter what distribution you use, it is all the same. You have a repository of packages, you get a package manager to manage your packages, you get a desktop environment, and you get freedom to tinker down to the lowest level of the kernel to configure things like IP routing and forwarding.
Differences…
Read more →Access Samba shares from Chromebook
Chromebooks are cloud focused. Many Chromebooks come with very limited storage in hopes you would be storing everything in the cloud. While this is a great habit to practice, in all reality, how likely are you to store 2tb of data in the cloud? Not many cloud providers even offer plans for that much storage.
Today marks a milestone - Read more → 5 Things to do after installing X
Congratulations, you have installed X! Here are 5 things to do right now:
- Change your background
- Install needless software
- Customize your font size
- Take a screenshot
- Share about your experience on social media!
This post is mainly a response to all of those 10 things to do after install…
Read more →How to fix Error: Transaction check error with dnf/yum
When a dnf or yum process gets interrupted, you may get the below error:
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
The …
Read more →
Switching from Active Directory to Samba4
Active Directory is solid, secure, and stable platform for user, group, and computer management. I would go as far and say that it is probably the backbone of 99.9% of all organizations world wide. So why would anyone want to switch away from Active Directory? The answer to that question is varied, but the most common reason why are:
- R…
Read more →
Converting Debian/Ubuntu to oVirt
oVirt 3.6 will have a better way to import virtual machines. In the mean time, here is the best method for getting an already made ova into oVirt. The example I am using is the open source log analyzer - graylog.
A prerequisite is the script located at Read more →
Converting VMs for oVirt
My existing Hyper-V infrastructure consisted of Windows, a few CentOS, and Debian/Ubuntu guests. The best method I found to importing into oVirt was using the virt-p2v disc. This required down time of the server (approx 3 hours per 100GB on gigabit backbone) and a dedicated Fedora o…
Read more →
Planning the Deployment of oVirt
After I played with oVirt I needed to do several items:
- Migrate the oVirt engine to a new host
- Migrate the storage from a single NFS share to GlusterFS
- Move my VMs from Hyper-V to oVirt
- Test my setup
Migrate the oVirt Engine to a new host
This…
Read more →
Switching from Hyper-V to oVirt
For quite some time I have heard that Hyper-V was a low player when it came to virtualization. It came with Windows and was the hypervisor of choice, but it had its limitations. In my environment, we had local storage and no clustering of hosts and consequently no high availability or fail over. This brought the first pain point - we need high avai…
Read more →
Paying for Open Source
While Open Source software is free to download, use, and depending on the license, free to distribute, it is not free to creator. The Open Source creators have to pay for hosting, branding (domain, etc.), coding (in time), and distribution. While some are offloading the costs by hosting the project on Open Source aware distribution channels such as…
Read more →
USB Key Start
Back in the good 'ole days of floppy drives, I used to install grub onto one. I would use it like a key to my computer and take it out if I did not want anyone using my computer when I was not around. Today, we use LUKS encryption to keep unwanted users out. Once grub became too big to fit on floppy drives (and floppy driv…
Read more →
My Review of Arch
After my minimal install of Arch, I was greeted by a terminal console upon booting the kernel. With 5,013 packages in the 32 bit stable repositories (compare tha…
Read more →
Jumping on the Arch Bandwagon
Well, after avoiding it for a few years, I have decided to install the Arch GNU/Linux distribution on my Acer C710. At first glance, it was nice to just install the necessary packages and have a working system within 20 minutes. The downside to having everything up and running in 20 minutes is that I did not install the base packages that come with…
Read more →
Expect with expect
Wouldn't it be nice to program a script that expects a certain line of text then sends a predetermined string? How about copy your ssh id to 40 different RPi units without typing the command for every one? Expect is that sort of program we all have been dreaming about. Just look at this script:
Read more →
The Arrow Law
When I first started out with Linux, I was having trouble understanding the basic commands such as ln, andrewmv, scp, rsync, etc. What got me with those commands was the SOURCE and DEST options until I figured out the arrow law.
A typical rsync command looks like this:
Read more →
Setting the I/O scheduler for a single disk on Fedora
You can set your IO scheduler on-the-fly by echoing the scheduler you want into /sys/block/{DEVICE-NAME}/queue/scheduler. This setting, however, does not persist across system reboots. The legacy method is to place this command in /etc/rc.local or by placing an elevator variable in grub.cfg.
Beginning w…
Read more →
Send Aliases over SSH connections
Bash reads aliases from a file only; however, this file does not have to reside on the server you are connecting to. With OpenSSH, we have to ability to send environment variables that the server allows.
On Debian/Ubuntu systems, the default accept environment variables are:
Read more →
Moving to Desktop GNU/Linux from Windows/Mac
There are many curious individuals who tinker with GNU/Linux as a Server OS and want to experience what it is like as a Desktop OS. The switch is often hindered by two obstacles:
- Some daily use programs are not available. (i.e. Photoshop, iTunes, etc.)
- The unknown of what to do if something goes wrong or what do I do to get my… Read more →
Easy unix epoch timestamps from CLI
Read more →While working on various projects and ultimately the need for a Unix timestamp for expiring swift objects in OpenStack, I needed a quick way to convert past, present, and future timestamps to the Unix epoch. Traditionally, I went to google, searched for a Unix timestamp converter, and retrieved my seconds that way. Unfortunately in exams, you are n…
Using Puppet to host a private RPM repository
Read more →A repository is a place where files are stored, indexed, and available through a package manager to anyone who has the repository information. With
rpmbased systems, a repository is created with a tool calledcreaterepo. Most of the time, publicly available repositories already offer the packages your server needs. When y…The future without Microsoft Office products
Read more →I recently submitted a proposal to remove Microsoft Office from off my network and switch to Google Apps for Work and LibreOffice. This would incur a cost savings of ~$17.50 per user per month (GAFW $5 plan versus Office 2016 Professional Plus, Corporate, Open License, License Only). Some may argue that there are better license options with Microso…
Puppet with Mac and GNU/Linux
Read more →Puppet on Mac is a mixture of Puppet on Linux and Windows. Registry settings are called "secrets" and to make things easier, you need to install homebrew.
Enforcing a local admin is a little bit tedious. In the past few OSX releases, the have changed their password hashing algorithm several times. This causes a few case statements based on r…
Learn GNU/Linux the easy way
Read more →Let's face it, Linux is a kernel and no matter what distribution you use, it is all the same. You have a repository of packages, you get a package manager to manage your packages, you get a desktop environment, and you get freedom to tinker down to the lowest level of the kernel to configure things like IP routing and forwarding.
Differences…
Access Samba shares from Chromebook
Chromebooks are cloud focused. Many Chromebooks come with very limited storage in hopes you would be storing everything in the cloud. While this is a great habit to practice, in all reality, how likely are you to store 2tb of data in the cloud? Not many cloud providers even offer plans for that much storage.
Today marks a milestone - Read more →
5 Things to do after installing X
Read more →Congratulations, you have installed X! Here are 5 things to do right now:
- Change your background
- Install needless software
- Customize your font size
- Take a screenshot
- Share about your experience on social media!
This post is mainly a response to all of those 10 things to do after install…
How to fix Error: Transaction check error with dnf/yum
When a
dnforyumprocess gets interrupted, you may get the below error:Running transaction check Transaction check succeeded. Running transaction test The … Read more →Switching from Active Directory to Samba4
Active Directory is solid, secure, and stable platform for user, group, and computer management. I would go as far and say that it is probably the backbone of 99.9% of all organizations world wide. So why would anyone want to switch away from Active Directory? The answer to that question is varied, but the most common reason why are:
- R…
Read more →
Converting Debian/Ubuntu to oVirt
oVirt 3.6 will have a better way to import virtual machines. In the mean time, here is the best method for getting an already made ova into oVirt. The example I am using is the open source log analyzer - graylog.
A prerequisite is the script located at Read more →
Converting VMs for oVirt
Read more →My existing Hyper-V infrastructure consisted of Windows, a few CentOS, and Debian/Ubuntu guests. The best method I found to importing into oVirt was using the virt-p2v disc. This required down time of the server (approx 3 hours per 100GB on gigabit backbone) and a dedicated Fedora o…
Planning the Deployment of oVirt
Read more →After I played with oVirt I needed to do several items:
- Migrate the oVirt engine to a new host
- Migrate the storage from a single NFS share to GlusterFS
- Move my VMs from Hyper-V to oVirt
- Test my setup
Migrate the oVirt Engine to a new host
This…
Switching from Hyper-V to oVirt
Read more →For quite some time I have heard that Hyper-V was a low player when it came to virtualization. It came with Windows and was the hypervisor of choice, but it had its limitations. In my environment, we had local storage and no clustering of hosts and consequently no high availability or fail over. This brought the first pain point - we need high avai…
Paying for Open Source
Read more →While Open Source software is free to download, use, and depending on the license, free to distribute, it is not free to creator. The Open Source creators have to pay for hosting, branding (domain, etc.), coding (in time), and distribution. While some are offloading the costs by hosting the project on Open Source aware distribution channels such as…
USB Key Start
Read more →Back in the good 'ole days of floppy drives, I used to install
grubonto one. I would use it like a key to my computer and take it out if I did not want anyone using my computer when I was not around. Today, we use LUKS encryption to keep unwanted users out. Oncegrubbecame too big to fit on floppy drives (and floppy driv…My Review of Arch
Read more →After my minimal install of Arch, I was greeted by a terminal console upon booting the kernel. With 5,013 packages in the 32 bit stable repositories (compare tha…
Jumping on the Arch Bandwagon
Read more →Well, after avoiding it for a few years, I have decided to install the Arch GNU/Linux distribution on my Acer C710. At first glance, it was nice to just install the necessary packages and have a working system within 20 minutes. The downside to having everything up and running in 20 minutes is that I did not install the base packages that come with…
Expect with expect
Wouldn't it be nice to program a script that expects a certain line of text then sends a predetermined string? How about copy your ssh id to 40 different RPi units without typing the command for every one? Expect is that sort of program we all have been dreaming about. Just look at this script:
Read more →The Arrow Law
When I first started out with Linux, I was having trouble understanding the basic commands such as
ln, andrewmv,scp,rsync, etc. What got me with those commands was the SOURCE and DEST options until I figured out the arrow law.A typical
rsynccommand looks like this:Read more →Setting the I/O scheduler for a single disk on Fedora
Read more →You can set your IO scheduler on-the-fly by echoing the scheduler you want into
/sys/block/{DEVICE-NAME}/queue/scheduler. This setting, however, does not persist across system reboots. The legacy method is to place this command in/etc/rc.localor by placing an elevator variable ingrub.cfg.Beginning w…
Send Aliases over SSH connections
Bash reads aliases from a file only; however, this file does not have to reside on the server you are connecting to. With OpenSSH, we have to ability to send environment variables that the server allows.
On Debian/Ubuntu systems, the default accept environment variables are: Read more →