Tracking deployment and maintenance activity in time series
We use a variety of tools to collect and visualize data about our infrastructure: Telegraf for data collection, InfluxDB for metrics storage, and Grafana for...
Posts by Tag
- Tech 7
- Ansible 6
- Linux 4
- DIY 3
- Dirty Tricks 3
- Bash 2
- Grafana 2
- Home Improvement 1
- General 1
- Holidays 1
- Rundeck 1
Tech
The XY Problem, or how to stay out of tech support purgatory
Have you ever been on the giving or receiving end of a marathon troubleshooting session? One that kept everyone going in circles for days, until someone fina...
Disable the seek bar popup (OSD) in Kodi / OpenELEC / LibreELEC
Inspired by this forum post, and other fragmentary how-to’s floating around the internet.
Installing OpenELEC/LibreELEC on the Amlogic S905 Chipset
Amazon is now flooded with media boxes that use the Amlogic S905 or S905X chipsets. Typically they come with a custom build of Amlogic ’s reference OS, and t...
Networker Jukebox Advanced Features- the fullest list
If you are in the middle of deploying EMC’s Networker backup suite, and you (still!) have to wrangle with a tape library, you may need to tune some “advanced...
Modular Interactive Kickstart Madness pt. 2
This is Part 2. See Part 1 here. Previously, we covered using a combination of %include files and an interactive pre- script to make Kickstart more flexible...
Modular Interactive Kickstart Madness pt. 1
Kickstart is a great time-saver for making standard Linux builds, but the traditional Kickstart process grows brittle as you try to scale it out. You may fin...
Ansible
Semi-random data with Ansible
You may come across the need for randomized data that is also predictable- whether picking randomized ports, UUIDs, etc. Ansible has a few tricks available t...
Rundeck Integration with Ansible
Thanks to some integration plugins, Rundeck can serve as a competent GUI dashboard for running Ansible playbooks- but there are some quirks and caveats that ...
Ansible Exit Codes
This is more difficult to figure out than it should be.
Ansible job reports with Jinja + HTML
TLDR: If you need an Ansible playbook to generate a clean-looking HTML report of the tasks it performed, check out this template for some ideas.
Using Ansible to audit configuration drift in a brownfield environment
When adopting tool like Ansible for configuration management, one big challenge is that you are often starting in a brownfield environment- namely, one that ...
Creative abuse of vars_prompt, for user-friendly playbooks without Tower
Ansible’s CLI wizard: vars_prompt
Linux
Using Ansible to audit configuration drift in a brownfield environment
When adopting tool like Ansible for configuration management, one big challenge is that you are often starting in a brownfield environment- namely, one that ...
Modular Interactive Kickstart Madness pt. 2
This is Part 2. See Part 1 here. Previously, we covered using a combination of %include files and an interactive pre- script to make Kickstart more flexible...
Configuring new network hardware in RHEL6 and RHEL7
This is one of those things that seems obvious, until you actually need to do it.
Modular Interactive Kickstart Madness pt. 1
Kickstart is a great time-saver for making standard Linux builds, but the traditional Kickstart process grows brittle as you try to scale it out. You may fin...
DIY
Medeawiz Sprite Deep-Dive for Holiday Decorations
When preparing for the holidays, I’m a big fan of digital decorations- which use a projector and special videos to “decorate” a surface or create various spe...
Disable the seek bar popup (OSD) in Kodi / OpenELEC / LibreELEC
Inspired by this forum post, and other fragmentary how-to’s floating around the internet.
Cable Management for Home Wiring
Cable Management for Home Wiring
Dirty Tricks
Creative abuse of vars_prompt, for user-friendly playbooks without Tower
Ansible’s CLI wizard: vars_prompt
Using Grafana to make a web kiosk, with pictures from a network share or external site
Maybe you have heard about Grafana’s playlist mode, and you want to make your own web kiosk to show off your dashboards. You make a nice playlist that shows ...
Parallel Processing in Bash
So you need to perform a task or run a command across a medium-to-large number of hosts, in some kind of controlled fashion. The typical options are:
Bash
Real-time script control and GUI interfaces in bash
While working on a script to batch-process items in parallel, I found the need to provide an interface that would let me control how the script was running, ...
Parallel Processing in Bash
So you need to perform a task or run a command across a medium-to-large number of hosts, in some kind of controlled fashion. The typical options are:
Grafana
Tracking deployment and maintenance activity in time series
We use a variety of tools to collect and visualize data about our infrastructure: Telegraf for data collection, InfluxDB for metrics storage, and Grafana for...
Using Grafana to make a web kiosk, with pictures from a network share or external site
Maybe you have heard about Grafana’s playlist mode, and you want to make your own web kiosk to show off your dashboards. You make a nice playlist that shows ...
Home Improvement
Cable Management for Home Wiring
Cable Management for Home Wiring
General
The XY Problem, or how to stay out of tech support purgatory
Have you ever been on the giving or receiving end of a marathon troubleshooting session? One that kept everyone going in circles for days, until someone fina...
Holidays
Medeawiz Sprite Deep-Dive for Holiday Decorations
When preparing for the holidays, I’m a big fan of digital decorations- which use a projector and special videos to “decorate” a surface or create various spe...
Rundeck
Rundeck Integration with Ansible
Thanks to some integration plugins, Rundeck can serve as a competent GUI dashboard for running Ansible playbooks- but there are some quirks and caveats that ...