Git (http://git-scm.com/) is one of the modern version management systems available at the moment. This tool is still changing a lot in features from version to version, so having an older version available can be a problem for Enterprise environments. One issue I encountered myself was the lack of (or introduction of) the smart-http transport released in version 1.6.6 (http://progit.org/2010/03/04/smart-http.html). Extremely useful in an Enterprise environment as it is simpler to manage usernames and passwords then ssh keys and operating system users....

Some time ago I had to reinstall a deb based system, which meant installing the packages and configure them. During the configuration I had to rethink how the system was originally configured, without having a proper backup of the system. Some of issues where that the backup contained some configuration files, but files referenced where not included. To overcome this problem I started creating a small piece of code (and placed it on github) which implements the following idea:...

Apache can be configured as a reverse proxy, using the mod_proxy and mod_proxy_http modules. Using mod_rewrite it is possible to create a simple method to proxy http requests based on the hostname. This does assume that there is a logical (programmatically) relation between the hostname used on the proxy and the hostname of the system that is intended to be reached. We can create a mapping like the one below:...

With Debian it is relative easy to setup ipv6 using aiccu. This can be done using the following steps (assuming you already have an account at www.sixxs.net): install aiccu sudo apt-get install aiccu edit de /etc/network/interfaces add the following entries: auto sixxs iface sixxs inet6 manual up ip link set mtu 1480 dev $IFACE pre-up invoke-rc.d aiccu start post-down invoke-rc.d aiccu stop disable the automatic start of aiccu sudo update-rc.d aiccu disable bring the interface up using the command...

Some people already found out the hard way that simply changing the /etc/fstab to make the root filesystem use the journal writeback modus will break the system. The trick to enable this feature is relative simple and involves 1 additional step to editing the /etc/fstab Lets use the below /etc/fstab snippet to illustrate the steps involved /dev/sda5 / defaults 0 0 We change this /etc/fstab snippet to: /dev/sda5 / data=writeback 0 0 And we execute the following command:...

This is the second article of a trilogy. The first article can be found here In the first article the installation of puppet on ubuntu was discussed. In this article we talk about making a trust between a puppet client and a puppet server. This is the crucial step that is needed in order te let an client obtain the puppet recipes for processing. The first step is installing the puppet client on a (new) server....

A blackberry bold 9700 can be used as a generic bluetooth modem. That is, without the use of the blackberry manager software. The trick is to change the phone number that is dialed. The general phone number to connect to a UMTS (3g) network is *99#, but in the case of blackberry it should become: *99***4#. Using this phonenumber in combination with a generic bluetooth modem (which is available after pairing) one should be able to make successful dial-up to a 3g network, using the blackberry as a tether device....

Radius authentication on a Nexus 5k (5548) using ldap as radius backend In the our current setup we are using radius with an ldap backup. Against this solution we found a way to configure the radius daemon in such a way that it is possible to gain admin rights. In this setup no changes to ldap where made. The trick to get this up and running is the following: In freeradius edit the default site, so that authorize looks like:...

This blog entry is meant as a quick lookup on how to setup an initial puppet environment on linux. The goal is to have puppet installed in a client master relationship, in which the master configuration files are stored in svn. The client is, except for the initial certificate trust, completely automated. In this part the focus is on the central server setup. As a base os for the central master ubuntu (11....

It turns out to be surprisingly easy to create a basic puppet client package. The steps involved are: download ruby from the opensuse (ruby-1.8.6.p36-4.1.i586.rpm, ruby-1.8.6.p36-4.1.src.rpm, ruby-1.8.6.p36-4.1.x86_64.rpm) download facter from opensuse (facter-1.5.7-1.1.i586.rpm, facter-1.5.7-1.1.src.rpm, facter-1.5.7-1.1.x86_64.rpm) download the puppet src.rpm from opensuse (puppet-0.25.5-1.1.src.rpm) download the puppet tar from puppetlabs (2.6.7 is the current one, http://puppetlabs.com/downloads/puppet/puppet-2.6.7.tar.gz) Install the ruby & facter package for the desired architecture (i586 = 32bit, x86_64 = 64bit). Install the puppet src....