What was it that I did, you ask? Well let me tell you all of the tasks I was able to complete.

System Administration Study Group

Over the past year, I’ve been working on a way to do a regular free study group for those who want to improve their system administration skills, get certified, or just brush up on something they didn’t quite understand.

Enter sysadminSG, a self-guided tour of many of the standard tasks any system administrator should know. The main goal was to create an instance of a Fedora 14 machine for studiers to use.

Some of the tasks on the study sheets indicate certain issues that would need to be resolved which can’t be resolved without a ‘master’ instance. I was able to recruit a couple of excellent individuals to help get this further than I thought it would. Jon Stanley and Ivan Makfinsky helped put together many of the pieces which will help studiers get more done. Specifically, an ldap server for centralized authentication and iscsi target luns for use with LUKS encryption, LVM and disk partitioning.

Fedora Infrastructure

I attended the Fedora Infrastructure session, where we covered two major things of concern. One was removing the puppet staging branch and moving everything into ‘Production’. This is a mental shift for many, but makes sense because in truth, everything maintained from an infrastructure perspective is production.

Additionally, a longer term plan of being able to spin up ‘staging’ environments for any new things that will go into production looks to be the direction we’ll be going. Many of the applications we have in Fedora require some work to get us to this point, mostly so they can be more atomic pieces. I think a proof of concept environment will provide us with an good idea of how much work will be involved.

pam_otp

After the Fedora Infrastructure hackfest, there was a two-factor authentication hackfest. We discussed using Yubikeys and a unique PIN together for authentication within Fedora. The initial goal was determined to setup sudo authentication for sysadmin-main group with two-factor authentication.

Nathaniel McCallum found the pam_otp library and was able to get it to compile. He passed it on to me to test and document it, which I was able to get working after a drunk night by the fire. I was then able to document the usage of it and have a test rpm that we’ll be using.

All in all, it was a very productive weekend and more work will be getting done over the next few weeks as well. It’s all very exciting and fun, a really good reason for attending FUDCon!

Cheers,

Herlo

Today and tomorrow we’re sprinting. We also have a sprint scheduled for next week!

Why you ask? Well, I finally have had enough time to finish coding skein and it’s ready for release to 2.0. There are most definitely some bugs and other things that need to be completed (read: documentation), but it’s functional and is ready to get us to the end of our first rebuild phase.

We have a ways to go, and a goal of EOY 2011 for our first Alpha!

Come join us at #gooseproject on irc.freenode.net and get started today! More information is available at http://gooseproject.org

Cheers,

Herlo

Recently, Jonathan Nadaeu and I sat down and discussed Fedora, GoOSe and a few other fun things on This Week in Fedora. The majority of the interview was about the GoOSe project and it covers a good bit of why we’re doing what we’re doing, how it works and how to get involved. Have a listen, and come hang out and help out the project!

In addition, I was asked to do a presentation this week on how to build RPMs at the Ogden Area Linux User Group (OALUG). While I teach this in my day job as a Red Hat Trainer, I’ve never given my own presentation. I’m really excited to share some very useful tips and tricks on how to build an RPMs and set them up in a custom repository for your company or for others to consume. It’s very cool and very easy to do most of this work.

So come on up to OALUG tomorrow night if you can.  I’ll make sure to follow-up here with the useful links for those interested.

Cheers,

Herlo

If you have never been to a UTOS Project Day, you just might want to attend. There have been 3 previously successful Project Day events and this one looks to be as awesome! In fact, just for attending and working on your project, there will be a raffle for a Motorola XOOM!

But really, that’s not why you should attend.

I will be there! :)

Oh, that’s not enough? Here are 5 excellent reasons to attend!

1. It’s Software Freedom Day and what better way to come down and work on a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) project
2. There will be a bunch of other folks there too, working on interesting projects
3. Many will be willing to collaborate with you and discuss your project
4. Free food and snacks throughout the day
5. Helping out the Utah Open Source Foundation with its efforts for UTOSC 2012 next spring

Add your project

If you would like help with your project, it’s a good idea to add it to the list. If you are looking for a project, check out the entries and see if there is something there that interests you. Either way, there will likely be more projects than what is currently listed.

So come on down!

I know quite a few folks who will be interested in staying later as well at a local coffee shop or similar and hacking well into the evening. Don’t let the draw of a football game get you distracted, there will be plenty of time to watch it on DVR on Sunday afternoon!

Cheers,

Herlo

Even though I did attend several presentations on Saturday. My day was mostly taken up with something else…

I built rpm packages for salt!

If you aren’t sure what salt is, check out their site and read the authors blog. Essentially, salt makes it easy to run a set of commands on multiple machines all at the same time, returning results quickly and asynchronously.

If you are interested in trying out salt on your system(s) and run Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, etc. feel free to try out the rpms. I’ve currently got a review request on bugzilla as well if anyone is interested in providing a review.

Cheers,

herlo

Folks, since Fedora 15 was just released yesterday, I had an idea regarding the UTOS Project Day. I’m going to setup an installation server and usb keys for anyone who wishes to try out and/or install Fedora 15 on their computer.

There are only a couple requirements:

1. If you want the media on your USB key, you must provide at least a 2GB key. (Any existing data should be preserved, but make a backup just in case.)
2. Installations will be done using network boot, which requires a PxE capable laptop. Most are these days, just make sure yours supports this feature.

UTOS Project Day is going to be tons of fun. Come on down and try out Fedora 15, work on your project., or help someone else work on theirs.

Here’s to seeing all my geek friends this weekend at UTOS Project Day!!

Cheers,

Herlo

Several new features are available, many which I am excited about.

• GNOME 3 desktop environment – built from awesome!
• Btrfs filesystem now optionally available
• Better crash reporting
• Better SELinux support
• More apps in live media thanks to XZ compression
• Better power management
• LibreOffice replaces OpenOffice
• Firefox 4
• Systemd – the new and better replacement for SYSV init
• And much, much more…

Download and share (via bittorrent) the latest release of joy and happiness. Fedora 15 is here!

Cheers,

Herlo

Come on down this Saturday, May 28 and hang out with other geeks. We’ll provide you space to hack, snacks, lunch and plenty of projects to come and learn!

Date: May 28
Time: 12pm to 5pm
Where: Open Source Technology Center @ Novell (map)

More information available on the UTOS Project Day website and the UTOS Blog. UTOS is looking for operational volunteers. Stop by between 9-11am and volunteer to help out!

Always free admission, free software and free food.

We’ll see you all there!

Cheers,

Herlo

WE NEED YOU

Come by the UTOS Project day from 9am to 11am to hear what we have planned for the future and how you can help.

Date: May 28
Time: 9am to 11am
Where: Open Source Technology Center @ Novell (map)

We’re growing again and UTOS has some excellent opportunities available. I highly suggest you consider supporting this organization as we cannot put on an awesome conference and community events without volunteers. I’ll be there, cheering you all on and helping UTOS grow open source.

You can find more details on the UTOS Project Day website and the Utah Open Source Blog.

I look forward to seeing who shows up and is ready to make UTOS the best open source community around!

Cheers,

Herlo

• working on a project that you otherwise may not have time.
• learning a new technology by joining others.
• networking with other smart people who like to create stuff.
• junk food for up to 8 hours of hacking on your favorite stuff!
• being able to sit in a corner and focus on your project without interruption.
• providing the best open source software hacking space.

Come on down this Saturday and hang out with other geeks.  We’ll provide you space to hack, snacks, lunch and plenty of projects to come and learn!

Date: May 28
Time: 12pm to 5pm
Where: Open Source Technology Center @ Novell (map)

More information available on the UTOS Project Day website and the UTOS Blog. UTOS is looking for operational volunteers. Stop by between 9-11am and volunteer to help out!

Always free admission, free software and free food.