Tag Archives: Fedora

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Today at SCaLE10x: System Administration Study Group

January 20, 2012 – 9:26 am

If you haven’t heard my ranting and raving about the SysadminSG last weekend at FUDCon, it went pretty well. Turns out, this weekend is another run of the event. The goal is to help Fedora contributors (and others) prepare for the tough world of Linux system administration.

If you attend the event, you will receive two study guides and an ec2 instance for about 24-hours. The idea is that you will spend the day today studying with others to improve your system administration skills. There are no instructors, but I will be there to get the ec2 instances setup and help with any non-study related issues.

If you are interested in the sysadminSG,  come visit us at SCaLE10x today:

Southern California Linux Expo 10x (SCaLE10x)
Los Angeles Airport Hilton – Catalina C
9am – 5pm

Cheers,

Herlo

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Fedora FUDCon News Tech Tools

FUDCon Blacksburg: sysadminSG, Fedora Infrastructure, pam_otp and more!

January 19, 2012 – 1:47 pm

Well, FUDCon Blacksburg has come and gone. I believe it was the most productive I’ve been at a FUDCon EVER! I was able to get quite a bit accomplished and much more than I had planned!

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

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Fedora FUDCon SysadminSG Tech

FUDCon Blacksburg 2012: Three days to the Sysadmin Study Group

January 11, 2012 – 9:28 pm

This Saturday, January 14, 2012 at approximately 1pm Eastern Standard Time, I will be running the System Administration Study Group (SysadminSG) at the Fedora Users and Developers Conference being held in Blacksburg, Virginia.

We did a successful version of the SysadminSG at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 9x) last year.  And thanks to Ben Williams prodding several months ago, I agreed to run this event again. Note: We will also be running the SysadminSG again at SCaLE 10x on January 21, 2012 as the Fedora Activity Day (FAD).

What is the System Administration Study Group (SysadminSG)?

The System Administration Study Group or SysadminSG is intended as a gathering of individuals with a common purpose, studying and preparation for the Red Hat Certifications. The two main certifications of focus are the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) and the Red Hat Ceritfied Engineer (RHCE).

This is a self-guided workshop for those who gather, it does not have any instructors. However, proctors will be around to assist as needed.

The SysadminSG could be used for many other reasons. The Fedora Infrastructure team is always looking for skilled system administrators. The study group is a great way to bone up on the technologies used by Fedora Project administrators every day.

Why should I participate in SysadminSG?

Because it’s cool, and other reasons, too!

Okay, while it is true that participation is the cool thing to do, it is also very possible you may wish to improve your system administration skills. Doing so with others in the room to bounce questions off can be very helpful. Studying by yourself is challenging and while IRC is nice, there really is nothing like real live people in a room, with similar goals.

So I am interested. What do I need to bring/provide to get me started?

To participate in this event, please bring a laptop, PC or some other computer with a current version of Fedora pre-installed. YOU DO NOT WANT TO INSTALL THE DAY OF THE STUDY SESSION!!

Amazon ec2 instances will be used where possible, so that things can be portable. The instances should be up and running for around 24-hours, which means if you don’t finish during the study session, it’s possible to continue for a short time after the workshop. To access an ec2 instance, it will need to be setup with an ssh public key, so come prepared with one.

Note: If the machine you bring has the capability for Virtual Machines using KVM or VMWare, we can work with that as well, but you may receive mixed results.

Resources! Pig for Wheat!

Okay, stop screaming about it! There will be plenty to do during the 4-hour session, but if you want to get a head start, read up on these guides.

Contributions encouraged and accepted

One of the main goals of the study group is to come up with tasks that would be representative of each of the objectives listed. It is my hope that with a bit of contribution during the session, we can discover and improve the study group to make it a regularly occurring workshop. I would like to see these study guides go from big sections of blank to something more tangible. It’s possible each objective could have two or three tasks for a future SysadminSG workshop.

See you all at FUDCon this weekend!

Cheers,

herlo

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Fedora FUDCon SysadminSG Tech

FUDCon Blacksburg: System Administrator Study Group

December 26, 2011 – 11:49 pm

FUDCon Blacksburg is a little less than 3 weeks away and I can’t believe it’s almost here! So much to do, so little time, it will be a great event!

As some of you may know, I’m putting on a workshop, called System Administrator Study Group. If you haven’t heard about this workshop, listen up!

SysadminSG as it’s called, is to get Fedora contributors prepared for certain certification exams, specifically the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) and the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE).

This workshop is not a place where you can come and earn either of these certifications. It is also not a course where you can get free instruction. Instead, this workshop is a hands-on place to sit down with others of like mind and work through the exam requirements as specified by Red Hat. If you have ever desired to get your RHCE certification, or just want to bone up on some of the qualifying skills, this is the place for you.

A Test Run – 18:00 to 21:00 UTC – December 27, 2011

My hope is to have everything working on ec2 instances for participants in the workshop. In that sense, I’ll be setting some things up in the morning tomorrow to make certain things work. It is clear to me that I’ll need help from a few folks to test the setup I’ve created.

If you have an hour or so tomorrow during the above time frame, I’d love your help testing these instances. Please find me in #fedora-cloud on freenode (I’m herlo) and I’ll set you up with your own 24-hour instance. I’ll probably be in there asking gholms and others for help getting ec2 policies working, among other minor issues.

Cheers,

Herlo

 

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Community Fedora GoOSe LUGs News RPM Tech Yum

Building RPMs and ‘This Week in Fedora’ interview

September 26, 2011 – 4:31 pm

Many of you may have already heard from my good friend Derek Carter about the GoOSe Project. If you haven’t, I’d love to hear your comments on what we are doing. I’d also encourage many of you to come and join the project and help us to build a community of contributors dedicated to making the best enterprise Linux rebuild available.

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

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Fedora fpaste-server Geek Guru Tech Tools

Fedora Infrastructure will soon have fpaste-server

September 5, 2011 – 7:52 pm

Today, I deployed the latest fpaste-server package on a development box within Fedora Infrastructure.

Test fpaste-server

I’d like to get some folks to hit it and do some testing. If you have time, I would love it if you could take a moment, read below and help.

On the development server

To help, just point your browser to http://paste01.dev.fedoraproject.org/ and add some pastes. In fact, it should be pretty sturdy. If you do happen to find a bug, please file it on our fedorahosted.org Trac instance.

Roll your own

Another way to help is to install your own instance of fpaste-server. I’ve posted some simple installation instructions for anyone who is interested.

We are always looking for helpers to make fpaste-server better. Please contact me (herlo AT fedoraproject doT Org) if you are interested in helping improve or maintain this simple and fun project.

Cheers,

herlo

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Fedora Filesystems Guru Tech Tools

Packaging Update: pydf now in Fedora

July 22, 2011 – 10:52 am

Recently, my friend beandog introduced me to pydf. After playing with it for a couple of days, I decided I liked it enough that I packaged and included into Fedora. (If you are interested in other packages I maintain, you can check them out here.)

What is pydf?

$ yum info pydf

Name             : pydf
Arch               : noarch
Version          : 9
Release         : 3.fc15
Size                : 14 k
Repo              : updates
Summary       : Fully colorized df clone written in python
URL                : http://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/software/pydf/
License          : Public Domain
Description   : pydf displays the amount of used and available space on your file systems,
: just like df, but in colors. The output format is completely customizable.

I was also able to send in a patch for the python 2.4 version to the upstream author. He was very happy to receive and apply the fix. The patch is also available in the source rpm.

A nice looking screenshot of the output from pydf is below:

Cheers,

herlo

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Community Fedora Fun Geek Guru News Tech UTOS

UTOS Project Day: Install Fedora 15

May 25, 2011 – 8:54 am

Are you planning on attending the UTOS Project Day this Saturday, May 28? Come work on your projects in an open environment with food, friends and feedback.

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

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Ambassadors Community Fedora Filesystems GNOME Guru Install News Tech

Fedora 15 (Lovelock) is here – get yours today!

May 24, 2011 – 8:41 am

Here’s the announcement from Fedora Project Leader, Jared Smith.

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

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Collaboration Community django Fedora Releases Tech Tools

Fpaste-Server: The new hotness of pastebins

May 2, 2011 – 11:51 am

If you have been on the internet for a while, you probably have seen or been told to use a pastebin when submitting large amounts of text or code in IRC. If not, you may have used a pastebin to show your buddy the code you are working through and getting advice.

My point…

PASTEBINS ARE EVERYWHERE

One of the pastebins that has been in use for a very long time is http://fpaste.org and the focus of my post today. Essentially, the Fedora community tends to use fpaste.org over other pastebins as it has a bunch of nice features and it’s Fedora branded. About 2 months ago, I was asked by Jonathan Steffan (aka daMaestro) if I would be interested in packaging fpaste.org’s code and get it into Fedora infrastructure (FI). I accepted that challenge.

As Jonathan will tell you, the code was hacked together over a weekend at a coffee shop. Thus, it needed a bit of clean-up to make things work without including libs from other projects (a big no-no when packaging a Fedora rpm). After a few weeks of clean-up and back-and-forth with Jonathan, fpaste-server was born. That was the first big step to get fpaste-server into FI.

Fpaste-Server is comprised of many other packages. Since I wasn’t the maintainer on many of them, I worked with the amazingly awesome Dave Riches (dcr226) to get django-mptt, django-tracking, django-simple-captcha and django-dpaste into the EPEL repositories for both EL5 and EL6. Dave was not only helpful, but went above and beyond to complete these builds. Thank you, sir!

Over the past month, I’ve been really busy, prepping for my wedding and what not, but found some time recently to finish the package builds of fpaste-server. The packages are all approved, save for el5 which was submitted this morning. This was the second big step to get fpaste-server into FI.

This week, and after my honeymoon, I plan to finish up the work to get fpaste-server into FI. All that’s really left is to get django-tracking into EPEL6.

If you haven’t tried fpaste-server yet, you should. It’s a pretty cool and stable pastebin, it’s also very hackable. Changing out the background to fit your own logos and such is very simple. Please comment here if you find any bugs or issues, have questions or comments.

Cheers,

Herlo

 

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