http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog Paul Lathrop discusses systems administration. Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:29:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Yeah, I haven't been updating like I should. But, I'm apparently pretty high on the list for Google results when searching for Puppet recipes, so maybe I should fix my theme and start updating again... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/10/10/bad-blogger-no-biscuit/ If you want to use Fink, and build a bunch of crap you don't need, follow these instructions. If you are like me and prefer to use the libraries that are already installed, just do this: If you haven't already, install XCode. Download python-ldap and extract it. Edit setup.cfg. The relevant lines are below: ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/07/07/getting-python-ldap-installed-on-os-x/ I'm at Velocity 2008 right now. So far I've learned several things: Twitter can't handle a conference. Sun might succeed in its attempt to restore its relevance. SSDs are going to be abother layer in server memory, between disks and RAM. Whenever a member of the Ops team is unavailable, something breaks. Con food isn't ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/06/23/my-first-conference/ It's quiet in here. Life has been hectic and I'm somewhat confused as to what I'm allowed to say without getting in trouble at work. Hopefully I'll have some more Puppet content soon. http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/06/18/crickets/ In Puppet parlance, a module is a collection of manifests (including classes and definitions), templates, and files which, taken together, describe a recipe for configuring something via Puppet. Puppet has a number of facilities which make modules incredibly useful and labor-saving. Modules have a standard internal organization which is described in ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/04/18/creating-puppet-modules/ This is awesome. Put the following into your ~/.bash_profile file: complete -W "$(echo `cat ~/.ssh/known_hosts | cut -f 1 -d ' ' \ | sed -e s/,.*//g | uniq | grep -v "\["`;)" ssh Open a new shell and type ssh tab tab. I love tab completion, don't you? http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/03/24/ssh-tab-completion/ I just followed these instructions to update my server from FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE to FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE. Aside from taking almost a day, it went flawlessly. I'm extremely impressed! http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/03/17/freebsd-update/ This article might be interesting to some of you. http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/03/12/virtualization-article/ Here are a couple of tips for more effective use of your Bash command history. I think the Ctrl-R trick will save me a lot of typing. I have some articles planned, but have been busy starting my new job. Those few of you who actually read this, don't worry - ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/03/12/bash-history/ Two useful SSH-isms http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/02/23/useful-ssh-isms/ I just discovered something that is very simple but saves a significant amount of time. Specifically, the SSH ControlMaster feature, which allows you to re-use an existing SSH connection whenever you connect to a host you are already connected to. In your ~/.ssh/config file, add: Host * ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/02/14/simple-ssh-speed-up/ The lack of posts is due to a general lull in my work lately. I've got a couple of posts in the queue, but they need more development. Stay tuned! http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/02/11/is-it-quiet-in-here/ One of the things you quickly learn as you become a more sophisticated systems administrator is that performing the same task on several servers is both tedious and error-prone. Of course, if your infrastructure has been deployed in an ad-hoc manner, sometimes you don't have a choice; the task is ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/02/03/capistrano/ I was pretty unhappy with Drupal as a blog software so I've switched to Wordpress. Since I have a fairly limited audience and not a lot of old content, I'm pretty sure this won't disrupt people much. The code segments in the old posts don't look as nice as I ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/01/07/new-blog-software/ One of the most exciting features of Puppet is the way it enables the sharing of systems administration tools - "recipes" in the Puppet parlance. Puppet allows us to collect manifests, definitions, and even plugins into modules which can then be shared with others. David Schmitt is the author of the ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2008/01/02/puppet-modules-and-apt/ As I write these entries about Puppet I want to make it clear that the configurations I post may not necessarily be "best practices". I am attempting to follow a logical evolution of steps involved in becoming familiar with Puppet. As the configuration grows more complex I will introduce the ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2007/12/15/clarification/ In my last post, I described how to distribute an SSH authorized_keys file using Puppet. My reasoning for this was to help us utilize our existing set of home-grown scripts to administer machines - with Puppet we don't have to wonder if our keys are set up on every host. ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2007/12/15/managing-sudoers-with-puppet/ In my last post I mentioned Puppet. If you are a systems administrator and you haven't taken a look at Puppet, stop reading and go look. No, really. Open a new tab and head over to the About Puppet page of the Puppet wiki. Because Puppet is one of those tools ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2007/12/13/getting-started-with-puppet/ I thought I'd write an introductory post to tell you a little about myself. I've been working professionally in the world of systems administration for seven years. My focus is on Unix variants such as BSD and Linux, but I am a generalist as opposed to a specialist; I have ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2007/12/08/some-background/ A friend and former co-worker has been writing interesting and useful articles over at his tech blog. I've been thinking about doing something similar for quite some time; guess seeing him do it was adequate inspiration. I'll be writing about systems administration and my experiences as a systems administrator (I ... http://plathrop.tertiusfamily.net/blog/2007/12/07/inspiration/