rackspace

Onward & Upward, Into the Wide Blue Yonder and the Great Unknown

Today was the end of the beginning. I've been a little out of sorts for the past few weeks and I don't really know how to write this post. I've rewritten this thing

systemd

Running local services in network namespaces with systemd

Given systemd is ubiquitous with modern day GNU/Linux it only makes sense that it be able to do just about everything under the sun; which strictly adheres to the UNIX philosophy 😂. While

elasticsearch

Fixing "duplicate plugin" issues in Elasticsearch

Sometimes, when installing or upgrading plugins within elasticsearch old installation files will remain after installation or removal. If these files are not cleaned up the installation or upgrade of new plugins will not

life

Living with The Ridge

So I've decided to upend my life and give up my trusty old leather wallet. I'm converting to an RFID shielding "slim" wallet!

btrfs

Migrating BTRFS Subvolumes locally

This post will focus on moving a BTRFS file system from loopback file to a mounted BTRFS subvolume on a local file system. The Scenario A server has BTRFS as it's root file

btrfs

Migrating a BTRFS Volume Between Devices

When using BTRFS volumes it's sometimes necessary to move things around. BTRFS has some great tools to assist operators to move volumes and this post will cover one available method. What is this

lenovo

Installation, Firmware Upgrade, and Setup of a Sierra Wireless Card on a Lenovo X1 from Linux

The card I wanted to break into many little pieces but now love is an "Sierra Wireless EM7455". If you've found this post and are simply wanting to know how to install new firmware from Linux for a Sierra Wireless WWAN device, skip to the bottom of the post.

systemd

¿Journald'ing Remotely? Mucho Sí!

If you're running Linux and using systemd then you've likely needed to deal with systemd-journald to stream system logs, or check on the general health of the node. In the course of administering

openstack-ansible

Nova-Compute + LVM, an IOPS Love Story

The OpenStack Nova project has long had the ability to provision instances into logical volumes however in my travels I've found most deployments don't use it as the go-to instance storage. However recently

btrfs

Mounting a BTRFS Subvolume

Porque Podemos Let's say there's a BTRFS filesystem happily running things in one location and it becomes desirable to use the same BTRFS filesystem in a different location. Traditionally would require the administrator

openstack-ansible

Minimal OpenStack-Ansible deployment

Deploying OpenStack-Ansible, and following the deployer documentation, will result in a production-ready OpenStack Cloud. A typical deployment requires operators to setup various network interfaces, use different VLAN tags, and create several purpose-built bridges.

nspawn

OpenStack-Ansible machinectl image management

With recent changes in OpenStack-Ansible we're now able to import and export container images for using the built-in systemd tooling via machinectl. This gives us the ability to rapidly provision or replace containers

nspawn

OpenStack-Ansible Machinectl Storage setup

When using the machinctl container storage backend you've got choices on how to setup your host machines. This article will cover the three very common deployment situations. Simply let systemd back the /var/

dtek

Fixing a wedged android update - DTEK60

The other day I received a notice from my mobile device manufacture (Blackberry) of an OTA update containing security patches for my DTEK60. Excited, I rushed to install the patch only to discover

nspawn

Growing BTRFS in a Logical Volume

As you may know, I run quite a few nspawn containers which are responsible for running my entire home network, entertainment system, home automation, and a few other applications here & there. What

ubiquiti

PXE from an nspawn container

This post will cover the provisioning of a nspawn container and the installation of a tftp-hpa serving pxelinux.0. While this sounds simple enough, and there are millions of other posts just like

lenovo

Lenovo X1 Firmware Updates without Windows

As you may know, I have a 4th Generation X1 Carbon and I love it. However, in order to update much of the firmware, I need a Windows Environment but that doesn't mean

lenovo

Lenovo X1 BIOS updates without Windows

The X1 Carbon (I've the Gen 4) is a Fantastic machine and works wonderfully with Linux. I purchased my unit back in December as an upgrade to my aging Lenovo X230 and I

nspawn

Networkd for nspawn with OpenStack-Ansible

Within this post, I will cover the systemd-networkd aspect of the PR to create a systemd-nspawn driver within OSA. This post will be working with systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved to integrate nspawn containers within

nspawn

Nspawn OpenStack with OpenStack-Ansible

The OpenStack-Ansible project has been around for a few years now but if you're unfamiliar with it, the TL;DR is it's an OpenStack deployment project running OpenStack services within containers and uses

linux

Luks, Issuing & Allowing Discards, Enabling Timers, Oh My!

If you're running a system with an SSD it's likely that you've heard of trim, if you're running Linux you may have heard of the fstrim command, and if you're encrypting your drives

cloud

Rolling Restart using OpenStack-Ansible

Sometimes it's useful to do a rolling restart of OpenStack services throughout the cloud. In OpenStack-Ansible we've the means to make this easy, you just need a little BASH to tie it all

systemd

NFS mount via systemd

Sometimes you feel like fstab, sometimes you don't. If you're running modern Linux and are wanting to invest all of your brain power in a systemd thing-a-me and you're wishing there's was systemd

ubiquiti

Running the UniFi controller in an nspawn container

The UniFi controller is an essential part of the Ubiquiti Networks UniFi platform. Getting this controller installed allows you access to metrics, analytics, and features you'd not have otherwise. I've been on a

containers

Rocket past the white whale and spawn a container

As I'm sure you're aware, Docker is all folks in the IT world can talk about and while Moby(Docker) may be everyone's obsession, there are quite a few of us looking to