RNNoise provides an excellent, Open Source solution for embedding microphone noise suppression.  I’ve found it performs better than other proprietary AI solutions like Nvid… Read More

Venerable Slackware, the oldest maintained Linux distribution.  For many Linux users it was the one you learned on, yours truly included.  I recently felt the nostalgic urge to add… Read More

I recently had two packages in Fedora whose package GPG keys had changed but dnf would error out and skip them.  After some searching I found a simple solution using RPM to remove the o… Read More

If you’re looking for a quick, easy way to setup repository-based CI for your Ansible playbooks on Github consider Travis CI, it’s also a breeze to set-up for larger projects and… Read More

Rofi is a super lightweight window switching and application launcher written almost in C.  It’s totally agnostic to your desktop environment or window manager making it ideal to… Read More

Being a long-time user of OpenVPN and generally liking the security approach of ProtonMail I decided to take ProtonVPN for a test drive.  These are my experiences using their Linux CLI… Read More

Over the past year chipping away on the weekends I’ve just published an Ansible video course with Packt Publishing.  This is a 2.5hour course split across 6 chapters, focusing on… Read More

Besides Btrfs, native Linux-based storage solutions have lagged behind the robustness and features of ZFS and the BSDs.  Recently Red Hat acquired Permabit which provides an Open Source… Read More

Recent versions of Wine can run iTunes and Apple Music for  Linux with no wizardry required.  Having been given a free Apple Music subscription as part of a family plan it’s… Read More

Recently Intel started including their graphics drivers into the mainline Linux kernel.  This is great except when it stops working.  Having suffered intermittent, sporadic GPU fre… Read More

In the 2018 race to re-invent AOL instant messenger Signal comes out on top of the competition for end-to-end encryption and a focus on privacy and security.  Signal desktop was recentl… Read More

I recently setup Pi-hole on an existing Raspberry Pi running CentOS on my home network to serve as my DNS server and block advertising and unwanted domains for all internet-connected devices… Read More

The Fedora project COPR service builds/hosts free RPM package repositories and provides useful automation hooks for your Devopsing.  You can combine COPR and any standard Git source (Gi… Read More

Recently the SSD Operating System disk on my primary work desktop failed without warning and no manner of arcane xfsrepair or xfsdump/xfsrestore chicanery would bring it back.  Luckily… Read More

I wanted all code, system configuration file comments or in-line replies in neomutt email italicised to stand out easier.  Many terminal emulators (xterm, xfce4-terminal, iterm2) don&rs&hell…Read More

In a previous guide I documented my mutt + offlineimap + notmuch setup.  If you’re using Gmail with IMAP enabled you can still utilize the superpower of this trio but you’ll… Read More

Git is a powerful tool for lots of tasks, it makes a wonderful VCS that can drive easy utility and automation.  Recently I used git and remote repositories to deploy code & data fan… Read More

Sometimes you just need to get stuff done quickly and there’s nary a replacement than a quick shell one-liner.  Recently I’ve needed to feed some large, multi-variable comma… Read More

Let’s Encrypt is a free, public SSL certificate authority (CA) you can use to generate and automate SSL certificate renewal.  I co-manage Trystack.org, a free OpenStack sandbox fo… Read More

Office voice mail has become a graveyard for unwanted sales solicitations for things I don’t need.  People who need to reach me have many available methods.  I’ve decid… Read More

It might seem like stepping back in time, but sometimes you start something with a VM and the desire for resources and usage skyrockets and you need to transplant it onto a bare metal server… Read More

Plex is a fork of the Open Source Kodi (previously XBMC) project from 2008, the Plex Media Server has evolved into what amounts to a free,  personal Netflix + Spotify that lets you stre… Read More

I have used every manner of web browser from lynx, Mosaic and Netscape builds to abusing curl commands and mostly prefer Firefox for the bulk of my daily desktop/laptop needs due to the stro… Read More

Recently two fun, actively developed Open Source FPS game projects have had major updates: Enemy Territory: Legacy and Urban Terror.  Over the weekend I’ve upgraded the Funcamp ET… Read More

Sometimes I need to quickly copy SSH keys to remote systems in a pinch.  I can do this with the Ansible authorized_key module but that’s not always available.  I might be on… Read More

I’ll be giving two talks at the OpenStack Summit in Barcelona on two upstream Open Source projects that I work on – Trystack and Browbeat.  Trystack is a large, public free… Read More

Git is more than just an awesome, decentralized version control system (SCM) – it can also drive lots of useful automation by triggering actions to deploy infrastructure and services b… Read More

“It’s not done unless it’s documented,” says the wise Ops sage.  Frequently updated documentation is critical, it’s also one of the most neglected parts of… Read More

We use Foreman for systems provisioning and recently received a large shipment of Supermicro for Ceph.  Out of the box they were a lot of trouble to get integrated/automated at the same… Read More

You seem to burn almost as many calories making risotto as you do eating it – there’s constant action required to keep things under control.  Don’t worry, it’s n… Read More

“All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less,” so says mutt author Michael Elkins.  This is true for me over the last 10years as mutt along with offlineimap and notmuch… Read More

The Workflow Optimizer is part of a new sketch series about people who work as “professional workflow optimizers.”  Today the workflow optimizer visits the Engineering offic… Read More

I use GNU Screen on servers to manage working sessions and perform long-running or persistent tasks. Lately I’ve been using tmux locally on my work desktop/laptop, finding it better su… Read More

WordPress enforces sensible defaults for views and text wrapping that addresses most blogging purposes.  Sometimes you want to work around these defaults.  Recently I needed to exp… Read More

I recently setup a dedicated game recording/streaming setup using OBS Studio on Fedora Linux.  This lets me capture and stream real-time full 1080p video and audio from another machine… Read More

Infrastructure monitoring is important, and there’s lots of tools to do this.  I’m fond of Nagios – it’s very mature and customizable but it’s also a giant… Read More

Sometimes you just need to get to things remotely.  Those things might be behind an unbudging firewall with no way to forward proper ports for remote access, or perhaps you just want it… Read More

There are many tools to manage passwords and sensitive resources, some cost money or are closed commercial products.  I’m going to show you how to create a secure, distributed and… Read More

Browbeat is an Open Source performance tuning and analysis tool for OpenStack clouds, and something I’ve been contributing to lately on my new team.  As of this OpenStack commit B… Read More

Here’s a recipe for homemade lasagna that feeds eight hungry people (or less with great leftovers).  We’ll be using mostly ingredients you can find at a local grocery store… Read More

Ansible is a wonderful tool for orchestration, configuration management and automating a lot of tasks you’d never want to do by hand.  Sometimes you just need to get in there and… Read More

7 Days to Die is an extremely fun apocalyptic zombie survival crafting game with much less emphasis on the crafting and more on survival.  It’s a cross between the good building a… Read More

I often need to quickly revert virtual machines used for testing to a known good, vanilla state without doing anything by hand.  QEMU provides a great set of tools to help.  Here&r&hell…Read More

I’ve been a long-time vim user, dating back to when I figured out how to exit the damn thing.  Over the years I’ve tried various vimrc configurations, plugins and looks and… Read More

I recently needed to completely automate deploying a full ELK/EFK stack and clients and didn’t find anything that suited my needs so I wrote the playbooks for this in Ansible.  Th… Read More

Following onto the previous Trystack.org talk at Devconf 2016, we presented at the 2016 Austin OpenStack Summit.  Following the same format as the previous talk we covered some exciting… Read More

Recently I setup CentOS on the Raspberry pi 2.  Now we’re going to be installing a modern Fedora 23 desktop on the Raspberry Pi 3.  I’ve used the Pi 2 instructions from… Read More

I’ve been an ardent user of the Tomato Linux Open Source router firmware, specifically on the ASUS RT-N66U home routers using the ‘Shibby’ builds.  They let you take f… Read More

Here are some useful ways to enhance your operating system shell environment.  The first will give you a permanent bash history that’s up to date and doesn’t require a logou… Read More

I recently acquired a Raspberry Pi 2 and wanted to run CentOS7 on it.  Here’s how I got CentOS installed and setup.  There are now official Raspberry Pi 2 CentOS ARMv7hl imag… Read More

In a previous post we covered getting started with the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana).  Now we need to remove old indexes manually from an Elasticsearch datastore sorted by… Read More

After 40+ hours of travelling, three long flights and a boat ride from warm, tropical Southeast Asia to Wintertime NYC my luggage containing warmer clothes and pretty much everything needed… Read More

I’ve been using Netapp technology since Ontap 6 before flexible volumes were around, and it’s my favorite commercial storage platform.  They provide a robust CLI and you can… Read More

Here’s a quick, easy recipe for citrus chicken and kale.  It costs around €8, feeds two people and it’s delicious and healthy.  Price based in Dublin, Ireland so m… Read More

There’s plenty of useful articles and guides on managing Linux software RAID floating around.  I recently had a disk failure in my 8-bay eSATA array and thought I’d add to t… Read More

I recently came into possession of a Logitech G933 wireless headset and started using it on my Linux work laptop for 100% of my audio and video conferencing needs.  There were a few iss… Read More

I gave a talk at the annual Linux Users and Developers Conference (Devconf 2016) in Brno, Czech Republic on Trystack.org: architecture, operations insights, tooling, automation and what it t… Read More

There’s an easy way to reduce power usage on Linux laptops using Intel’s Powertop utility.  Powertop polls your existing power usage and recommends tunings for your hardware… Read More

Sometimes web page Javascript will disallow you to auto fill your saved password credentials.  In recent versions of Firefox there’s now a way to fill out credentials without digg… Read More

The ELK stack provides a very powerful set of tools that allow administrators and developers unfettered access and customizable log aggregation across any manner of server, application or de… Read More

I’ve recently had the pleasure of editing/reviewing the new second edition OpenStack Neutron book by James Denton.  It’s published by Pakt Publishing who has also published… Read More

Recently I posted guides around playing actively maintained free/Open Source games like Enemy Territory: Legacy, or Urban Terror.  I’ve set up a few game servers for the general p… Read More

In my previous post about Enemy Territory I mentioned an active, maintained fork of this famous Splash Damage WWII RPG-shooter from the mid-2000’s.  I’ve had some time to in… Read More

Sometimes it’s hard finding extensive, easily digestible documentation on FTOS running on the Dell Force10 switch platform.  Recently we had to apply simple rate limiting against… Read More

Here’s a really easy, quick breakfast tip that requires hardly any time and preparation.  I dare call it a recipe because it’s so easy to make, but perhaps some folks haven… Read More

Urban Terror is a free first person shooter based on the Open Source Quake III engine that advertises itself as a “Hollywood tactical shooter.”  It’s native for Linux… Read More

Enemy Territory is a free, Open Source multi-player first-person shooter video game set during World War II. It was created in 2003 by Splash Damage and runs great on low-end hardware. … Read More

The FTP protocol has been around a long time, some of us remember using it fondly while others might shudder at the very mention of its name.  The fact remains it’s not going away… Read More

This is a traditional Neapolitan recipe for vegetarian zucchini pasta popular in 19th century Napoli.  It’s simple, quick and delicious.  Total cost is around 6€, feeds… Read More

I’ve been an avid user of the Mutt email client for quite some time, preferring it to GUI clients or web for its speed, hotkey-everything approach, and integration with vim that compli… Read More

When running a public cloud you sometimes need to obtain user or tenant information quickly based on their public IP address.  Here is a simple shell tool to accomplish this rather than… Read More

Recently I needed to make a Glance image available to a specific user but not make it public.  In this example an image needed to be available only to the services tenant and owner.&nbs&hell…Read More

This is a more experimental recipe for seasoned French Toulouse sausages tossed in Siren Brewing Broken Dreams stout.  The sweetness and consistency of the stout contrasts well with the… Read More

Trystack.org is a free, public OpenStack sandbox for developers and ordinary people to try out OpenStack or test their apps.  It’s been around since 2012 but has recently been rev… Read More

Managing more than a handful of Dell servers becomes cumbersome using the iDRAC web interface.  This is especially painful with several hundred servers or more.  Luckily Dell provi… Read More

Here’s a simple guide to making eggtoast.  This is simply a fried egg in between some bread, cooked in a pan.  Makes for a hearty morning meal before you go out to plow those… Read More

Here’s a quick, delicious Neapolitan vegetarian pasta dish: Olive e Capperi or “Olive and Pepper” Pasta.  Total time: 15-20minutes, total cost: €7 and feeds two p… Read More

I recently did some testing on my home Linux fileserver with Bonnie++ at the urging of a friend who wanted to compare his numbers.   I also ran similar tests with dd and hdparm.&nb&hell…Read More

Here’s a simple recipe for tataki tuna with vegetables.  Fairly quick, easy and healthy.  You’ll ideally want sashimi grade tuna.  Total time, 1hour with ingredien… Read More

I’m pretty picky with stouts, being more of a Czech Pilsner and non-overpowering APA/IPA fan.  A friend of mine recently introduced this wonderful stout to me, Siren Brewing &ndas&hell…Read More

If you’re looking for a quick, easy seafood recipe for pasta here’s how to make Calamari & Pomodirini.  You’ll need good linguine pasta, access to fresh squid and… Read More

I’ve been a long-time Xfce user as I’ve bounced around any manner of window manager and desktop environment since the turn of the century. I always found 3D effects like viewing… Read More

As a previous user of the now defunct Infinality repo I was looking for something similar in Fedora 22  Fedora 24 and came across this useful blog post.  In a few quick steps you c… Read More

Watch closely as “Knapsack” Willy Jenkins defends a hobohouse against an intruder. Filed under: comedy, sketch, skit Tagged: comedy, funny, hobo, hobohouse, sketch, skit Read More

I’ve recently had the pleasure of helping edit/review the awesome OpenStack Essentials by my friend and colleague Dan Radez.  Highly recommended reading for anyone getting into Op… Read More

Quick Google map of comedy clubs in Dublin, Ireland. Re-posted from Cormac Moore’s site.  He goes into good detail on his page, so check out the details there.Filed under: comedy… Read More

When I was really into Skateboarding I made a promo video, with footage shot mostly in NC, VA, SC including a few skateboard parks and contests.  This was ripped from VHS to digital so… Read More

Demo of a large, 70 node bare-metal deployment  we did at the Red Hat Summit in April 2014 showcasing an OpenStack Havana deployment via Puppet and Foreman.  There are other tools… Read More

When you’ve created more than one OpenStack user via the CLI or Horizon dashboard it gets old really quick.  It’s a good idea to automate it or use a tool to do the job for… Read More

The Cloud (aka another dude’s computer) is a great place to backup your data, files and make your life easier and your technical resources more accessible.  It can also be extreme… Read More

Foreman is an awesome provisioning, utility and life-cycle management solution for Linux and UNIX-like server infrastructure.  It unifies a lot of things like DHCP, DNS, PXE, and automa… Read More

Part of the greater “Awkward but Ineffective Attacks” theme, Human Battering ram proves not to be effective to strangers in Boston, MA. Filed under: comedy, sketch, skit Tagged:… Read More

Hanging with the locals. Filed under: comedy, sketch Tagged: comedy, creeper, dude, lurking, sketch, sketch dude, sketchy, what Read More

Some improvised fun at a colleagues expense who was chatting on a webcam a few years ago while working late in a datacenter. Filed under: comedy, sketch, skit Tagged: comedy, creepy, datacen… Read More

One feature desktop Linux has been lacking out of the box is hybrid-suspend, supported as of Kernel versions 3.6+. The following guide lets you suspend to both memory and disk, so you never… Read More

Ruckus Pizza in Raleigh, N.C. ran a contest a while back for “Create your own Sandwich” Mine won, aptly named ‘The Red Hatter’  Here’s a skit we made about… Read More

Sadly Lenovo got a whiff of Macintosh style fervor and got a little overzealous with their current laptop offerings, resulting in a really irritating button-less laptop design. Luckily, you… Read More

My latest standup set from the International Comedy Club in Dublin, Ireland.  Enjoy! Filed under: comedy, standup Tagged: comedy, dublin, ireland, standup, standup comedy, will foster Read More