Work on Al's Ramblings

Running Ansible on Windows

Tue, 08 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Some times you just have to make do with what you have. So I considered this morning why is it as IT professional we are often told what tool we need to use to do our job. I mean does a carpenter get told what type of saw he need to use?

My tool of the trade is a Mac, not because I’m an Apple fan boy ,far from it, but as a functional computer it really does just work. Has access to the tools I need due to it’s Unix heritage, and provides and usable graphical interface for the less technical in the family.

Puppet 3 and Solaris 11 IPS

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A recent post Solaris Packages for Puppet 3.0.0-rc7, Facter 1.6.0 and Hiera 1.0.0 on a puppet mailing list caught my eye.

While gems has a nifty little package management system of it’s own, it is possible be that your machines do not have direct access to the interent so having a local IPS repo is handy. I’ll demonstrate how to add these packages to you own repository. This assumes you have already setup your own local repo.

Linux kickstart for Solaris Admin's

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Linux kickstart for Solaris Admin’sSo sometimes Solaris Admins need to turn their hand at another OS for various reasons, especial in this day and age of mass production of virtual environments. Solaris Admins will be well versed with jumpstart a tried and truly tested system of automated builds for over a decade now. While recently this system has been thrown out with the bath water for AI in Solaris 11 and while the jury is still out on that one that’s a conversation for another time.

How to use NFS client on Windows 7

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

How to Shrink zfs root pool.

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This exercise for me is to replace my current single disk rpool, the second disk was removed for another project, on to two slightly smaller disks. Doing so restores my root mirror but as the disks are slightly smaller some work is required.

For reference my current root pool name is rpool, the current disk in this pool is c5t1d0, the first replacement disk is install at c5t0d0 and is empty.

We need a revolution?

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Just a short time back I had what amounts to a mini revilation or small epiphany, take your pick. Actually it was a realization what I had known for some time just never admitted to myself. Since when did we need so many non IT people running the IT infrastructure.

Two things happened. I spent a numbing 8 hour day in a training course for Configuration management, not the funky new Devops definatation of configuration management but the boar you to tears ITIL version, seriously do you really need 6 different slides and 15 minutes to explain release management as “do steps 1 through 7 in serial sequence completing 7 before starting on step 1 again for the next release”. I get it that this is a generic course not aimed at the twenty year veterans , but a two year old could understand this.

Solaris 11 Zones

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

First Video as part of a presentation MSOSUG in April 2011 showing how to create a Solaris 11 zone

Solaris 10 Container in Solaris 11

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Second Video as part of a presentation MSOSUG in April 2011 showing how to create a Solaris 10 branded container in Solaris 11

Solaris 11 Express SRU4 and VirtualBox 4 bad combo

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

So I’ve been tracking the Solaris 11 Express Support repo updates for a while. I had issue today where I couldn’t make a network connection to my virtual box guests. They would ping but no ssh and no http connection. The later being important as my VB guest is running a local mirror repo. while I could connect to the guest from other machines on the network I could connect to them from the the machine hosting the guests.

Solaris 11 Express VNC

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Okay , not entirely sure why yet but I though I’d like to get VNC server configured on my Solaris machines, perhaps it’s with the arrival of the AppleTV 2 in the house freeing up the trusty mac mini workhorse to go back to desktop duties after the last 3+ year as a Plex app media player, anyway on to the task at hand.

DAY 6 Lisa 2010 Dtrace tut

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Jim Mauro’s Dtrace tut

DAY 5 Lisa 2010 Vmware performance notes

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

RMC ESX Performance and Tuning

DAY 4 LISA 2010

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Over the Edge System Admin

Day 1 LISA 2010

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Wet day in San Jose, not to matter will be inside all day. Doing the S1 VMware vSphere training session, a good introduction and much needed clarification on on some of the names of products that keep changing, apparently it’s also confusing inside VMware so no wonder we can’t understand it.

How to configure iLOM ssh key for SUN T-series

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Note if you do not have at least Version 3.0.6.1.e r49743 firmware then you will run into this bug
6823488 Cannot add an SSH key for automatic password authentication.

> ssh root@ilom
Password:
Waiting for daemons to initialize...

Daemons ready

Sun(TM) Integrated Lights Out Manager

Version 3.0.6.1.e r49743

Copyright 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.

-> cd /SP/users/admin/ssh/keys/1
/SP/users/admin/ssh/keys/1

-> set load_uri=http://192.168.0.1/sshkey.pub
Load successful.