Category Archives: devops

Deploying mod_spnego

SPNEGO is a negotiated authentication mechanism for HTTP which can be used to take advantage of Kerberos credentials for web site login (an alternative to simple username/password, or client digital certificates). The reference implementation for Apache, mod_spnego, can be downloaded … Continue reading

Posted in devops, kerberos, windows | Comments Off

Virtual Machine on Mythbuntu

I have a Linux box running the excellent Mythbuntu (Ubuntu-based) distribution, headless (that is, without a monitor). Quite a lot of the time it’s sat around doing nothing (and even during recording or playback the CPU is idle). For some … Continue reading

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Painless MythTV Channel Configuration

MythTV – a brilliant homebrew digital video recorder system. Killer features include being able to play content over the LAN at home, scheduling recordings via the web, and generally poke it to integrate with all kinds of devices (e.g. see … Continue reading

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Hosting the AutoCRUD Demo

In my previous entry here (syndicated from blogs.perl.org), I linked at the end to a demo Catalyst::Plugin::AutoCRUD application running on DotCloud. I’m much happier with this than running something on my own personal server, and here’s the notes on its setup. … Continue reading

Posted in databases, devops, git, perl | Comments Off

Is it silly that tmux is fun?

No, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to get a zing of excitement when you find a new tool that improves your life. Maybe you know what I mean – that feeling of happiness at saving time, remembering more … Continue reading

Posted in devops, linux, productivity | 1 Comment

Smokeping+lighttpd+TCPPing on Debian/Ubuntu

Some notes on getting Smokeping to work on Debian/Ubuntu using the lighttpd web server, and the TCPPing check. Install the lighttpd package first, as then the subsequent smokeping package installation will notice that it doesn’t require the Apache web server. However, … Continue reading

Posted in devops, monitoring, networking | 1 Comment

The Limoncelli Test

Over at the excellent Everything Sysadmin blog is a simple test which can be applied to your Sysadmin team to assess its productivity and quality of service. It’s quite straightforward – just 32 things a good quality team ought to … Continue reading

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Migrate SourceForge CVS repository to git

Updated to include promoting and pushing tags. I recently had need to migrate some SourceForge CVS repositories to git. I’ll admit I’m no git expert, so Googled around for advice on the process. What I ended up doing was sufficiently … Continue reading

Posted in devops, git, linux, netdisco | 7 Comments

A Strategy for Opsview Keywords

At my previous employer, and recently at my current one, I’ve been responsible for migration to an Opsview based monitoring system. Opsview is an evolution of Nagios which brings a multitude of benefits. I encourage you to check it out. … Continue reading

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Cfengene3 on Debian Squeeze for local management

Dialling the nerd factor up to 11, I’ve decided to store configuration for my VPS server in git and manage it with Cfengine3. Joking aside, this is a sound decision: having the VCS repo makes backups simple and trustworthy, and … Continue reading

Posted in devops, linux | 2 Comments