Beware of over-engineering

I have been working on a migration project and one thing i have seen a couple of times is people love to over engineer solutions when basic troubleshooting and debugging would have found the problem. One example of this was an engineer was migrating a java based application shared with the testers the URL saying ready for smoke testing. The URL was slightly different to what the tester was expecting, it ended in 8080 e.

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New Blog Engine

Nearly a new year, but a new blog engine, why would you ask and the honest answer would be to play with some new technology but also to find away to reduce costs and free up my time from having to constantly patch a wordpress site.

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Creating FreeDOS Image under ubuntu

Pre-requites apt-get install wget unzip genisoimage wget - pulling down files from the internet unzip - uncompress any zip files genisoimage - Needed for creating the ISO image Making custom freedos disk make a source directory where you will keep all these files. mkdir ~/src_freedos export FDSRC=~/src_freedos cd $FDSRC Download the FreeDos OEM CD-ROM disc builder http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/ISO/FDOEMCD.builder.zip wget http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/ISO/FDOEMCD.builder.zip -O ${FDSRC}/FDOEMCD.builder.zip unzip the package and go into the new directory called “FDOEMCD” unzip FDOEMCD.

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Making Postfix config changes on the fly

This example shows how to update the aliases path so we have this standard across all machines in a datacentre, this is a quick hack method. The correct way to fix this in a production would be to use a configuration management system like chef/puppet or cfengine. PATH=$PATH:/opt/csw/bin:/opt/csw/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/postfix/sbin export PATH ## Show the existing aliases paths postconf | grep '^alias' ## Make the changes to main.cf postconf -e alias_maps='dbm:/etc/mail/aliases' postconf -e alias_database='dbm:/etc/mail/aliases' ## Make new aliases database newaliases ## Show aliases paths just to make sure things have been updated postconf | grep '^alias' ## send test email to self uname -a | mailx -s "`uname -n`" pcanham@`uname -n`

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Corosync Logging

Setting up corosync logging, by default the data is logged to /var/log/syslog in ubuntu. corosync config - /etc/corosync/corosync.conf logging { fileline: off to_stderr: yes to_logfile: yes to_syslog: no syslog_facility: daemon debug: off logfile: /var/log/corosync/corosync.log timestamp: on logger_subsys { subsys: AMF debug: off tags: enter|leave|trace1|trace2|trace3|trace4|trace6 } logrotate config - /etc/logrotate.d/corosync /var/log/corosync/*.log { weekly missingok rotate 52 compress delaycompress notifempty create 640 root adm sharedscripts copytruncate }

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bbwin - xymon/hobbitmon windows client installation

BBwin installation Install bbwin client to machine Edit c:program filesBBWinetcBBWin.cfg telling it the server is “10.10.10.10” (will be under a setting called bbdisplay) edit the bbwin registry to make it use the FQDN and not the server name. Change the hostname entry from “%COMPUTERNAME%” to “%COMPUTERNAME%.%USERDNSDOMAIN%” minus the quotes 64bit Machines = “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeBBWin”. 32bit Machines = “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBBWin” With 64bit Windows you need to add an extra setting in bbwin.

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Installing ubuntu to HP DL140 G3

ilom You will get into the inital screen all OK but if you dont alter the frame buffer you will just see rubbish on the screen, to fix this, do the following. Set what Language you wish to use. Hit ‘F6’ to choose the “Other Options” menu Choose “Expert Mode” this will allow you to alter the kernel parameters Hit “Space bar” to select the Expert Mode and then “Esc” to escape out of the menu option.

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Ubuntu: Booting from ISO from PXE

install syslinux # apt-get install syslinux copy memdisk to tftp root # cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /var/lib/tftpboot/11.04/ Add following into pxelinux.cdf/default LABEL dos kernel memdisk append iso initrd=dos/dos_622_supermicro_bios.iso

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Fixing Locale errors in Ubuntu

How to fix the following error when you are running apt-get update or installs. perl: warning: Setting locale failed. perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings: LANGUAGE = (unset), LC_ALL = (unset), LC_MONETARY = "en_US.ISO8859-1", LC_NUMERIC = "en_US.ISO8859-1", LC_MESSAGES = "C", LC_COLLATE = "en_US.ISO8859-1", LC_CTYPE = "en_US.ISO8859-1", LC_TIME = "en_US.ISO8859-1", LANG = "en_GB.UTF-8" export LC_ALL="en_GB.UTF-8" export LANGUAGE="en_GB.UTF-8" export LANG="en_GB.UTF-8" printf "LANGUAGE="en_GB.UTF-8"nLC_ALL="en_GB.UTF-8"" >> /etc/default/locale dpkg-reconfigure locales to test run echo | perl this will generate the error if the locales are wrong.

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How to install your own CA cert into Google Chrome

There are a couple of different sites, which i log into on a regular basis which have there own self sign certificates. This isnt a bad thing but it does start to get annoying when you have to approve viewing the site every time you open up chome. To stop this from happening here is how you install your CA certificate to chrome Install the following package to your machine sudo apt-get install libnss3-tools Download the CA cert you wish to install (in this example cacert.

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