Lately I’ve been working on automating my server infrastructure. One of the tasks at hand was to simplify the way I install certain software. For instance, for my web-stack, I compile ruby and nginx manually, so I can compile them using specific parameters. When I started researching this, I got overwhelmed with all different kind … Continue reading Creating Debian packages with checkinstall
Tag: linux
In my previous post, I described how you could setup Ansible. At this point, you are able to send commands to your hosts. Although running ad hoc tasks is useful, I won’t be covering that here. If you want to know more about running command line ad hoc tasks check out the detailed examples on … Continue reading Configuration management with Ansible: Playbooks & Execution
Lately I’ve been working on configuration management for my infrastructure. Since I started freelancing, the number of clients have grown and so did my infrastructure. Managing one server isn’t a daunting task, but from the moment you need to expand, things get more serious. At this point, my infrastructure consists of 1 database server, 1 … Continue reading Getting started with configuration management: Ansible
There are circumstances where you have repetitive tasks you wish to automate. Most of that can be done through the use of scripts. But what do you do when you need to automate an interactive process? In my case, I had to automate a configuration script. After installing a software tool on my servers, I always … Continue reading Automate interactive processes in Linux
Virtualizing environments these days is a breeze. The simplest way of doing so is using Oracle Virtualbox . One thing I’ve noticed installing Ubuntu 12.04 was the fact that I was unable to select 800×600 or 1024×768 in screen resolution. It turns out that you are obligated installing the virtualbox guest additions. Fire up your terminal and … Continue reading Ubuntu Virtualbox: Setting High Screen Resolutions
From the moment you build your own .deb package, you also want to install it. The easiest way to install / uninstall your custom packages is by using dpkg. But using dpkg means the packages need to be present on the host you wish to install them on. Another downside of dpkg is that it … Continue reading Set up an APT repository
A chroot environment is essentially a complete self-contained Linux installation that is nested within the main system. The reason that I’m looking into setting up a chroot environment is for building custom ubuntu packages. Instead of compiling and running everything on my main machine, it’s best practice to do that in a chroot. This way, your … Continue reading Setup chroot Environment
Like a lot of other geeks, I’m still somewhat active on IRC. It may be handy to stay online all the time, just in case something interesting passes by when you’re not around. That’s why I installed ZNC on one of my servers. ZNC is an IRC bouncer, that stays connected to IRC, so when … Continue reading Using irssi with screen
Some time ago, I experienced some connectivity issues from my host machines. SSH connections got dropped as well as other connections like irc. Since the disconnections occurred very randomly, it was not easy to determine what the problem was. Thanks to @svg, I used used a tool called MTR. MTR is a great network diagnostic … Continue reading Connectivity testing with MTR
In this article, I’ll explain how I’ve installed ruby on my production server. I only focus on ruby this time. Later on, I’ll make an article on Nginx and perhaps some security measurements I’ve taken. Ruby 1.9.3 MRI First things first, the ruby version I’m using for all my software is ruby 1.9.3 MRI. There … Continue reading Ruby install in production environment