System & Network Admin

AJ's personal blog

Create LXC Templates Every time inspiration struck or I saw a blog post with something I wanted to try, it was frustrating and time consuming to get the base operating system set up to the way I like it before proceeding with the project. Now I just update the template each point release or when I add something substantial to my dotfiles so it's ready to go whenever I need to spin up a fresh container.

Tiny Core Linux is as lightweight as a GUI-based Linux distribution can be. Jack Wallen walks you through the installation that makes this operating system unique.

In this guide, we will transfer the home directory files to a separate partition on a newly added disk drive in Linux systems.

I was used to #release a new version of #Movim twice a year. Skiff is an exception. One year of…

Hiawatha, a secure webserver for Unix

Although the world has mostly gone digital now, there are still times when you just have to print a form, sign it, and scan it back in. Sometimes, I find that a snapshot on my phone suffices, but some industries require a better copy than a hasty snapshot, and so a flatbed scanner is necessary. The KDE project provides an application called Skanlite that helps you import documents scanned on a flatbed, or even a tethered camera. Install Skanlite on Linux You can install Skanlite from your software repository. On Fedora, Mageia, and similar:

Python is a great tool for automating system administration tasks on Linux systems. Detailed here are some ways to best utilize Python in Linux

This guide explains what is Whiptail, how to install Whiptail in Linux and how to create GUI dialog boxes in Bash Scripts using Whiptail.

The KDE project doesn't just provide a famous desktop, it generates a lot of software, from tools for video editng, photography, and illustration, to graphing calculators, email, and office work. Those are all productivity tools, but KDE is also good for relaxing. It has games and media players, and the music player I use is known simply as Juk.

When you want to grant administrative access to some of your users while controlling and checking what they do on your systems, you use sudo. However, even with sudo, there are quite a few unseen issues—just think about giving out shell access. Recent sudo releases added features that let you see these issues and even control them. For example, you can turn on more detailed and easier-to-process log messages and log each command executed in a shell session.

DevOops is a retired machine on HackTheBox. This write-up is a walk through the methodology that leads to root shell.

Including network setup software and remote control

If you've been following the Chainguard blog, you might ask yourself: how do I run the open-source sigstore stack on my machine? While sigstore is often deployed using Kubernetes, it is flexible enough to run nearly anywhere: from a Raspberry Pi to an IBM mainframe. This article will demonstrate how

Leafnode allows you to create an offline copy of your USENET server to use with your newsreader. Learn how to set one up today.

Terraform enables DevOps teams to easily manage infrastructure-as-code (IaC) and migrate existing infrastructure to the cloud.

We kick the tires on Flex and install it on some old hardware for good measure.

EJBCA covers certificate issuing, management and certificate validation. The Open Source CA can easily be scaled to match the needs of your PKI.

The top programs that have saved HN 100+ hours.

KDE neon is the latest and greatest of KDE community software packaged on a rock-solid base.

What do VAX minicomputers, Yahoo and obscure programming languages have to do with modern security automation tools? Lots!

Early in my Linux journey, I learned how to use the command line. It's what sets Linux apart. I could lose the graphical user interface (GUI), but it was unnecessary to rebuild the machine completely. Many Linux computers run headless, and you can accomplish all the administrative tasks on the command line. It uses many basic commands that all are familiar with—like ls, ls-l, ls-l, cd, pwd, top, and many more. [OS_EMBEDDED_MENU_RIGHT:]

Font ligatures combine multiple characters into a single unique character. Some fonts provide ligatures specifically for software development.

An article from dylanbeattie.net

Containers are run in the cloud. That's because container technology allows websites and web apps to spawn fresh copies of themselves as demand increases. They're the reason hundreds of millions of people can use popular sites without those sites buckling under the pressure of global traffic. Containers are a Linux technology, meaning that they rely on code (specifically cgroups and namespaces) unique to the Linux kernel, so when you run a container, you're running Linux.

NMState is a declarative network manager for configuring networking on Linux. It’s a library that provides a command-line tool that manages network settings.

In this post we are going to provision HTTPS certificate from Let's Encrypt and use that in our SSL termination program nginx. We are going to use Ansible for this automation.

Today I want to share with you some behaviour that I learnt the other day that you might find helpful when working with Batfish. This behaviour is based upon the following: When working with impact analysis and using layer1 topologies in Batfish. Don't use named references within your reachability questions.