Three Drunken SysAds

Here  we go – the main event!

I’ve finally got around to publishing my puppet module to deploy MCollective to systems.

The module can be found at http://github.com/proffalken/proffalkensPuppetModules and includes the puppet and service agents and the facter facts plugin from http://code.google.com/p/mcollective-plugins/ to provide control over MCollective from the outset.

The module is setup so that if a new agent needs to be deployed, the agent can just be dropped in the “file/agent” directory and puppet will push it at next run.  As the puppet agent is included by default, it means that you can copy the new agent in place and then force a puppet run in seconds instead of waiting for 30 minutes – the same applies for fact providers…

If anyone has any additional fact providers/agents that they believe should be pushed by default, please let me know and I’ll do my best to include them.

I’ve been playing with Puppet for some time now and creating the directory structure for modules as defined in the puppet best practice guide gets tedious after a while, so I threw together a simply base script that takes a single argument and builds the directory structure for you.

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One of my main gripes with Centos/Redhat is the insistence to use sendmail as the default MTA when something as beautiful as Exim exists and provides far greater flexibility.

Thanks to the folks at atrpms, it is possible to install Exim 4.71 on Centos 5 with the following steps:

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OK, so I might have been a bit hasty to dismiss Centos in my last post – a couple of people have contacted me and told me about additional repos that I can use for rubygems etc – so as a brief interlude, here’s the instructions for getting MCollective and ActiveMQ up and running on Centos 5:

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A few weeks ago I was at UKUUG and met an intriguing project (and it’s owner) called mcollective.

MCollective is a system that enables you to run queries across multiple servers in real time and have the responses come back to you in a speed you would only expect if you were physically at the console.  In other words:- it’s f**king quick!

This post sets out to show you how to install it on Ubuntu Server (the instructions should apply to both 9.10 and 10.04 RC), the next set in the series will help you get it up and running across multiple machines!

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There are a few dependencies that need to be installed before cucumber-nagios will work correctly:

1. Install RubyGems from source.  Trust me, you’ll thank me for this later
2. install ruby, irb, rdoc and ruby-dev from Apt using your favourite package manager
3. install libxslt-dev, libxslt-ruby and libopenssl-ruby from Apt
4. install cucumber-nagios using GEM

And that’s about it…

OK, so I’m not the first to blog about this, however I’m using cobbler and puppet to automate the creation of VMs on my laptop for testing/staging purposes so I thought I’d blog about it here.

The aim is to use Cobbler to setup the base operating system and install puppet, then let Puppet take over and install and configure the rest of the system.

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Twitter has the latest updates on safe-proxy servers for those inside IRAN wishing to get out and publish about the current events.

Current list is as follows (19:48 on Monday 15th June 2009):

218.128.112.18:8080
218.206.94.132:808
218.253.65.99:808
219.50.16.70:8080

WHOIS reveals that these IP addresses are NOT inside IRAN and therefore are unlikely to be shut down as part of the signal jamming referred to in a bbc post found @ http://bit.ly/11YBNo

If you want to help, search for #Iranelection @ http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23Iranelection

There are calls for a DDOS on the Iranian Gov’t Servers. I think this is a bad idea as it is using fire to fight fire IMHO.

[UPDATE]

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%22Functioning%20Iran%22  <– follow this tag for the list of functioning IRAN proxies.

Just a quick post…

In the last two parts of this series I stated I’d be using Ethernet over Powerline (aka HomePlug) as the backbone for my media system.

I currently own two 14Mbps units and tests have rapidly shown that this is nowhere near good enough.  Looks like I’ll have to upgrade to the 200Mbps units once I get paid and hope that it makes a difference.  If it doesn’t, I think I’m going to have to go down the route of Wireless-AP’s flashed with OpenWRT and acting as bridge devices to get the DHCP/TFTP working for the media directors.

Hmmm, PXE over a flakey wireless CX – not good… :o(

In part one of this series, I outlined LinuxMCE and how amazing it was providing Home Cinema, VoIP Telephony, CCTV and home automation in one system for the price of a download and a few hours work.  This article will help those who, like me, live in rented accomodation or cannot ask their local electrician to come and channel cabling ducts into the walls for some other reason, yet need to have a solid network cable running throughout the house.

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