My name is Rich Jerrido and I am the person behind www.outsidaz.org I am a geek hailing from the city of brotherly love. I started this blog a couple of years back as a dumping place for a lot of working knowledge of mine that I could have available online regardless of where I was. Over time it has evolved into being a full-fledged blog, complete with RSS feeds, comments, and pictures.When I am not hacking on computers for profit, I hack on them for fun.Read more about me »
As a follow up to my previous article regarding Deploying Observium on RHEL6, this article covers integrating rsyslog, the default syslog daemon with RHEL6 with Observium. This document is based upon the Syslog-ng instructions provided on the Observium site.
I finally fixed the “Subscribe via Email” link on the website, so those of you who aren’t RSS junkies can get posts emailed to you.
I added the PDF24 Articles To PDF plugin, so articles can be downloaded via PDF.
- Happy Blogging.
Sometimes I need a webserver while doing troubleshooting, such as testing firewalls or proxy servers, and installing Apache or Nginx is a bit heavyweight for my tastes (or time). Optimally, I would want something that I can invoke easily, keep in the foreground, and CTRL-C when complete. Luckily, Python includes a simple webserver which gives me exactly that. It can be invoked in the following manner:
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Like most geeks, I frequently build (and rebuild) systems in the lab. One of my biggest challenges has been ensuring that they stay up to date with the most current content. Being a good netizen, I have always liked to keep a local mirror of content (primarily Fedora and RPMFusion) local, so that my system builds, live media composes, and updates complete faster. In the past, I heavily used rsync mirrors to accomplish this, but as of recently, I have switched to using reposync.
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As part of a recent restructuring of my home lab, I have started looking at incorporating some monitoring solutions. Currently, I am a big fan of Munin. But as of recently, I started playing around with Observium, and so far, I like it a lot. This document describes how to setup Observium on a RHEL6 server system with SELinux in enforcing mode. This document is adapted from the CentOS instructions available here
Since I have begun upgrading my HTPC’s to Fedora 16, I have switched to using XBMC’s built in XDM session. This allows two major things. Firstly, it allows me to run XBMC completely autonomously, without needing to use GNOME or XFCE as a very souped up application launcher. Secondly, it allows me to cut down the amount number of packages that need to be installed. Not that my HTPCs are constrained for disk space, but every little bit counts. The downside of this setup is that I no longer have a full Desktop Environment to use for various maintenance tasks. Primarily, I need to adjust the audio settings (via PulseAudio) or the video settings (via nvidia-settings) I’ve had to consult the various manpages of the above utilities as the method to use them over SSH via X-Forwarding wasn’t entirely straightforward.
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One of the most prevalent uses of Linux within my household is for the purposes of displaying digital media (Music, Video, & Pictures). Originally, back in the dark ages (lol!) when I ran primarily Windows, I was a large user of Mediaportal. Since moving over to the Linux platform, I have become an avid user of XBMC. As time has gone on, my home theater environment has evolved to pick up new functionality and features. This document aims not to be a step by step guide on how to configure XBMC (plenty of those exist), but more of a ‘reference architecture’ of sorts. Basically, I will document what worked for me, what didn’t, any tricks I’ve learned along the way, and what I would do differently if I had to do it all over again. I make no claims that this is the most optimal way to do this, so in addition to being an Reference Architecture, this is also a Request For Comment. So, please, comment 
In my lab, I use the Linux SCSI target framework (tgtd) to provide iSCSI storage to my virtual machines, physical servers and RHEV farm. One of my biggest operational challenges is resizing iSCSI volumes to increase/decrease space. This guide aims to document those challenges, and how I addressed them.
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This past Friday, I took (and passed ) the EX429 exam. This exam was a little weird for me as it is the first exam that I have completed since I began my employment at the crimson habadashery. Under normal conditions, completing the EX429 exam post-RHCA means that one would become an RHCSS, but since I opted to take EX318 in lieu of EX423, I still got one more to go. Oh well :/. Certification items aside, the RHS429 course was pretty awesome. Back when I was working in operations, I was definitely in the category of sysadmins who disabled SELinux, mainly because the learning curve to becoming operationally competent with the technology was so steep. After deep-diving the material for 4 days, I definitely feel more comfortable with it. Heck, I can even write a sane SELinux policy. I also feel that SELinux’s ability to implement MLS has some definite applications outside of the traditional military & governmental roles such as in organizations who have the need to prevent unauthorized users from viewing credit-card numbers or social security numbers. And considering that SELinux is included with most distributions of Linux (especially RHEL), it makes sense to take a good honest look at SELinux to see if the technology can satisfy those ever changing auditory requirements.
With all the hubbub about GNOME3, I’d figured that I go ahead and install the beta of Fedora 15 and give it a whirl. While it is very very different in many aspects than GNOME2, it is still quite familiar. I like the fact that GNOME3 seems to be much more keyboard-centric. This is awesome for me, as now, I can do things such as press the
