XPath for libvirt external snapshop path

The following xmllint XPath query will pull out the name of the backing file for a VM named fedora-server-36 and an external snapshot named fedora-36-post-install,

virsh snapshot-dumpxml fedora-server-36 fedora-server-36-post-install | xmllint --xpath "string(//domainsnapshot/disks/disk[@snapshot='external']/source/@file)" -

The string function extracts the attribute value.

This value can be used in the process of using or deleting the snapshot.

Date format suitable for file names

It is rare that you want to write something without later wanting to be able to read it back. One common way of organizing files that are generated regularly is by time stamp. If you want to add a timestamp to a file name, you can do so using the date command.

In order for the filenames to sort in the right order, you want the name to go from largest unit to smallest.

Here is an example that creates a filename-suitable string formed Year->second. I remove all unnecessary formatting characters.

date --rfc-3339=seconds | sed -E -e 's! |-|:!!g'

The date command reads the current date/time on the local system. –rfc-3339=seconds produces output that looks like this:

$ date --rfc-3339=seconds 
2021-11-03 10:57:14-04:00

In order to keep the regular expression concise inside the sed command, the -E switch tells it to use extended regular expressions, including the alternation character ‘|’ . Thus, the regex ‘ |-|:’ matches a space, a dash, and a colon.

Querying hostnames from beaker

If you have requested a single host from beaker, the following one liner will tell the hostname for it.

bkr job-results   $( bkr job-list  -o $USER  --unfinished | jq -r  ".[]" )   | xpath -q -e string\(/job/recipeSet/recipe/roles/role/system/@value\)

This requires jq and xpath, as well as the beaker command line packages.

For me on Fedora 33 the packages are:

  • perl-XML-XPath-1.44-7.fc33.noarch
  • jq-1.6-5.fc33.x86_64
  • python3-beaker-1.10.0-9.fc33.noarch
  • beaker-redhat-0.2.1-2.fc33eng.noarch
  • beaker-common-28.2-1.fc33.noarch
  • beaker-client-28.2-1.fc33.noarch

Manually Adding SSH Keys to a Cloud Image

Not all of my virtual machines run on OpenStack; I have to run a fair number of virtual machines on my personal workstation via libvirt. However, I like using the cloud versions of RHEL, as they most closely match what I do run in OpenStack. The disconnect is that the Cloud images are designed to accept cloud-init, which pulls the ssh public keys from a metadata web server. Without that, there are no public keys added to the cloud-user account, and the VM is unaccessable. Here is how I add the ssh keys manually.
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Java on Port 443

I’ve been working on setting up a Java based SAML provider. This means that the application needs to handle request and response over HTTPS. And, since often this is deployed in data centers where non-standard ports are blocked, it means that the HTTPS really needs to be supported on the proper port, which is 443. Here are the range of options.
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