Once I re-enabled DHCPD and TFTP, my Machines got through the basics of PXE, but then failed Kickstart. Here’s the debugging:
Continue readingCategory Archives: Sysadmin
PXE Setup Part the First
PXE is conglomeration of tools used to get a new operating system onto a computer. It is based on two protocols: DHCP and TFPT. I used PXER a long time ago at Penguin and have always wanted to set it up for my home personal use. I’m doing that now for my lab. My goal is to first be able to provision virtual machines, and then to provision physical boxes. I need to do a full install of RHEL 7 and RHEL 8, which means I also need Kickstart to automate the install process. I had it working, but after rebooting the NUC it is running on it broke. Here’s my debugging.
Continue readingRefactoring in Ansible: extract Variable
“Let the complexity emerge.” Probably the best advice I ever got in coding. Do something in as straight-forward manner as possible. When you find your self repeating code, extract it. Here’s an example from an ansible playbook I’m working on.
Continue readingSelf Service Speedbumps
The OpenShift installer is fairly specific in what it requires, and will not install into a virtual machine that does not have sufficient resources. These limits are:
- 16 GB RAM
- 4 Virtual CPUs
- 25 GB Disk Space
Reading keystone.conf in a container
Step 3 of the 12 Factor app is to store config in the environment. For Keystone, the set of configuration options is controlled by the keystone.conf file. In an earlier attempt at containerizing the scripts used to configure Keystone, I had passed an environment variable in to the script that would then be written to the configuration file. I realize now that I want the whole keystone.conf external to the application. This allow me to set any of the configuration options without changing the code in the container. More importantly, it allows me to make the configuration information immutable inside the container, so that the applications cannot be hacked to change their own configuration options.
Continue readingFrom WebUI to CLI: MariaDB in OpenShift
Web base user interfaces are great at walking a user through tasks they do not know how to perform yet. In my case, I want to launch a MariaDB instance on OpenShift. Eventually, I want to do this from the command line. Here are my steps.
Red Hat IdM as an LDAP Identity Provider in OpenShift Container Platform 4
For my OpenShift Demo, I want to use a Red Hat IdM server as the identity provider. It took a little trial and error to get the mechanism to work right.
Continue readingDeleting Trunks in OpenStack before Deleting Ports
Cloud is easy. It is networking that is hard.
Red Hat supports installing OpenShift on OpenStack. As a Cloud SA, I need to be able to demonstrate this, and make it work for customers. As I was playing around with it, I found I could not tear down clusters due to a dependency issue with ports.
Continue readingPackage Management Domain Model
Many years ago, when I first started working at Red Hat, I worked up a package management domain model diagram. I’ve referred to it many times over the years, but have never posted or explained it in detail. Recently, discussions over image building software caused me to refer to it a few times. Here it is, with annotations below.
Continue readingSuccessful OpenShift 4.1 Disconnected install
This one is going to be a little light on details, as we are still working through it, but I’d just like to share what I’ve been working on the past couple weeks. Note that this is for a proof-of-concept cluster, and is not for production.
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