geek howto linux

HOWTO automate Debian installs with preseed

August 18, 2011 – 2:41 pm
Automatic (you know, for the people)

Automatic (you know, for the people)

I’ve installed Linux, probably 100s of times, and while going through all the questions and answers used to be fun, once you have everything decided it’s mainly a case of tab, space, enter, tab, tab, enter, space, space, tab, enter. I remember reading about kickstart, which was Red Hat‘s way of automating the install process, but Debian GNU/Linux (and by extension Ubuntu Linux) support  preseed. From Debian’s wiki, “Preseeding provides a way to set answers to questions asked during the installation process, without having to manually enter the answers while the installation is running. This makes it possible to fully automate most types of installation and even offers some features not available during normal installations.” So preseeding automates the install of the OS, the questions that you’d normally need to answer interactively are predetermined, and defined by a supplied configuration file, and sometimes boot parameters. So while Ubuntu is known for it’s user-friendly OS installer, Ubiquity, preseeding the Debian-Installer  (also known as “d-i”) is the recommended method for automating Ubuntu installations and for building custom install CDs. With this in mind I set out to build a preseed config file that would automate installs of virtual KVM machines we were provisioning at a gig, but looking at how I do such bare-bones base installs, this would work for most of my normal Debian installs at home too.

This is a preview of HOWTO automate Debian installs with preseed. Read the full post (1257 words, 2 images, estimated 5:02 mins reading time)
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geek linux privacy security

DEFCON 19: Taking your ball and going home

August 17, 2011 – 1:05 pm
DEFCON 19
DEFCON 19 logo

UPDATE you can now view a video of my slides, along with the audio of my talk on the DC archive page (45 Megs)

This is a preview of DEFCON 19: Taking your ball and going home. Read the full post (403 words, 4 images, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)
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geek howto linux privacy

HOWTO retrieve email with fetchmail and forward it on with procmail

July 7, 2011 – 10:40 pm
fetchmail

fetchmail logo

I’m starting a new gig Monday, so I got a new email address for use while I work there. Now of course, I have many, many email addresses, but thanks to Google Apps, I still check them all through a Gmail frontend, and can ‘send as’ any address I want; which makes it almost seamless to integrate new email accounts. However, today we hit a snag, whereas my last client offered to simply forward my mail to another address, the new one wouldn’t with something about auditing as their reason, which I can completely understand, as long as they understand, having to check email via multiple clients just won’t scale. That’s right Anthony, ‘this won’t scale’. So, since we’re rocking Linux and open source we know we can fix it some way, and that’s what I live for, the challenge. Ya, that’s right, I was given a stumbling block, I stared it down and proclaimed, “challenge accepted”.

This is a preview of HOWTO retrieve email with fetchmail and forward it on with procmail. Read the full post (627 words, 2 images, estimated 2:30 mins reading time)
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howto linux

HOWTO start a detached process in screen on boot

April 25, 2011 – 9:43 am
Using a key to gouge expletives on another's vehicle is a sign of trust... and friendship.

Using a key to gouge expletives on another's vehicle is a sign of trust... and friendship.

Ok, a quick one today – at work I had the problem of needing a process to be automatically started during boot, and have it running in the background, but it didn’t have its own init.d script. I knew there was a way I could use GNU Screen (one of my favorite ‘must have’ sys admin tools) to do this, but it took me some time searching to find the right syntax to translate for my needs, so I’m posting it here.

This is a preview of HOWTO start a detached process in screen on boot. Read the full post (296 words, 1 image, estimated 1:11 mins reading time)
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commerce music

HOWTO make a DIY Record Store Day sign

April 11, 2011 – 9:32 pm

UPDATE: My wife got a great picture of me enjoying myself at Euclid Records (see it at the bottom of this post) celebrating Record Store Day 2011 – such a great day! Thanks again to all at Euclid, thanks to Dave the St. Louis PBR rep and to RSD organizers everywhere!

BONUS: I’ve got a shot of the finished sign, installed in my yard, at the end of the post now. Enjoy, and I’ll see some of you Saturday!

As you should know by now, Record Store Day (April 16, 2011) is rapid approaching, and to me it’s more of a holiday than most holidays. As a quick intro, their site states that, “This is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day and hundreds of artists in the United States and in various countries across the globe make special appearances and performances. Festivities include performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, djs spinning records and on and on. [...] Record Store Day is now celebrated the third Saturday every April.“ As I’ve blogged about it, each year, since it started – I wanted to do more this year, I wanted to promote Record Store Day to all the people in my neighborhood that might not appreciate the local record shop (Euclid Records) that I’ve spent time in for over 25 years. To do this my thought was one of getting offline, ya, going analog, taking it to the streets as it were, so I checked with @recordstoreday on Twitter to see if they had any ready made posters I could print out…

This is a preview of HOWTO make a DIY Record Store Day sign. Read the full post (817 words, 5 images, estimated 3:16 mins reading time)
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