Tag Archives: open source

MongoDB document depth headache

We ran into a weird problem recently where we were unable to sync a replica set running MongoDB 3.4 when adding new members to the replica set. The sync would begin, but at some point during the sync it would … Continue reading

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DevOpsDays NZ 2016

I recently spoke at the inaugural DevOpsDays NZ in Wellington. The team whom put together the conference did an amazing job and it’s one of the few conferences that I’ve really enjoyed recently. If they put together a subsequent conference … Continue reading

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Puppet Training

I recently ran a training session for our development team at Fairfax introducing them to the fundamentals of Puppet. To assist with this training, I’ve developed a bunch of scripts and learning modules which I’ve now open sourced at https://github.com/jethrocarr/puppet-training Using … Continue reading

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Building a mail server with Puppet

A few months back I rebuilt my personal server infrastructure and fully Puppetised everything, even the mail server. Because I keep having people ask me how to setup a mail server, I’ve gone and adjusted my Puppet modules to make them … Continue reading

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Faking a Time Capsule with a GNU/Linux server

Apple MacOS’s Time Machine feature is a great backup solution for general desktop use, but has some annoying limitations such as only working with either locally attached storage devices or with Apple’s Time Capsule devices. Whilst the Time Capsules aren’t bad … Continue reading

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Easy IKEv2 VPN for mobile devices (inc iOS)

I recently obtained an iPhone and needed to connect it to my VPN. However my existing VPN server was an OpenVPN installation which works lovely on traditional desktop operating systems and Android, but the iOS client is a bit more … Continue reading

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Upcycling 32-bit Mac Minis

The first generation Intel Apple Mac Mini (Macmini1,1) has a special place as the best bang-for-buck system that I’ve ever purchased. Purchased for around $1k NZD in 2006, it did a stint as a much more sleep-friendly server back after … Continue reading

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How much swap should I use on my VM?

Lately a couple people have asked me about how much swap space is “right” for their servers – especially in the context of running low spec machines like AWS t2.nano/t2.micro or Digital Ocean boxes with low allocations like 1GB or 512MB … Continue reading

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/tmp mounted as tmpfs on CentOS

After a recent reboot of my CentOS servers, I’ve inherited an issue where the server comes up running with /tmp mounted using tmpfs. tmpfs is a memory-based volatile filesystem and has some uses for people, but others like myself may … Continue reading

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Secure Hiera data with Masterless Puppet

One of the biggest limitations with masterless Puppet is keeping Hiera data secure. Hiera is a great way for separating site-specific information (like credentials) from your Puppet modules without making a huge mess of your sites.pp. On a traditional Puppet master environment, this … Continue reading

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