FreeBSD

Ansible versus Salt

Over the past few weeks, I worked with two different configuration tools: Salt and Ansible. I started working with Salt. I quickly created a setup for a Salt server and for a Salt minion. The modules I saw looked great. However, I had consistently had trouble converting from the documentation to a practical usage. The examples provided always seemed to be CLI. Taking that and converting it to a SLS file caused me

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Routing with jails

Tonight I asked a question in the OpenVPN IRC channel on FreeNode. me: I’m getting ready to set up a new server, running an OpenVPN client. It will be running several virtual machines (FreeBSD Jails). Each VM will have both a public IP address and a non-routable IP address. I’m hoping to access all those VMs from within the VPN. Am I making sense with my objective here? reply: “clientlan” is (#1) for

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Exciting project ahead

I have an exciting project ahead of me. I will soon be configuring a new server. It will be ZFSROOT running a pair of mirrored 500GB disks. I plan to use a configuration tool for management of this server. The final choice of tools is yet to be decided. The services provided by this server will be primarily based on jails. The use of a configuration tool will simplify future redeployments. I’m doing

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Bootstrapping / installing pkg on FreeBSD unattended and without answering Yes

Sometimes you want to do things alone. Or rather, without intervention. Unattended. Bootstrapping the pkgng package management tool is one of those things. From the pkgng documentation, “FreeBSD 9.1 and later includes a bootstrap utility which can be used to download and install pkgng, along with its manual pages”. Let me show you how that goes: # pkg The package management tool is not yet installed on your system. Do you want to

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OpenVPN and dynamic DNS

My laptop’s hostname is dent. I want my DNS records to point to that laptop whether I’m connected to my LAN directly (via WIFI or ethernet cable) or via OpenVPN (my VPN of choice). SIDE NOTE: You will see references to nsupdate -k below. Note that in recent versions of this program, the option you want has changed to nsupdate -y. You will find an example of the new format later in this

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can’t re-use a leaf or module_register: module g_label already exists

For some time, I’ve seen these messages and been slightly bothered by them. Today, I found the solution. can’t re-use a leaf (geom_label)! can’t re-use a leaf (geom_part_gpt)! module_register: module g_label already exists! Module g_label failed to register: 17 module_register: module g_part_gpt already exists! Module g_part_gpt failed to register: 17 Those messages appeared on the console while booting and were logged in /var/log/dmesg.boot. I was told, but I forget where, that this was

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Nvi saved the file sudoers.tmp

Have you ever seen a message like this? From: Nvi recovery program Subject: Nvi saved the file sudoers.tmp Date: November 3, 2013 6:48:00 PM EST To: root@slocum.example.org Reply-To: root@slocum.example.org On Thu Jul 25 18:55:42 2013, the user root was editing a file named /usr/local/etc/sudoers.tmp on the machine slocum.unixathome.org, when it was saved for recovery. You can recover most, if not all, of the changes to this file using the -r option to vi:

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mounting the FreshPorts chroot within a jail

In my work on FreshPorts, I’ve learned more than the average non-committer about the FreeBSD ports tree and its oddities. Just about everything learns about a port it gets from ‘make -V’. Even this method can be fraught with difficulty. In an attempt to get the fairest information possible, FreshPorts uses a chroot solution, first proposed by Ryan Steinmetz . Previous posts about this particular solution can be found in the FreshPorts blog.

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doveadm cannot work without a tty

I got this message today: $ doveadm pw -s SHA512-CRYPT Enter new password: doveadm(dan): Fatal: open(/dev/tty) failed: No such file or directory It seems if you have no tty, you can’t create a password. Surely there is a better way to do this? # w 7:21PM up 19 days, 4 mins, 0 users, load averages: 0.48, 0.77, 0.67 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE WHAT # That’s on a FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE-p3 jail. To access

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