Bootstrapping a new FreeBSD jail host as an Ansible node

6 Comments / ansible, FreeBSD, Open Source / By /

A few days I configured a new server to be an Ansible node. This will allow my Ansible configuration tool to configure and install software. Installing Ansible and getting it running is not covered by the post. All I show here is how I got a remote server ready to be configured by Ansible. The server in question was running FreeBSD 9.2 with ZFSRoot. Preparing the client for configuration by Ansible Key to […]

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Ansible versus Salt

3 Comments / ansible, FreeBSD, Open Source, salt / By /

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

Leave a Comment / ezjail, FreeBSD, Jails, Networks / By /

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

Leave a Comment / FreeBSD, Open Source, OpenVPN, ZFS / By /

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

Leave a Comment / FreeBSD, pkgng / By /

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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running OpenVPN as something other than nobody:nobody

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I am a big fan of OpenVPN. I’ve been using it since 2008. It’s been extremely reliable and stable. Out of the box, at least on FreeBSD, it runs as nobody:nobody (not really, but that’s how most people configure it). I can’t point to am immediate security issue with this situation. However, I’d prefer it to run as something else. How, about running it as openvpn:openvpn? NOTE: In the original version of this

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Bacula – client changes host name

2 Comments / Backups, Bacula, Open Source / By /

Like many people, I have a laptop which I backup using Bacula. In my case, the laptop may be present under one of two condition: directly connected to my network via wireless indirectly connected to my network via VPN My VPN of preference is OpenVPN, but that’s not relevant to the situation. The issue is: the IP address for my laptop changes depending upon which of the two connections it is using. Putting

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Adding a tape library to Bacula

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This article was written some months go, but only published today. I recently acquired a new tape auto-changer / library. I have already run some simple tests on the library, and all seems well. I already have an existing Bacula installation and my plan is to add this new auto-changer into that. The Devices The following is a list of the devices associated with my auto-changer. The output has been trimmed to exclude

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Upgrade or replace?

Leave a Comment / hardware / By /

I have this server (I don’t actually have it; I haven’t seen it since 2006) which has started to be restrictive in what I can do with it. It’s running FreeBSD 9.2 and I’d love to start making more use of jails and ZFS. The server has 8x 50G Raptor drives, all on a 3Ware 9550SX-8LP, and 8GB of RAM. The RAM has been giving these types of messages for a few years

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