default - 🧑‍💻 Funky Penguin (Page 2)

Automatically create VLAN bridge interfaces for KVM on RHEL 5-6

At Prophecy, we make extensive use of KVM Virtualization on CentOS6. A VM host can have multiple bridge interfaces (each on a separate VLAN) on which we can run virtual machines. This lets us (for example) run a dev VM (inside a dev network) on the same physical VM host

how-to

Merge git forked repo with upstream changes

I forked Phlow’s excellent “Feeling Responsive” repository about a month ago, to create this website. I hacked away at config files, added posts, and deleted demo data. Since I’d starred Phlow’s repo on GitHub, I noticed that he was continuing to commit fixes and improvements (after I’

usenet

Dockerized HTPC Suite (sabnzbd, couchpotato, nzbdrone, plex)

Table of Contents * Introduction * Quick Start (using docker-compose) * Manual Container Management (without docker-compose) * Planned Enhancements Introduction Introducing docker-htpc-suite, a set of automated / manual scripts to control an integrated set of “dockerized” HTPC suite of tools, including: * sabnzbd * couchpotato * sonarr * plex * plexrequests * plexpx * nzbhydra * headphones * mylar * rtorrent + rutorrent Quick Start (using

how-to

Perform L3 adoption with UniFi Controller v4 (Dockerized)

Having recently deployed a “dockerized” Ubiquity UniFi Controller, I was forced to reset my UniFi AP so that I could re-adopt it and bring it back under management. This shouldn’t have been a big deal, but a number of systems didn’t work as the should have. 1. Using

windows

Activating Windows Server Evaluation

Internally, our build process for Windows Servers (2012r2 in this case) is to build the VM on the Evaluation media available from Microsoft, and then apply the licence during the grace period. It turns out that you can’t “Activate” an Evaluation copy of Windows Server with a Production licence

featured

Addons to improve Thunderbird (and make it less annoying)

My organization standardizes on Mozilla Thunderbird as our mail client of choice (partly because Mail.app is so deficient on OSX). It’s a bit crusty since Mozilla halted further development in 2012, but better the devil you know, right…? I recently had some downtime while waiting for gingerbread houses

advice

Stumbling into what you love

Thanks to the Farnam Street Blog for recommending this commencement speech by Daniel Pink. To paraphrase his message, you can’t be prepared enough for life before living it. You may have an idea of the direction you want to take, but you should be open to stumbling into what

review

Review of Packt Publishing's ESXi Cookbook

Because I previously authored a book on PHPList, I was asked by the folks at Packt Publishing to review their latest book, VMWare ESXi Cookbook. Review follows. Mohammed and Aravind have done a good job at covering a broad range of topics related to ESXi. I was pleased to see

opinion

Why financial incentives aren't the optimal way to motivate your knowledge workers

In “The 6 Rules for Rewards”, Jurgen Appelo points out that extrinsic motivators (bonuses, etc) are far less powerful than intrinsic ones. He makes the bold statement that employee bonus schemes can actually reduce effectiveness. Reflecting on this - I wouldn’t want to loose my yearly bonus at my

opinion

Buy a watch, save your brain

Jeremy Vandehey points out in “This is your brain on mobile” that buying a watch can reduce the amount of time you spend distracted on your smartphone, since you won’t be whipping it out to check the time, only to repeat a few min later because you’ve forgotten.

project

Easy squid tricks and pranks with Vagrant

For April Fools this year, I decided to update my 2011 squid prank, and gain some experience using Vagrant at the same time. I rebuilt the entire environment using a Vagrantfile, which permits anybody to check out a few files and reproduce it. See https://github.com/funkypenguin/squidprank for

note

Postfix config on OSX Mountain Lion (Server) not where you expect

I spent the better part of an hour wondering why my postfix main.cf config changes didn’t apply on a OSX Mountain Lion server. Turns out that because “OSX Server” no longer exists (it’s just Server.app now), the postfix files specific to the Mail component of the

cisco

Clearing static nat on Cisco router

I was asked to change a incoming NAT translation on a Cisco router for a customer today - however since this NAT was used to deliver all their internal email, it was never not in use, and I got the standard message below when trying to clear it: %Static entry

cacti

Workaround for the Cacti segmentation fault on CentOS5

Seems a little dumb, and I’m not sure how other distributions deal with it, but if you install Cacti from RPM on CentOS, and then browse to your /cacti/ directory via HTTP, you’ll find that it dies with a segmentation fault. You know this is you if every

centos

April Fools Pranks with a Squid Proxy Server

Use Squid to turn the internet upside-down, change Google to Klingon For this year’s April Fools Day, I went with the classic “turn the internet upside-down” squid trick, with a few tweaks. I didn’t want to be too obvious, so I avoided changing images on the majority of

book

phpList 2 Email Campaign Manager

In 2011, I authored phpList 2 E-mail Campaign Manager, a comprehensive guide to PHPList v2. About This Book * Harness the power and flexibility of open source software using phpList for e-mail management mastery * Use analytics to identify top-performing links and most engaged subscribers, and target campaigns based on flexible criteria

how-to

Convert (liberate) Audible AAC files to MP3

I was an Audible subscriber for over 2 years, and although I’m no longer active on a plan, I still have 50+ books that I’ve legitimately purchased. Each of them, however, is locked to my Audible username and password. I don’t tolerate DRM where possible, and I’

openwrt

Convert a .BIN file to .TRX for OpenWRT / DD-WRT

I recently had reason to convert the latest DD-WRT firmware .bin file to .trx format, so that I could manually flash my WRT54GL. Not wanting to risk it, I first converted the .bin image with the following command: dd if=firmware.bin of=firmware.trx bs=32 skip=1 Which

apache

Protect your website with htaccess

Today we had the need to setup a htauth-secured WordPress blog for internal development purposes. We duly protected our web application with the vanilla .htaccess directives: {% highlight conf %} AuthName “Secured” AuthUserFile /path/to/secret/location/.htpasswd AuthType Basic Require valid-user {% endhighlight %} We were using WordPress to generate RSS data feeds,