Working with Terraform to build VM’s in Azure for proof-of-concept work, I often opt to use Ubuntu for my Linux systems. Up until 18.04 everything worked fine but when I tried to go to 20.04 or later my Terraform deployment would error out with: Failure sending request: StatusCode=404 — Original Error: Code="PlatformImageNotFound" Message="The platform image […]

Let me start by saying, I really love Microsoft Azure and my brain is currently flooded with plenty of Azure goodness after earning my Azure Admin certification. Therefore I was surprised to find myself working on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) platform less than a week after passing the AZ-104. I find that my professional […]

The current state of the world has caused some unique stresses on IT infrastructure. For IT departments servicing internal teams, remote access infrastructure in particular has felt the brunt of the blow. To that end, I spent a couple of weeks testing out enterprise VPN solutions.

If you use linux and have never come across this statement (or just realized this in the course of working with the OS), then let me be the first to tell you this critical truth… “Everything is a bloody file.” While this holistic statement isn’t quite 100% true, it’s close enough that if you adopt […]

If you run linux desktops (virtual, containerized, physical… or other?) then you may have come across the term VNC which is shorthand for “Virtual Network Computing” which is so ambiguous it means practically nothing. If you come from the windows world you are probably familiar with the term RDP which is shorthand for “Remote Desktop […]

I have decided to give Ubuntu 17.04 LTS Desktop a go. On a whim I installed it on a laptop I had lying about (being an IT person they tend to proliferate over a given period of time in my office… older units becoming doorstops, newer units lovely “Jenga” blocks and maybe the occasional Proxmox […]

I have written articles on how to start using RealmD and SSSD for integrating ubuntu into a windows network. However, prior to that I wrote an article on using PBIS. RealmD and SSSD is, by far, the superior method IMHO and experience, so for all of those folks that want to switch, you probably want […]

For this tutorial I will be walking through how to use a tool called Realmd to connect an Ubuntu Server or Ubuntu Desktop system to a Windows Active Directory Domain. In the past I wrote an article talking about how to use Powerbroker Identity Services to do the same thing, but the scope of the […]

One of the things I like having is a remote system I can access and work on from anywhere. In the past this has meant using either a dedicated server (expensive) or VPS (which is just a VM… too slow). With Proxmox, I figured I had the option of using a container, which would mean […]

If you load Proxmox 4.0 from OVH or any of their affiliates you end up with a partition scheme that gives you one big logical volume for data that is formatted to EXT3. That will work but it isn’t desirable. Starting with Proxmox 3.4, support for the ZFS filesystem was added. ZFS is more than […]

So I wanted to start playing around with Docker and LXC containers and all kinds of other fun stuff on one of my cheap Kimsufi dedicated servers. I immediately ran into a problem though, Kimsufi (and parent company OVH, and probably sister company SoYouStart) use a modified Ubuntu Kernel. Why do they do this? In […]

I heartily recommend Exim4. I find it to be BY FAR the easiest/best email server for “send only” operations. It is a full MTA so you don’t need to rely on outside relays (gmail is commonly used with things like phpsendmail). Being a full MTA means that it can do a lot more but I […]

Explain how to undo or rollback an apt-get install command on a Debian or Ubuntu or Mint Linux. Source: Rollback an apt-get upgrade if something goes wrong on Debian / Ubuntu Linux All I have to say is, AWESOME! I am filing this one away as potentially a life saver if I ever fail to […]

I wrote a new script today to keep me up-to-date on how full the boot partition is on my Ubuntu servers. I actually administer quite a few of them and it can become a real issue if the boot drive hits 100% full, which it commonly does. The reason for this is that the boot […]