When I'm working with the Machine Config Operator (MCO) in OpenShift, and frequently typing oc describe mcp and oc get mcp, I'm often reminded of the MCP (Machine Control Program) in the film Tron. I like the idea behind the MCO, and when it's working it's great, but perhaps this association in my mind is not only …

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Of course, this really shouldn't happen right? You're a responsible IT professional, and your OpenShift cluster is configured with multiple authentication methods, and a secure backup of a kubeconfig file with the system:admin user certificates for passwordless login? Except sometimes it does. In my day job, we have a …

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To anybody who has ever used containers, Alpine is a well known base operating system layer to many popular and widely used container images in use today. By design, it's a cut down minimal OS layer using the excellent busybox and musl libc C library. By using these alternatives to GNU Coreutils and GNU glibc C …

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I use python setuptools bdist_rpm to build RPMs from the code in my git repositories and today I updated my automated build script (a wrapper around python setup.py to run pre-requisite functions) to generate an RPM changelog from the git log of the repository hosting the package and then automatically include this in …

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By default, a new Fedora installation or a fedup upgrade on my dual monitor machine will result in GDM displaying the list of users and login screen on my left hand monitor. But I want it on my right hand monitor... Up until now, I simply logged in and set up the configuration I wanted using Settings -> Displays. …

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There are many different file formats and file extensions for storing certificates. It seems each time I come around to renewing a cert, I have forgetten what all the files and extensions mean. So for next time... Certificates are generally encoded in either Base64, PEM, or DEM formats. Base64 (.cer) Originally …

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Generally, if I have 100 files that I need to edit and make changes in, I tend to write a perl or python script to make them (if I have 3 files, I just open them in VIM and make them manually!) Yesterday however, a colleague who doesn't code had to change 2 consecutive lines in about 400 similar files and wanted a …

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I had an email about the minecraft.desktop file in the config file in a previous post. My kids love to play Minecraft, and installation of this simple GNOME .desktop file gives them the launcher icon on their desktops. 1cat << EOF > /usr/share/applications/minecraft.desktop 2[Desktop Entry] 3Version=1.0 …

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When it comes to customising GNOME, its config has always confused me - gconf, dconf, gconf-edit, gconftool - what are they all for? The furthest I've ever delved into them was copying and pasting some tips (give me my minimize and maximize buttons back!). My Linux work is almost exclusively with headless servers …

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Is there anybody in the IT industry that wasn't doing something with openssl in April? I don't use the openssl command line utility that often, but last week it reminded me that openssl command line tool is pretty comprehensive and has some nice features. I thought on this occasion I'd record the most useful ones so …

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