Firstly, welcome back. It’s now 2012, and there’s lots more to write about. Recently, Oracle withdrew the ability for Linux distributions to repackage Java and distribute their own packages. This has been widely regarded as a bad idea. I tend to agree. So, let’s re-roll an old sun-java6 deb file, with a new content to contain the latest 6u30 java release. You will need: A set of build packages (I’ve got a set for lucid, so if this goes away, I’ll find some way to host them....

Hah. So it’s New Year’s Eve. Twitter is down, and has been for about 3-4 hours. That’s because the NYE celebrations have already started. Somewhere on the other side of the world. I include Twitter on my personal website. The one you’re reading. There’s a template tag that displays my five latest tweets. About 2-3 hours ago, I got some error reports about XML parse errors on that template tag. I use api....

Right. Let’s have a look at the massive technical implications of the Fix Puppet idea. As I mentioned in my earlier blogpost, in order to fix puppet in a sensible way, we’ll have to review all, and overhaul some of the underlying infrastructure that allows it all to run. The interlinks and dependencies between all the parts are a little tricky to visualise. So, here’s a picture. Anything in red needs attention, and the stuff in green just works....

I’ve decided. We need to start doing points poker here at Baseblack if we’re going to carry on this Agile DevOps thing. I’ve got to admit, the first time I came across the Agile methodology was quite late in my career. In the past, prioritisation of “operations” projects was reasonably first come first serve, or by order of priority (frequently, business need, and seldom operational requirement). For software development teams, Agile is a pretty good, native fit....

Our new PowerDNS cluster (of 2 nodes, so far).. Is backed by Postgresql. In the past, I’ve found that Postgres performs far better for a PowerDNS backend, than MySQL, and certainly better than the BIND, LDAP or SQLite backends. Until version 9.x, Postgres replication was a pretty sorry state of affairs. There were a few options for replication. Slony was commonly used, if not very good.. You’d tend to get a horrific SPoF around the single master....

This article relies on having a soon-to-expire SSL certificate on an Apple OSX Server. Ours are running Snow Leopard, and I’m yet to try the whole thing on Lion. I’ve got to admit, I went through a bit of a rigmarole to do this. To generate a new certificate, you need a key, and a CSR. To get the key, you need to export a PKCS12 file from KeychainAccess as ROOT....

A little background, perhaps: Last night I attended a Winter Party at a bar called The Sterling, in the ground floor of the Gherkin. I have absolutely no problem with the organisation of the Party itself, but more complaints about the Venue. I drink in various bars quite a lot. I’ve worked in a few bars. I observe how bar staff operate, and how their tills work. There’s a few longstanding massive problems with pretty much every till/billing system I’ve ever seen in a bar....

It’s only a few days after Black Friday, and eBuyer have experienced their very own Black Monday. I’ll set the scene. This morning, I had an email mailshot advertising a £1 sale of clearance range items on eBuyer. Sounded like an ideal plan, especially if there were any hard disks up for grabs. I never actually got that far though. I followed the “sneak preview” instructions, duly “liked” eBuyer on facebook....

I came out roughly of my own accord, I think it was sometime in November 2000, but I can’t be that precise on the date. It seems a long time ago now. I say ‘roughly of my own accord’, because as the story will unfold, some might say I was outed. As a mere technicality, I came out to my internet group of friends a while before this. I remember that a lot more clearly as being a few days before my 13th birthday, or was it my 14th?...

So you wanna be a good sysadmin? I don’t blame you. It’s fun, and it’s lucrative. Especially if you do it right. The difference between a good admin and a bad one are many and varied. Most importantly, it boils down to a level of devotion to the company. And a knowledge that is expansive. Not that it has to be all-encompassing. One of the important things to know is the limit of your knowledge....