CentOS/Redhat 5.x Kickstart Deployment

Not too long ago I was tasked with deploying a decent number of CentOS 5.3 and Redhat servers to BL490 blades and VMs in our datacenter (part of a massive environment deployment with HP C7000 enclosures, virtual connect, and a lot of patience). I hate manual configuration so I figured now is as good of time as any to get on the kickstart bandwagon. Here is how I did it:

Windows: Some Small System Administration Scripts

Here are a few scripts that I have cobbled together over the last few years. They are small and useful but nothing earth-shattering. One gets information about a remote system and who is logged in. The other can remotely reset the administrator password. Both obviously require  you have the permissions to do so on the remote machines. Both accept multiple computer names divided by a semi-colon.  Save and change the extension from .txt to .hta

GetAsset

ResetAdminPass

GNS3 on Ubuntu 8.04 – Migrating Your Install

Don’t have much time due to work obligations but I wanted to quickly drop this one out there for any who have followed my install guides. I was always ragging on and on about making the install somewhat portable by putting it into the /opt/ directory and now I’ll give a good example why.

Ubuntu Server 8.04 Post Install Tip #1: Auto Updating

On a headless server that you have at home or for testing I like to make sure that all security updates and trivial updates are done automatically. A good sys admin will shy away from this practice for a good reason, updates can mess things up. In a production environment or where the server setup is very complex I can understand the need to manually run updates. For me, well I’m lazy when it comes to my home machines and generally don’t have too complex of setups. Also, in my experience, I’ve hardly ever seen an apt security or trivial update cause any harm (desktop linux I have seen issues though). That being said, I like to force security and trivial updates to happen daily.

GNS3 on Ubuntu 8.04 – Choosing and Using your IOS

As promised here is the post regarding choosing and using an IOS image that will fit your study needs.

If you followed the first post in this series you are technically now ready to start loading up images and making labs of your own. You will need to get your hands on some IOS images (legally of course).But which IOS should you use?