Recently I needed access to a HP Management Processor (MP) without knowing the appropriate IP address.

A possibility is to utilize a serial connection to the MP - but this is kinda complicated if you don't have any physical system access.

A smarter approach is to find out the IP address using the running operating …

Recently I had the problem that my homelab's Linux machines managed by Puppet were generating dozens of error messages when updating the catalog:

1# puppet agent --test
2Error: /File[/var/lib/puppet/lib/puppet/parser/functions/load_module_metadata.rb]/ensure: change from absent to file failed: Could not set …

It is a common procedure to use templates ("golden images") when deploying virtual machines. Recently I had an issue when deploying SLES machines - newly registered systems within SUSE Manager replaced older one. The management agent was installed within the template.

For classic systems (registered via RHNSD …

With FirewallD, some Linux distributions introduce a new default firewall differing heavily from previous interfaces. This post focusses the basic concept and some practical examples.

A major difference is that the firewall now supports changes in realtime without dropping active connections. FirewallD integrates …

Recently I had some issues with a Linux cluster running Corosync, Pacemaker and Apache. I was unable to run the redskin as ressource - starting always failed with "invalid parameter":

 1# crm resource start apache
 2# crm status
 3...
 42 nodes configured
 55 resources configured
 6
 7Online: [ deb9-node2 …

A fresh Spacewalk installation usually defines user accounts in a local manner - including permissions. Especially for bigger system landscapes with requirements such as Single Sign-on, this is not a practical solution.

Fortunately, Spacewalk and Red Hat Satellite 5 support authentication using FreeIPA and Red Hat …

After my last Spacewalk 2.7 installation I had the problem that synchronising repositories using the web interface failed with the following error:

<img
  loading="lazy"
  decoding="async"
  alt="Reposync error in Spacewalk 2.7 web …</picture></figure></p>

When installing Spacewalk 2.7 under CentOS 7.4 along with PostgreSQL 9.2.23, I recently stumbled upon the following error:

1# spacewalk-setup
2* Setting up SELinux..
3** Database: Setting up database connection for PostgreSQL backend.
4** Database: Installing the database:
5** Database: This is a long process that is …