thinking sysadmin

This post is an amalgamation of Vladimir Vuksan’s Provision to cloud in 5 minutes using fog (EC2-specific) and Jeff Gran’s Bootstrapping an Ubuntu Server on Rackspace Using Cloud-Init and Fog – I contributed little more than (inexpertly) gluing them together.

Assuming you already have the Fog gem installed:

First, as a prerequisite and as Jeff Gran notes, you’ll need to create a Rackspace image with the cloud-init package installed.

Next, similar to what Vladimir Vuksan describes, create a config.rb file, and populate the following values as appropriate for your environment:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

@flavor_id = 3
@image_id = 1234567

@rackspace_username =  'example'
@rackspace_api_key = '1234....'

@private_key_path = './ssh/id_rsa'
@public_key_path = './ssh/id_rsa.pub'

The flavor_id values and image_id specify the instance size and the image you built with cloud-init installed (see the “fog” executable’s “Compute[:rackspace].flavors” and “Compute[:rackspace].images”, respectively); the Rackspace username and api_key can be retrieved from within the console under “Your Account: API Access.” The SSH key pair will be what you use to access the new instance as root.
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Following on to my previous post about ack and autojump, one more new-to-me tool that I’ve become quite fond of is f.lux. When you find yourself passing up your dual-core hot-rod workstation for your underpowered netbook solely because the netbook has f.lux installed, take it as a sign that the creators of f.lux are on to something.

From the f.lux website: “f.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you’re in, all the time. When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again.” For me, the decrease in eye strain is palpable; at night, picking up a mobile phone or even looking at a TV after using a machine with f.lux installed is painful. (Obviously, if you need accurate color representation, you can’t have f.lux on; thankfully, temporarily disabling it is a breeze.)

There are are Windows, OS X and Linux versions available; installation on Ubuntu is made easy through a PPA. Here’s a little Puppet module for Ubuntu Maverick hosts, if Puppet is your thing:

class flux {

  exec { "add f.lux ppa":
    command => "/usr/bin/apt-add-repository ppa:kilian/f.lux",
    creates => "/etc/apt/sources.list.d/kilian-f_lux-maverick.list",
    notify => Exec["apt-get update"],
  }

  package { "fluxgui":
    ensure => present,
    require => Exec["add f.lux ppa"],
  }

}

Disclaimer: I am not a FirePass administrator; only an end-user and have no other relationship with F5. There may be better methods to address this issue; please comment if you know of one.

See also: f5vpn-login.py, described here, and brought to my attention by sh4k3sph3r3. A CLI FirePass client is quite likely a better solution than separate browser instances, etc.

Preliminaries: Although the F5 FirePass SSL VPN product supports Linux, as best as I can tell, that support is somewhat limited: My understanding is that they officially claim support for 32-bit installs only, and they do not appear to track new distribution releases particularly aggressively. F5 has also been somewhat slow in supporting new browser versions: They announced support for Firefox 3 on October 6, 2008, nearly four months after its release and with only two months to go before Firefox 2 was end-of-lifed. For Firefox 3.6 support, a comment on the post linked above states that you need to request a special hot fix from F5 (which my site has not applied). There is no Google Chrome support that I am aware of.

Further, F5′s automated client installation tools have unfortunately never worked for me on Linux, even when the architecture and browser are in their support matrix. The manual download instruction links are also broken on the FirePass install I connect to.

Solution: Install a dedicated, 32-bit version of Firefox in a supported version; create a single-purpose Firefox profile for VPN use. Add the FirePass client to that browser and the operating system.
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I finally got around to installing Ubuntu (Hardy) on my Eee PC this weekend. My only regret: That I waited so long to do it.
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• Ubuntu Netbook Remix – “A ‘remix’ of the standard Ubuntu Desktop 8.04 release to enable it to work better on devices with small screens, such as Netbooks (sub-notebooks).” I’ve been meaning to replace Xandros on my Eee with Ubuntu – it’ll be nice to have this on top of Hardy Heron. (Seen at Ars Technica, whose post has more info and some nice screenshots.)
• Internet Traffic Growth Doesn’t Matter – A look at Internet bandwidth consumption that sounds quite level-headed to me. A few great quotes, some of them excerpted from a presentation by Andrew Odlyzko: “Internet traffic growth rates are slowing. Hype is accelerating.” “Telecom is the only industry that worries about it’s [sic] customers using too much product.” “Volume is not value. SMS messages consume almost no bandwidth but bill out at $1000/Mb.” “Traffic growth simply doesn’t matter. Period. What matters is revenue.” And best of all: “Most people think they are special but in realty [sic] just want to watch ‘American Idol’.” (Seen at Data Center Knowledge.)