tips_and_howtos

These tips and howtos are quick notes mostly on how to get something up and running. All of these are tested and documented on site but may contain mistakes and typos.

Please be aware that most of the documents require knowledge on several aspects of IT so be careful to do you background research before doing this stuff. Especially security is vital to keep in check when doing these or you will end up with uninvited guests.


Upgrade your SuperMicro IPMI firmware

How to quickly upgrade your Supermicro IPMI firmware using Linux shell.


VLANs and Network Manager

How to quickly configure your network interfaces for VLAN with Network Manager.


Upgrade your WordPress

How to quickly upgrade your WordPress installation using Linux command line shell with no extra software required.


Online upgrade Windows Server from command line

How to quickly upgrade / activate your windows server using 2 online commands and your product key.


Rescue broken Windows without image backup

Rescue / repair your windows installation when you do not have a backup image available. A very simple procedure with command line commands.


Enterprice Grade Clustered ZFS / NVME storage server

How to set up a 2 node NVMe, high performance clustered Linux ZFS fileserver for production use utilizing RDMA and NVME-of.


Networked storage performance comparisons

Performance stats and comparisons of our NVME storage using NVME-of, iSER, MD and LVM.


Linux serial console for IPMI

Simple step by step how to set up a serial console you can use with your ipmitool SOL. Updated with simple ISO image mounting instructions.


Native Infiniband for Linux

Native Infiniband RDMA setup for Linux without IP. We go for speed and do not wish any extra layers to bother us. NVME-of and iSER covered so far.


eduPersonAssurance attribute explanation

A compact explanation and guidance on the usage of eduPersonAssurance attribute.


How to do NVidia + secure boot à la CentOS8 / RHEL8

Install NVidia drivers to your CentOS8 / RHEL8 workstation with secure boot.


NetIQ / Microfocus IDM 8 + eDirectory 9.2 CentOS 8 install checklist

How to install NetIQ / Microfocus eDirectory 9.2 and IDM 4.8 to CentOS 8 fast.


Setup Linux rsyslog server

Simple step by step how to set up rsyslog server functionality to Linux.


NetIQ / Microfocus IDM install checklist

How to install NetIQ / Microfocus in real world.


How to fix RHEL / CentOS / Linux boot problems after update

In CentOS / RHEL you may end up with an non-bootable system after update which may be caused by a broken initramfs. You may see a screenful of dracut-initqueue timeouts. This is a quick howto on how to deal with it.


Icinga Web 2 Apache SSL configuration

As a cheat sheet on how to quickly help set up Icinga Web 2 to CentOS 7 Apache with SSL / https.


USB stick transfer rates per block size

As a reminder of what is the optimal block size for USB stick transfers I run Kingston Datatraveler 8GB USB2 and Kingston Datatraveler Elite G2 64HB USB3 stick with variable block sizes. Also a nice performance test.


Create eDirectory SUB CA with openssl

How to create a new SUB CA to Microfocus/Netiq Certificate Server with OpenSSL commands only.


Create a dummy rpm package

How to create your own empty dummy rpm package to use for placeholder or package check purposes for example.


Libvirt multiple server implementation

A quick reminder on how to configure Libdirtd multiple virtual host environment ready for live migration.


SailfishOS Google Play Store (re)installation

Here is a quick script which makes Play Store installation a bit easier for your Sailfish OS phone. Works for reinstallation too.


Make Windows compatible USB stick in Linux

How difficult can it be? It is not but you gotta do the right thing anyway.


Clean XML from duplicate nodes

How to clean out XML file from duplicate nodes with XSLT stylesheets using traditional and Muenchian methods. Example is based in NetIQ Identity Manager XSLT stylesheets but should be applicable to any standard XSLT environment.


Install WoeUSB from source to OpenSUSE Leap 42.3

WoeUSB is a tool to create Windows 10 USB installation media in Linux environment. However the packages for OpenSUSE are not available in common repositories so we install it from source since it is a very simple operation. Here is how to do it.


Ditch SuSEfirewall and use persistent iptables

Opensuse has SuSEfirewall which is not suitable for my needs. Ok to say it straight it is horrible. It consists of several files, it's own proprietary configuration directives and manages to make a simple thing very complicated. Here is a writedown of how I ditch SuSEfirewall and replace it with reboot persisting iptables and relies on one simple standard /etc/sysconfig/iptables configuration file.


Make Windows 10 usb installation media in Linux

How to make a bootable Windows 10 USB installation media in Linux. The simplest possible way.


NetIQ eDirectory maintenance checklist

How to keep your NetIQ eDirectory healthy with weekly / monthly check.


Set VIM auto indent with comment indenting

How to set autoindenting so that comments will be indented as well.


Create and manage Office 365 mailusers with Powershell

How to create Office 365 mailusers with multiple proxyAddresses, how to modify and disable them from command line using Microsoft Powershell.


Clustered Shibboleth IDP V3 federated installation

Step by step guide on how to install clustered / HA Shibboleth IDP V3 to your federation using two nodes and Postgres replication.


Shibboleth SP V3 installation

Step by step guide on how to install Shibboleth IDP V3 to a federation or with a single IDP.


Install / refresh .desktop files in Linux

You want to make your new program visible when you press super/windows key and start typing it? You've got a new myapp.desktop and you want it in your start menus? A quick reminder on how to do it.


Install OpenSUSE Leap 42.3 with Nvidia 1070 in UEFI mode

OpenSUSE will not install with NVidia 1070 card (in UEFI mode) without special attention. Here is how to do it.


Install VIM plugins

How to install and enable excellent Vim-Plug plugin manager and as an example how to install Apache Velocity template syntax plugin to Vim.


How to sync contacts and calendar from Zimbra to Sailfish OS

How to sync your contacts and calendar from Zimbra email server using Sailfish OS / Jolla built in CalDAV and CardDav connectors.


How to keep SSH connections alive

SSH connection closes after a period of inactivity? A super quick tip to prevent this.


NetIQ iManager Apache ajp proxying on CentOS 7

Quick and dirty: a conf file to proxy iManager or other Tomcat web application with ajp.


Bash completion support to your script (Perl example)

A simple example on how to make Bash tab key completion with your script without any extra libraries. Example made with perl but is doable with any script / programming language.


How up upgrade Owncloud after several major release skips

Time went by and you forgot to say yum update? Owncloud has skipped major versions and you cannot find the previous releases in EPEL or other package repositories? Don't worry been there done that. Click to see how to manually upgrade Owncloud through multiple major versions ending up with the version your repository provides.


How to do a clean install of OS X El Capitan from usb stick

How to do a clean install of OS X El Capitan to you MacBook or Mac workstation from a USB drive - that maybe formatted with other os and OS X cannot even recognize.


How to migrate from RHEL to CentOS

How to migrate a RedHat Enterprise Linux to CentOS.


Deploying commercial wildcard certificates to Zimbra 8

How to apply and deploy commercial wildcard certs to Zimbra.


Backup and quick restore of MySQL database

MySQL restore is slow and needs different backup options to enable faster restore.


How to install virtual guest from console

How to install virtual guest from Linux console with virt-install.


NetIQ eDirectory installation on CentOS 7

How to install eDirectory on CentOS 7.


How to mount and repair a virtual guest image

Something I always have to look up even when it is supposed to be evident. I guess there's a bit too much at stake :-)


Amdgpu accelerated driver in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

Tested and confirmed working. Check out the overview here.


Persistent source / policy based routing

How to make persistent source routing (policy based routing) with iproute2 so that your rules and routes are effective after reboots.


CentOS 7 LDAP authentication

How to make your CentOS 7 authenticate and query LDAP.


Super easy Sailfish install on Nexus 5

The simplest and most straightforward way to get SailfishOS to your Google Nexus 5.


Enable Virsh / KVM / Qemu text console

How to enable text console on your virtual guest in RHEL7 / CentOS7. This will enable boot messages and shell access without the GUI client.


Install Citrix Receiver to OpenSuSe Tumbleweed x86_64

How to install Citrix Receiver (ICA Client) to OpenSuSe Tumbleweed x86_64, step by step quide.


Super Quick: change your resolution with xrandr

This is as simple as it gets. How to change your xorg / x11 screen resolution from command line with xrandr.


Pacemaker cluster in 10 minutes

How to get your Centos 6 boxes do high availability Apache clustering in a libvirt KVM environment - with fencing - lightning fast!


NetIQ eDirectory database problems and stuck obituaries

How to deal with stuck obituaries and severe problems with your eDirectory Flaim database. Quick document.


Deploying RapidSSL certificates to Zimbra 8

How to apply and deploy RapidSSL certs to Zimbra using openssl and custom server DNS name.


Jolla / SailfishOS GNUPG2 missing pinentry

Jolla and apparently SailfishOS has a very useful GNPG2 library but it lacks pinentry binary which renders it almost unusable (to my knowledge). Here is a Jolla compiled version of the pinentry.

Update: added support for Sailfish OS 2


Install zypper package management to Jolla Mobile

Jolla Mobile has rpm packages available in the repository but we need a good way to get our hands on them. Jolla's Sailfish OS version does not seem to come with yum, zypper or equivalent preinstalled so let's just grab one from Mer public repository and gain access to the packages.


Linux md boot multiple disks

We have a software raid system in Linux but a conventional file system for /boot and we want to make it bootable from every disk.


Linux md replace a disk

One server first drive sda had come to it's end and had to be replaced. Here is how it is done.


Gluster filesystem steps

Download, install and make a working Gluster filesystem share in CentOS 6.2.


KVM performance tuning

KVM tuning tips.


CentOS 6 LDAP authentication

How to make your CentOS 6 authenticate and query LDAP.

  • tips_and_howtos.txt
  • Last modified: 2022/09/15 10:25
  • by Pekka.Kuronen@pegasi.fi