Category Archives: Scripting

Testing Syslog from the command line

Posted on February 15, 2024 by brian.wuchner

From time to time it is helpful to be able to send a syslog message to confirm that things are working correctly — firewall ports are open, nothing is filtering out the traffic in line, including a timestamp in the … Continue reading →

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Jenkins & Java Upgrade on Windows

Posted on January 15, 2024 by brian.wuchner

One service that I use quite frequently in my lab is Jenkins. I have this running on a Windows VM and have a variety of tasks that run from there, some on a scheduled and others consumed by web hooks. … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab Infrastructure, Scripting | 1 Comment

Keeping pihole up to date with Aria Automation Config

Posted on December 27, 2023 by brian.wuchner

I’ve recently begun keeping components of my lab up to date using Aria Automation Config. I’ve scheduled a daily job to inventory Linux packages that need updated and a weekly task to update Linux VMs and reboot if necessary. Both … Continue reading →

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Keeping Linux up to date with Aria Automation Config — part 2

Posted on December 21, 2023 by brian.wuchner

In a recent post (available here), we created a simple Aria Automation Config (formerly SaltStack Config) state file which reported on and applied available Linux OS updates. In this post we’ll revisit a minor change to this state file. After … Continue reading →

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vSphere Custom Images & How to Compare Image Profiles

Posted on November 20, 2023 by brian.wuchner

Occasionally there is a need to create a custom ESXi image as either an installable ISO or a depot/zip bundle. For example, when setting up a new host, you may wish to automatically include specific drivers for a particular network … Continue reading →

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