Gitlab: The source branch does not exist [SOLVED]
Got an interesting error on Gitlab today. On an MR that had passed tests and had been approved, Gitlab would not allow the branch to be merged because “The source branch [Branch Name] does not exist....
View ArticleQuickly create guest VMs using virsh, cloud image files, and cloud-init
After the latest updates to the code these scripts now create VMs from full Linux distros in a few seconds. I was looking for a way to automate the creation of VMs for testing various distributed...
View ArticleRun a Linux systemd service during shutdown
I recently needed to add a cleanup service that runs at shutdown to a hundred AWS servers. My requirements were: Run the script /usr/local/sbin/ec2-cleanup.sh when a VM shuts down (poweroff or...
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Configure BIOS settings with Ansible and Redfish
If you’re using Ansible and trying to configure the BIOS settings of a bunch of hosts in a data center, take a look at Ansible’s community.general.redfish_config module. The Redfish standard is a...
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What to do when your Facebook account is “hacked”
I still use Facebook. About twice a month one of my friends posts “My Facebook account got HACKED! I changed by password but they’re still sending friend requests to my friends! What do I do?” Or...
View ArticleDark Mode on Chromium
Many Raspberry Pi projects use the Chromium web browser to display web pages and UI screens. For instance, I wrote a kiosk program for displaying a set of web pages and I start up Chromium in a bash...
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AI without GPUs: Accessing Sapphire Rapids AMX instructions on vSphere
Full disclosure: I used to work for a startup called Bitfusion, and that startup was bought by VMware, so I now work for VMware. At Bitfusion we developed a technology for accessing hardware...
View ArticlePosting to Google Spaces from Bash
I recently started using Google Spaces and wanted to have some automations send me messages when certain things happened on my systems, so I wrote a simple bash script to send a notification message....
View ArticleAI without GPUs: Using Intel AMX CPUs on VMware vSphere for LLMs
I was invited to AI Field Day 4 in Santa Clara last week to present a couple of talks on running AI workloads on Intel AMX CPUs. This is a recording of the talk I did on running LLMs. Hope you find...
View ArticleAI without GPUs: Using Intel AMX CPUs on VMware vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes
I was invited to AI Field Day 4 in Santa Clara last week to present a couple of talks on running AI workloads on Intel AMX CPUs. This is a recording of the talk I did on setting up Tanzu Kubernetes...
View ArticleUnexplored Territory #069: AI on CPUs with Earl Ruby
I was just interviewed by Frank Denneman for the Unexplored Territory podcast, where we talked about new computing hardware for running AI workloads on vSphere and VCF. AI on CPUs Hope you find this...
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Fix bouncing mail from a GNU Mailman server on Dreamhost
GNU Mailman is free software for managing electronic mail discussion and e-newsletter lists. I started using it back in 1998 for managing internal email lists at a company I worked for. I’ve used it...
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AI Without GPUs: Using Your Existing CPU Resources to Run AI Workloads
This is a talk Keith Bradley and I gave at VMware Explore 2024 Las Vegas called AI Without GPUs: Using Your Existing CPU Resources to Run AI Workloads. Keith Bradley is the Vice President of IT and...
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Copy entire file directories from a Linux host to Box
I had about 2TB of files on a cloud-based Linux host that I needed to backup to cloud storage. I had an Box Enterprise storage account with a 30PB limit on storage and a maximum file size of 150GB, so...
View ArticleUpdating local IDRAC passwords on Dell hosts using Ansible
Dell hosts have the ability to add multiple local users to the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) with different levels of access. Each IDRAC user has an Account ID number 1 through 2^8....
View ArticleUpdate the firmware on Dell hosts using Ansible
Dell provides an https website with firmware updates. If your host can reach https://downloads.dell.com you can update Dell firmware using Ansible and the dellemc.openmanage module. First install the...
View ArticleAdding a LUKS-encrypted iSCSI volume to TrueNAS and Ubuntu 24.04
I have an Ubuntu 24.04 “Noble Numbat” workstation already set up with LUKS full disk encryption, and I have a Terra Master F4-424 NAS with 32TB raw storage that I installed TrueNAS Scale on. Years ago...
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Installing TrueNAS Scale on a Terra Master NAS
My 10+ year old Synology NAS failed recently. I tried replacing the power supply and replacing the CMOS battery but it would not come back to life, so I started searching around for a replacement. I...
View ArticleAdding a volume for docker images to Tanzu Kubernetes
If you deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster using a typical YAML file with no volumes defined you’ll end up with a fairly small worker node that can quickly fill up all available disk space with...
View ArticleMaking JIRA Suck Less
Why JIRA Sucks JIRA is almost universally reviled by every engineer that I know. Most of them can’t quite explain why is sucks, they just hate it. In my view the problem isn’t JIRA, it’s how managers...
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