How Do You Set Up a Shared Drive or Folder Using Oracle VirtualBox?

0 Comments

Problem scenario:  You want to transfer files between a host machine running Oracle VirtualBox and a guest server.  By sharing media, your Oracle VirtualBox is much more useful.  How do you configure a folder to be shared between the host machine that runs Oracle VirtualBox and a virtual guest OS?   

Solution
These directions are for Oracle VirtualBox running on a Windows 7 Professional host with a guest virtual server running Linux,

…

Continue reading “How Do You Set Up a Shared Drive or Folder Using Oracle VirtualBox?”

How Do You Install VirtualBox Guest Additions on a Linux Guest Server when the Files Are All Missing From the .iso?

0 Comments

Problem scenario:  You are trying to install Guest Additions on a Linux server.  You mount the CD/DVD/.iso through Oracle VirtualBox to /media/VirtualBoxGuestAdditions.  On the host virtual server the /media/VirtualBoxGuestAdditions (the directory where the CD/DVD/.iso was mounted) has no files.  You try to unmount the device and remount the device.  But you see no files. You are unable to run “./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run” because the file is not where it should be.  What do you do to solve this problem?

…

Continue reading “How Do You Install VirtualBox Guest Additions on a Linux Guest Server when the Files Are All Missing From the .iso?”

How Do You Troubleshoot yum Command Failures with the Error “File /var/cache/yum/i386/7/epel/metalink.xml does not exist”?

0 Comments

Problem scenario:  yum commands are failing.  You get this error after running a yum command:  “File /var/cache/yum/i386/7/epel/metalink.xml does not exist”

Solution
Remove EPEL. Use this command: “yum remove epel-release”

…

Continue reading “How Do You Troubleshoot yum Command Failures with the Error “File /var/cache/yum/i386/7/epel/metalink.xml does not exist”?”

How Do You Fix an Error “no repomd file” When Trying To Run a Yum Command?

0 Comments

Problem scenario:  You try to use yum commands.  You get an error about “no repomd file” and the desired yum command does not work.  What should you do?

Solution

If you are using Fedora Linux, run this command:

cat /etc/*-release

Look at the output of the above command to find the version of Fedora.  Verify you are using a recent version of Fedora (released within the past two years).

…

Continue reading “How Do You Fix an Error “no repomd file” When Trying To Run a Yum Command?”

How do you handle a “ENOMEM” error when trying to run a Chef command?

0 Comments

Problem scenario:  You recently installed Chef server on a Linux t2.micro instance (an AWS virtual server with 1 vCPU and 1 GB of RAM).  You ran this command “chef-server-ctl reconfigure” and received this error:

“Errno::ENOMEM occurred in delayed notification: runit_service[opscode-solr4] ( private-chef::opscode-solr4 line 37) had an error: Errno::ENOMEM: Cannot allocate memory – fork(2)”

What should you do?

Solution
Root cause:  A t2.micro instance has insufficient RAM. 

…

Continue reading “How do you handle a “ENOMEM” error when trying to run a Chef command?”

Troubleshooting An Initial Run Chef Client

0 Comments

Problem scenario
When you are configuring a server to be a Chef client, you run this command:

/usr/bin/chef-client

But you get this error:

“Chef encountered an error attempting to create the client <hostnameOfChefClientServer>”

Solution

Verify you have a client.pem file in this directory on the server you are running the command on: /etc/chef/

The Chef documentation says this:
“Every request made by the chef-client to the Chef server must be an authenticated request using the Chef server API and a private key.

…

Continue reading “Troubleshooting An Initial Run Chef Client”

Infrastructure as Code and Architecting Server Environments for Automatic Replication

0 Comments

Infrastructure as Code is often associated with “Continuous Configuration Automation.”  We think the term should be “Continual Configuration Automation.”

There are four popular tools to rapidly provision cloud infrastructure using templates: Azure Resource Manager, CloudFormation, Terraform, and Heat.  Three of these tools each support two different types of template files for provisioning servers.

…

Continue reading “Infrastructure as Code and Architecting Server Environments for Automatic Replication”

How Do You Redirect The Output of Lynx to a Regular File?

0 Comments

Problem scenario:  You are using Lynx and you want to redirect the downloaded web page to a file.  You do not want it to be sent to standard out (also referred to as printed to the screen).  What do you do?

Solution

You should use the “-dump” flag between the “lynx” utility word and the URL.  Then use the regular POSIX redirect symbol “>” at the end of the Linux command. 

…

Continue reading “How Do You Redirect The Output of Lynx to a Regular File?”

How Do You Get Lynx (in Linux) to Automatically Accept Cookies?

0 Comments

Problem scenario
You are using Lynx, and the prompt to accept cookies is tedious or disruptive to a non-interactive process you want to develop.  How do you get Lynx (running on Linux) to automatically accept cookies?

Answer
To configure Lynx to always accept cookies, do these steps:

1.  Find lynx.cfg with this command:  find / -name lynx.cfg

2.

…

Continue reading “How Do You Get Lynx (in Linux) to Automatically Accept Cookies?”

A List of Books Related to Puppet (configuration management software)

0 Comments

Here is an alphabetized list of Puppet books. 

Beginning Puppet by Spencer Krum, William Van Hevelingen, Daniele Sluijters
DevOps: Puppet, Docker, and Kubernetes by Packt Publishing
Extending Puppet by Alessandro Franceschi
Instant Puppet 3 Starter by Jo Rhett
Learning MCollective: Parallel Server Management in Puppet and Chef by Jo Rhett
Learning Puppet by Bill Ward
Learning Puppet 2nd Edition by Jussi Heinonen
Learning Puppet 4: A Guide to Configuration Management and Automation by Jo Rhett
Learning Puppet for Windows Server by Fuat Ulugay
Learning Puppet Security by Jason Slagle
Mastering Puppet by Thomas Uphill
Mastering Puppet 5: Optimize enterprise-grade environment performance with Puppet by Packt Publishing
Pro Puppet 2nd Edition by Spencer Krum,

…

Continue reading “A List of Books Related to Puppet (configuration management software)”