Stupid Puppet Trick: Agreeing to the Sun Java License with Debconf Preseeds and Puppet

I had a user ask for Java to be installed on the cluster systems, so I started up by making a simple JRE5 module for puppet, but this first one didn’t quite work: class jre5 { package { “sun-java5-jre”: ensure => latest; } } It doesn’t work because Sun wants you to agree to its …

The autostow is Dead, Long Live stowedpackage!

I had posted earlier about distributing stowed packages via rsync and puppet to my managed systems, but that method wasn’t quite what I wanted: There was one more file to manage outside my regular puppet manifests, and I’d have to remember to keep them both up to date and in sync. There wasn’t an easy …

Getting an email list for your class from Web For Faculty

For all the improvements Web For Faculty/Advisors may have over the old SIS system, it sure doesn’t make it easy to generate an email list from your class roll. I can see who’s in my class, click on a flagrant abuse of the HTML select element to see their permanent address, phone numbers, off-campus email …

Grabbing Stills and Making FLV Movies from Axis IP Cameras

About a week and a half ago, I was reminded of a long-dormant project to archive still images from an Axis IP camera. I started this up a few years ago as a favor to a coworker, but it never really got finished. Previously, it was a pretty simple cron job that would just authenticate …

Client Configuration Management

Back at the infrastructures.org mothership, client configuration management is described as everything that makes a host unique and/or part of a particular group or domain. And for Unix-like systems, everything pretty much comes down to configuration files, services being enabled/disabled, and cron jobs. Hmm. Configuration files Services Cron jobs Looks like Puppet pretty much handles …

Client File Access

The infrastructures.org folks list two primary goals of what they call “client file access“: first, consistent access to users’ home directories, and second, consistent access to end-user applications. Some of the things they warn against, such as automounters and the /net directory, we never thought of using to begin with. Their need to consider systems …