2018-Mar-06

Link Aggregates and Virtual LANs

A Link Aggregate (or Network Aggregate) is what you get when you push a single network link over several cables at once. In HP switches parlance, this is known as a trunk and in the Cisco dialect as an EtherChannel Bundle. On HP servers, it’s NIC Teaming and in other places it’s called Link/NIC bundling or bonding. In this post i’ll just call them Aggregates, and Aggregates are your friend.

2018-Mar-02

HP Switch Certificate

Setting up a SSL certificate on a HP (HPE/Aruba) 2530 switch is not hard or complicated but it is frustrating when you try to figure out exactly how it’s done. There’s some terminology that isn’t immediately obvious and the switch tends to be a bit picky about how things are done. So with that said, let’s dive in. I’ll assume here that you have a functioning PKI on your site, or that you’re able to get a certificate request signed somehow.

2018-Mar-02

Some Nice HP Switch Settings

I’m kind of fond of the HP (HPE/Aruba) 2530 series switches. They are mostly no-nonsense and fairly nice to configure from the command line.

2018-Feb-28

Sharing your `known_hosts` among your admin peers

The first time you contact an ssh server, you’re presented with a fingerprint and asked whether you want to trust the server to be who it is, based on this fingerprint. Blindly, i might add. If you’re at least a bit concerned about (usable) security, this should send a few shivers down your spine; how the heck are you supposed to know whether this fingerprint is right or not. If you’re managing your servers with ansible, this query can be inconvenient, as it stops your flow at some random place and it’s not entirely clear where it will commence.

2018-Feb-24

Hugo, Custon Domain, Letsencrypt Certificate and Gitlab Pages

Setting up https on a hugo site on Gitlab pages with your custom domain requires some manual work, but if i can do it, so can you.

2018-Feb-24

The more Separator

TL;DR: To preserve html styling in summaries on hugo, use the tag  (removing the letter a) in your text.

Learning in public

Curing my incompetence, one step at the time, in front of an audience.