Linux Articles

A “control node” with a hand-curated venv works. Until it doesn’t. A colleague has different collection versions, CI installs a slightly newer Python library, and a playbook that ran yesterday now fails. Execution Environments turn the control node into a versioned container image. ansible-builder produces it, ansible-navigator runs against it, and the same artifact ships from your laptop into AAP/AWX without modification.

Hand-writing Quadlet files works for one host. For a fleet, the containers.podman collection’s native Quadlet generation lets you describe containers as Ansible state, including secrets, registry logins, and templated configuration. A small Mastodon welcome bot makes a concrete example.

My ThinkPad T14s shipped with an Intel XMM7560 LTE modem that would not register on the network until Lenovo’s proprietary FCC-unlock helper ran. I replaced it with a roughly 100-line bash script from a ModemManager merge request, and along the way learned that the “unlock” is just a small challenge-response handshake that is easy to explain in plain shell.

An opinionated production-ops guide to Podman on Linux servers - why I prefer it over Docker, how Quadlets replace Compose files, and practical patterns from real deployments including secrets management, auto-updates, and Docker compatibility.

Deploying Keycloak 26 as an identity provider using Podman Quadlets with network segmentation, secret management, and systemd integration.

Backups are the thing everyone knows they should do and nobody does well enough. Here’s my multi-stage strategy for keeping about a dozen servers safe: ZFS snapshots with sanoid, off-site replication with syncoid to rsync.net, Proxmox Backup Server with an S3 backend for VMs, and a creative Podman trick for backing up RHEL hosts that don’t have proxmox-backup-client. Plus a dead man’s switch, because the only thing worse than no backups is backups that silently stopped working three months ago.

Old CentOS rebuilt RHEL faithfully, but its downstream position meant it could only follow, never contribute back. CentOS Stream changes that. Sitting upstream of RHEL and downstream of Fedora, it combines enterprise-grade stability with a genuine feedback loop into RHEL development. After years of running it in production, I’m convinced it’s the better model.

A practical guide to the four major Linux firewall technologies - iptables, nftables, firewalld, and ufw. Covers real-world cloud server hardening with concrete examples, from locking down SSH to building zone-based configurations. Includes an honest comparison and an entirely unbiased opinion about which firewall is actually best.

Not another hjkl tutorial. This is the stuff you still get wrong after years of using Vim - efficient navigation, copy/paste that actually works, YAML-specific workflows, and the motions that turn config file editing from a chore into a joy.

Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on ZFS root is not supported. I did it anyway. Here’s how this cursed configuration came to be, why you shouldn’t replicate it, and what the proper alternative looks like.