For my future self: [Wayback/Archive] Jan-Piet Mens :: Deploying SSH host keys and certificates with Ansible
--jeroen
Archive for the ‘Configuration Management’ Category
Jan-Piet Mens :: Deploying SSH host keys and certificates with Ansible
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/09/17
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Development, DevOps, Infrastructure, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, ssh/sshd, YAML | Leave a Comment »
Kevlin Henney on “configuration is code” in his essay “Out of Control. An essay on paradigms, refactoring…”
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/31
For my link archive [Wayback/Archive] Out of Control. An essay on paradigms, refactoring… | by Kevlin Henney | Dec, 2020 | Medium.
Neither because Kevlin describes how to refactor a basic algorithm to convert Roman numerals into Hindu-Arabic numerals (in part by using the fact that an if statement can be considered a bounded case of a while loop), nor because he splits the resulting algorithm in coded data and coded statements, or because he mentions the [Wayback/Archive] Gilded Rose Kata but because well, you should just read it in full.
Remember though: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Configuration Management, Development, DevOps, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Three dashes or a rendered horizontal table at the top of your GitHub markdown document? That’s YAML metadata
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/22
Many Markdown documents on GitHub have three dashes (---) at the top (and rendered a horizontal table displays).
I didn’t know this markdown construct, and it appears to be GitHub specific: it is a way to render YAML metadata (for instance used while blogging).
So I searched for [Wayback/Archive] three dashes table markdown – Google Search and found [Wayback/Archive] Viewing YAML Metadata in your Documents | The GitHub Blog.
Well, actually… Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Blogging, Configuration Management, Development, Lightweight markup language, MarkDown, Power User, SocialMedia, Software Development, YAML | Leave a Comment »
Some lessons to learn from the CrowdStrike debacle
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/20
About a month from International CrowdStruck Day, just a few thoughts, more likely to follow:
- How well does your infrastructure behave when none of your Windows machines can boot?
- How well is your out-of-band management?
- How well is your CMDB doing key management, for instance for BitLocker encryption?
- Is checkbox compliance more important than a single point of failure?
- Can you ensure all updates from your supply chain are staggered/staged/phased with a kill switch when things get out of hand?
- Are the worst case scenarios in your disaster recovery plans really the worst?
- Do you understand the human factor of large scale outages (both of the people that – often indirectly – triggered them – hello #HupOps – and the ones that cannot work because of them)?
- Do you value your people – especially the ones that pulled you out of this situation – enough, and did you rename your Human Resource department into something that is more friendly to your people?
- Do you realise this could have happened on any of the platforms you use, including Linux and MacOS?
- If you were mentioned in the media by not recovering well, do you have any idea how much a target you will be from adversaries?
- Did CrowdStrike finally show some real postmortem instead of the half-hearted communications they did mostly after the weekend following the debacle?
- How does your organisation perform dates of critical files?
- Would other platforms be less or more risky? If so: why?
- Will eBPF solve most of this, or at least centralise the issues and what consequences would that have?
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Posted in Configuration Management, DevOps, HugOps, Infrastructure, Power User, Windows | Leave a Comment »
I learned about the “YAML-NOrway Law.”
Posted by jpluimers on 2023/06/15
Every time I use YAML, I bump into things even I copy paste from exact working configurations.
Today I learned I’m not just alone, but there is even a term for it: “YAML-NOrway Law.”
[Wayback/Archive] I’d like to propose the “YAML-NOrway Law.” “Anyone who uses YAML long enough wil… | Hacker News
I’d like to propose the “YAML-NOrway Law.”
“Anyone who uses YAML long enough will eventually get burned when attempting to abbreviate Norway.”
Example:
NI: Nicaragua NL: Netherlands NO: Norway # boom!`NO` is parsed as a boolean type, which with the YAML 1.1 spec, there are 22 options to write “true” or “false.”[1] For that example, you have wrap “NO” in quotes to get the expected result.
This, along with many of the design decisions in YAML strike me as a simple vs. easy[2] tradeoff, where the authors opted for “easy,” at the expense of simplicity. I (and I assume others) mostly use YAML for configuration. I need my config files to be dead simple, explicit, and predictable. Easy can take a back seat.
[1]: [Wayback/Archive] http://yaml.org/type/bool.html [2]: [Wayback/Archive] https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy
Even a key Ansible author seems to regret using YAML: [Archive] Kevin Honka on Twitter: “@hikhvar @isotopp jap :) Muss da immer an den Spruch des entwicklers von Ansible denken: Hätte ich gewusst, wie einfach es ist in Python eine DSL zu bauen, hätte ich nie YAML verwendet” / Twitter
Somewhere in the tread, Kris mentioned [Wayback/Archive] Code rant: The Configuration Complexity Clock:
It seems to be a recurring issue in both Kris’ and my life: One needs to actually fail in order to get a feel for reality.
Via [Archive] Kris on Twitter: “Die YAML Spezifikation gelesen. yaml-dox-url Jetzt habe ich Alpträume. “Erkläre Node Tags, Complex Keys mit ?, resolved und unresolved tags, und partial representation.”” / Twitter
[Wayback/Archive] YAML Ain’t Markup Language (YAML™) revision 1.2.2
–jeroen
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Posted in Configuration Management, Infrastructure, YAML | Leave a Comment »
A twitter call to say nice things about technology sparked interesting threads
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/05/27
A while ago [Archive.is] Adam Jacob on Twitter: “Let’s say nice things about technology today. I’ll start. If it wasn’t for @lkanies and @puppetize, there is no way we would have been able to adapt as an industry to the rise of the cloud. Quote tweet me with your own.” sparked some interesting threads.
First posts are below; click on them to see the full threads.
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Posted in Chrome, Configuration Management, Development, DevOps, Firefox, History, IaC - Infrastructure as Code, Infocom and Z-machine, Infrastructure, KVM Kernel-based Virtual Machine, LSI/3ware, Open Source, PDP-11, Power User, PowerShell, Puppet, Python, Qemu, Rust, Safari, Scripting, Software Development, UCSD Pascal, Vagrant, Veewee, Virtualization, Web Browsers, Xen | Leave a Comment »