AJ's Blog

This is a personal blog focused on computer software and hardware. Most projects are implementing software and hardware for a homelab. What is a homelab? I would say a homelab could be a single computer or dozens of computers connected in a network. You can also integrate with computers in the Cloud.

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Recent Posts

Getting started with Ansible

09-01-2021

ansible
ansible

Ansible is an open-source software that uses python to provide an automation language. It uses YAML declarative files known as playbooks to describe tasks that are executed by Ansible. Ansible can configure computer systems, deploy software, and automate IT tasks at scale. Ansible does not require software to be installed on managed systems and utilizes protocols such as OpenSSH and WinRM to connect to systems. The official documentation has more detailed information on how to get started.

Creating Linux virtual machine templates with Packer

08-14-2021

packer
packer

You could set up each virtual machine by mounting the installation iso image to your virtual machine’s virtual disk drive and proceeding through the installer. In fact this is what I recommend for new users, but I will be using a software known as Packer to create Linux templates that I can use in VirtualBox or even other hypervisors.

Templates can be found on my public github repo.

Getting Started

To create a virtual machine, you need a CPU that supports virtualization and hypervisor software to emulate computer hardware within software. I recommend starting with VirtualBox since this is an open-source hypervisor that you can install on Windows, macOS, or Linux.

Vagrant Installation/Demo

08-10-2021

Vagrant is a software from HashiCorp that provides easy to configure and replicate virtual machine images. Vagrant integrates with existing hypervisor software to quickly deploy VM templates from the Vagrant community or templates that you create.

vagrant_logo
vagrant_logo

Installation

Prerequisites

In order to proceed, you need a hypervisor software such as VirtualBox. I have a previous post regarding virtual machines and setting up VirtualBox.

Windows 10

I will be installing vagrant with Chocolatey. Check out my post on setting up Windows for info on how to get started with Chocolatey.

Proxmox Installation

08-03-2021

Proxmox Virtual Environment is an open-source Linux distribution for virtualization. It tightly integrates KVM hypervisor and LXC, software-defined storage, and networking functionality on a single platform. With the integrated web-based user interface you can easily manage Virtual Machines and containers.

System Requirements

  • CPU: 64bit
  • Intel VT/AMD-V capable CPU/Mainboard
  • Minimum 1 GB RAM
  • 128 GB disk drive (Any less is not much to work with)

Installation

  1. Download the ISO image installer from Proxmox.
  2. Create USB installation media with a tool like Etcher or mount the .iso image on a virtual disk drive in a VirtualBox VM. See my previous post on creating USB media.
  3. Once you boot the installation image, you can proceed if you see the following screen:

pve_grub_menu
pve_grub_menu

Getting Started with Virtual Machines

07-27-2021

A virtual machine is like a physical computer such as a laptop or desktop or server. It has a CPU, memory, disks, and can be connected to the internet but all of these components are emulated with software and borrowed from a host computer. A virtual machine exists as files on a host computer, commonly referred to as an image. Virtual machines should not interfere with the operations of the host computer’s operating system.

Cygwin + Windows Terminal

07-17-2021

Cygwin is a collection of open source tools that are commonly found on GNU/Linux systems but not found on Windows systems. It includes a library for x86_64 Windows systems that provides some POSIX API functionality.

Installing Cygwin

If you set up Windows 10 per my previous post, you already have this utility installed. If not, I recommend using Chocolatey to install and maintain this software.

choco install cygwin

If you install Cygwin via chocolatey, the binary will be located in: