Posts tagged Fedora

Create a bootable ISO with kickstart

Installing Linux on a physical or virtual machine can be fun for a couple of time, but configuring a system can be combursome after a couple of times. Red Hat developed Kickstart to install and configure machines via the network, but also as part of an ISO file that can used in a virtual CD-ROM drive or on a bootable USB-drive.

The following steps are required to create a bootable ISO file with a kickstart file and when the ISO file is booted, the kickstart file is used to install and configure the system. Creating a bootable ISO file is not a difficult task, but it is a manual procedure. The following steps are required to create a bootable ISO file with a kickstart file.

Read more ...


Use specific Vagrant version on Fedora

Vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machines locally with just a few commands and a single file. It is a good way to get started with infrastructure-as-code on your local machine. Vagrant is also shipped with Fedora to make it easier to install and use as it uses libvirt to manage the virtual machines running on Linux with kernel virtualization to provide virtual hardware. This works well until you also want to install Terraform from the HashiCorp repository and later you upgrade Vagrant to a newer version with a regular package update.

In the example above Vagrant fails to find libvirt to connect to KVM and manage the virtual machine. Multiple providers are available for Vagrant to use, but the one that is used is not the one that is installed on the machine or can be used. This is a known issue with Vagrant on Linux and does not use the system Ruby environment with the lirbary for libvirt. Downgrading to the version of Vagrant that is shipped with Fedora will fix this issue.

Read more ...


Docker on Fedora 31 and 32

For Developing inside a Container with Visual Studio Code, one of the requirements is to use Docker Community Editon as the version of Docker that ships with Fedora is too old and misses certain features. Also the new Docker alternative Podman from Red Hat isn’t supported by Visual Studio Code.

After installing Docker CE on Fedora 31, cgroups version 1 needs to be enabled as Linux switched over to cgroups version 2, but Docker still depends on version 1. With the commands below cgroups version 1 can be enabled again and requires a rebooting of the system.

Read more ...


Setting a different libvirt uri for Vagrant

HashiCorp Vagrant normally selects the right hypervisor, but the version shipped with Fedora 30 prefers to run within the QEMU user session of the hypervisor. A .Vagrantfile it would match the default behavior which doesn’t require any system privileges is shown below.

In some cases a virtual machine needs to run on QEMU system level and that can be done by changing the domain.uri from “qemu:///session” to “qemu:///system”. Vagrant now creates the virtual machine at the system level of the hypervisor and isn’t depending on any user environment to run.

Read more ...


Using YUM history to see package changes

When you install or update packages on your system, then changes may occur that were not expected. Recent security updates on a server and left Nagios in a failed state, but what exactly happened, and can it be traced back as yum-cron installs all required security updates? Luckily YUM keeps a history database of all actions and with yum history can you list all transactions.

As transaction 15 was the latest and only transaction before the defect occurred it is the one to look into. With yum history info the details of the transaction can be shown. It shows when and who triggered the transaction, but also with which version of RPM, YUM, and which plugins for YUM were used. Most importantly it also shows which package was updated with versions used and from which repository. This narrows the search down to the packages shown as updated and sees what they changed on the system.

Read more ...