Survival Guide to Linux Administration

Spacewalk server is deployed and functional. 😎 Some general tips are add the hostname and Ip to the /etc/hosts file on your Virtualization host machine. I also wanted to access my Spacewalk GUI via web browser on my Windows Desktop; since installing a web browser on your server is counter intuitive. In order to accomplish this both machines have to be on the same network and you can edit your host file in Windows using notepad. Run as Admin and add your VM to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts .  Spinning up the VM: I used 2 Vcpu cores and 3 GiB of RAM. I allocated 50 GiB of storage. I would say these are a minimum to deploy this server. When installing the OS for your Spacewalk server, keep in mind it is essentially a database server. I used the following custom partitioning to accomplish a successful deployment because postgresql needs at least 15 GiB of space.    Follow the install process found on Github: https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/w...

I intended to make Ovirt Node work since it is based off of Centos but within 10 minutes of install I am having to vim /etc/hosts and set Ip address to hostnames because I need to bypass FQDN requirements. Then I need to set up the Ovirt Engine which requires a lot of resources. I still do not know what purposes it serves. An hour later and I still have not spun up a VM. At this point I am starting to think I shouldn't use this platform. I scrapped Ovirt and spun up a Proxmox host. I will add a big tip here. Login to your router when during the Proxmox install and reserve the IP it is using. This will effectively bind that private Ip to the MAC address of the Proxmox host. This step is super important. Once you are done installing Proxmox all the network configurations are done for you automatically. You do not have to set up a bridge between host and Vms. I was able to install Proxmox and spin up a Vm in about 15 minutes with full network connectivity. The GUI also looks ver...

In order to get some real hands on experience as a Linux admin; lab construction should be the first priority. I am setting out with a couple of goals: 1. Set up a KVM hypervisor. 2. Inside of that KVM hypervisor, install a Spacewalk server. Use CentOS 6 for deployments in order to not worry about SELinux. I wanted the lab to have an enterprise feel but wanted to utilize free open source software. Another requirement was a it needed to have a GUI (preferably web based).  After a detailed review 2 operating systems peaked my interest and already came prepackaged with KVM. For those interested in reviewing all the options: https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Management_Tools The first was Proxmox. Proxmox is Debian based OS and has very nice features with streamlined ease of use. Below is an example of the GIU and iso images can be found at  https://www.proxmox.com/en/downloads/category/iso-images-pve The second offering I reviewed was Ovirt. Ovirt is Redha...