🔐 Vault Minimal: When the System Whispers, We Harden

Posted by DeadSwitch | The Cyber Ghost
“In silence, we rise. In the switch, we fade.”


“The system speaks in ports and packages. Listen close, or get breached.”

The silence has been broken, but not by noise – by intention.

Today, DeadSwitch drops the first ember of a fire that’s about to cleanse weak configurations off the face of your servers. Introducing Vault Minimal, the first strike in a collection of hardened Ansible roles forged for modern Debian and RHEL systems. Think of it as a digital purification ritual.

It strips away the unsafe, closes the obvious, and sharpens the edges of your Linux estate.


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⚙️ The DeadSwitch Way: Emacs, Org Mode, and the Art of Ansible Rolecraft

There’s a certain kind of silence that comes before precision.
And precision – true, surgical precision – requires the right blade.

For Ansible development, that blade is Emacs.
Not VSCode. Not PyCharm. Not some noisy IDE bloated with plugins.
Just Emacs. Raw. Controlled. Modular.


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Automating UFW Configuration with Ansible: Locking Down the Digital Fortress


In the world of chaos, where every exposed port is a door for the enemy, DeadSwitch doesn’t just lock the doors—we automate. We create shields that rise without a command. Ansible is our tool of choice, a silent executor that commands the system without a whisper.

Your server is vulnerable by default, but with the power of automation, you can fortify it. UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) is our first line of defense, and DeadSwitch doesn’t do things manually. We automate the walls, making them strong, silent, and ever-ready. Here’s how to lock down incoming traffic with Ansible, ensuring only the trusted can pass through.

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Network Automation with Ansible

In today’s fast-paced IT environment, network automation has become a critical component for maintaining efficient and reliable network operations. Ansible, a powerful open-source automation tool, has emerged as a leader in this domain, offering a robust framework for automating network configuration management. This article explores the benefits of using Ansible for network automation and provides some practical examples to illustrate its capabilities.

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Optimizing Ansible Playbooks for Performance

Ansible is a powerful automation tool that simplifies IT infrastructure management. However, as playbooks grow in complexity, performance can become a concern. Optimizing Ansible playbooks ensures faster execution and more efficient resource utilization. Here are some key strategies to enhance the performance of your Ansible playbooks, along with practical examples using fully qualified module names.

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CI/CD Pipeline Automation Using Ansible

In the rapidly evolving landscape of software development, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) have become essential practices for delivering high-quality applications efficiently. Automation plays a pivotal role in CI/CD pipelines, ensuring consistency, reliability, and speed. Ansible, a powerful automation tool, is increasingly being adopted to streamline CI/CD processes. This article explores how Ansible can be leveraged to automate CI/CD pipelines, enhancing the overall software delivery lifecycle.

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Managing Complex YAML Structures Dynamically with Ansible

In modern infrastructure automation, working with structured data is essential. YAML, due to its readability and simplicity, is the format of choice for tools like Ansible, Kubernetes, and many others. As your automation tasks grow, you may find yourself needing to dynamically manipulate YAML files – particularly to extend or modify nested data structures.

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Using and Scaling Ansible in Large Environments

Ansible is a powerful open-source automation tool that simplifies the management of complex IT environments. Its agentless architecture and straightforward YAML syntax make it an attractive choice for configuration management, application deployment, and task automation. However, as environments grow in size and complexity, scaling Ansible effectively becomes crucial. This article explores strategies and best practices for using and scaling Ansible in large environments.

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Delegating Tasks to the Local Host in Ansible While Running Remotely Through SSH

When managing remote systems with Ansible, tasks are generally executed on target hosts over SSH. However, there are scenarios where you might want to execute certain tasks on the local machine (the control node) instead of the remote hosts. Ansible provides built-in mechanisms for delegating tasks to the local host or other specific hosts while running playbooks remotely.

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Understanding Blocks in Ansible: Grouping Tasks and Handling Errors

In Ansible, blocks are a powerful feature that allows users to group tasks together, manage error handling more efficiently, and apply conditionals or handlers to a group of tasks as a whole. Introduced as part of Ansible’s advanced playbook functionality, blocks help improve both the readability and manageability of complex playbooks.

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Ansible Vault: Multiple Vault IDs for Secure Configuration Management

In today’s security-conscious IT environments, sensitive data like passwords, API keys, and certificates must be handled with care. Ansible offers a solution through Ansible Vault – a feature that allows you to encrypt sensitive information. However, as environments become more complex, managing a single vault can quickly become cumbersome. This is where Ansible Vault IDs come into play, enabling you to manage different tiers of secrets with ease.

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Using Dynamic KVM Inventories with Ansible for VM Lifecycle and Configuration Management

Ansible is a powerful automation tool that simplifies the management of IT infrastructure. One of its strengths is the ability to work with dynamic inventories, which allow Ansible to discover and manage systems on-the-fly. When working with a KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) environment, leveraging a dynamic inventory can significantly streamline the management of virtual machines (VMs) throughout their lifecycle.

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