Previously we took a look at creating a basic plain text file inventory for our Ansible automation project, but we will need more functionality when we start using it seriously. Luckily Ansible provides us some other ways to create groups of hosts and handle them. Let’s investigate what else can we do in an Ansible inventory!
Continue reading “How to write more advanced Ansible inventory files?”Tag: howto
How to implement and use handlers in Ansible code?
Handlers are Ansible’s solution for running specific operations only when other tasks made changes, like when we update the configuration of a web server, and we want to restart the service. Obviously we do not want to restart the Apache2 on every playbook run, only if there is a change in its configuration. This is why we use handlers.
Continue reading “How to implement and use handlers in Ansible code?”How to implement Ansible blocks in our code to group and manage tasks together?
There are some limitations of using YAML instead of a scripting language or a DSL, but the developers of Ansible thought about the issue, and they integrated some cool, more advanced features into the tool. We can use blocks collecting and handling tasks together Let’s investigate this feature a bit more!
Continue reading “How to implement Ansible blocks in our code to group and manage tasks together?”Using Hyper-V on Windows 10 (Updated on 2023. 03. 05.)
Hyper-V is the virtualization hypervisor technology of Microsoft. There are different versions of Hyper-V, and we can use the desktop version on our Windows 10 or Windows 11. It is similar to VMWare Workstation Pro or VirtualBox, though its feature set is quite limited.
Continue reading “Using Hyper-V on Windows 10 (Updated on 2023. 03. 05.)”How to protect sensitive data with encrypted files (or elements) in Ansible – Ansible Vault
When we automate configurations we cannot avoid providing secrets to Ansible. The last thing we want is our secret data running around in plain text files on our control node. Luckily Ansible has a tool for this.
Ansible Vault is an integrated encryption tool in Ansible to manage sensitive data like passwords, keys and certificates. As with most parts of Ansible, we can start simple, and complexity can come later on.
Continue reading “How to protect sensitive data with encrypted files (or elements) in Ansible – Ansible Vault”How to install LAMP stack on Debian Bullseye – the old way
The traditional “LAMP stack” means Linux, Apache2, MySQL/MariaDB and PHP for many IT practitioners. It is a collection of software and services for running dynamic web applications with database backends.
Linux is the Operating System kernel on which we run these services. Apache2 is a general web server for running static web sites. MariaDB is a relational database engine for storing persistent data. PHP is a lightweight, interpreted language for writing dynamic server side code for web applications.
A large slice of the known web sites run on the LAMP stack today.
Continue reading “How to install LAMP stack on Debian Bullseye – the old way”Podman – let’s containerize our test boxes without Docker!
Podman is an open source Pod Manager. It is a daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running containers. Their motto on their website is
What is Podman? Simply put: alias docker=podman
stating that Podman is 100% Docker compatible.
Continue reading “Podman – let’s containerize our test boxes without Docker!”How to install Microsoft core fonts on a Debian desktop?
Sometimes we want to install Microsoft TrueType fonts on our desktop to see webpages in our browser as they were intended to be viewed.
Continue reading “How to install Microsoft core fonts on a Debian desktop?”How to install and manage VMWare Workstation Pro virtual machines?
If we want a cool personal lab environment, then we have to use cool tools and technology. Virtual machines are one of the best inventions for learning and practicing IT in isolated environments. We can simulate and test Operating System changes, kernel modifications and even network configurations from our chair on our PC or notebook. Let’s build a basic test lab!
Continue reading “How to install and manage VMWare Workstation Pro virtual machines?”How to install VMWare Workstation Pro on Windows 10?
VMWare is a famous name in virtualization technology. If you work in IT it is impossible that you don’t know about the VMWare products. A lot of companies use the vSphere infrastructure with vCenters and ESXi hosts. On the other end of their products there are the home users and small businesses. We can use the Workstation Player for free for non-commercial use of course, but the Workstation Pro has more powerful features that can help us building a personal home lab.
Continue reading “How to install VMWare Workstation Pro on Windows 10?”Getting started with Ansible for managing our personal lab – ad-hoc commands
After we installed Ansible and tested that it works well, then we want to make it work for us. There are three methods Ansible can operate. The first one is running so called ad-hoc commands with the ansible command line tool. The second option is to write re-usable code (playbooks, roles and variables) and run them with the ansible-playbook command. Both commands use the push mechanism to interact with the controlled nodes. A third option is a tool called ansible-pull that (as its name suggests) pulls the configuration onto a managed machine from a source code management repo. Let’s take a look at the easiest method, the ad-hoc commands first!
Continue reading “Getting started with Ansible for managing our personal lab – ad-hoc commands”Windows as Ansible control host in WSL2
We all want to work smarter, not harder. (Or at least some of us…) Automating the repetitive tasks was always a huge leap forward even before the “DevOps times” when we wrote shell scripts and Perl code to create automation out of the box. Today we have the luxury of choosing between a lot of automation and orchestration frameworks.
Continue reading “Windows as Ansible control host in WSL2”A closer look at SQL and SQL Injection
We worked with SQL nowadays, and we used some SQL Injections in the web browser and in Burp Suit, but what is an SQL Injection by the way? Let’s make a step back and look at the databases and SQL a bit!
Continue reading “A closer look at SQL and SQL Injection”How to brute force a web application password with Burp Suite? Basic dictionary attack in practice!
With Burp Suite we can initiate dictionary attacks against a website. This time in this simulated attack we will brute force the login field of the Juice Shop web application. We already know the email address of an admin user, so we have to make sure to find the right password.
Important note: hacking in the wild is illegal! Do NOT do it out of the lab, unless you are a penetration tester with a signed contract!
Continue reading “How to brute force a web application password with Burp Suite? Basic dictionary attack in practice!”How to brute force FTP users and passwords with Hydra? Ethical Hacking in real life!
In this article we will investigate other functionalities of the Cyber Security test tool Hydra. In one of the previous articles we cracked a user password on a Linux system through SSH. In this example we do not know the exact username of any FTP user. We will create a list of possible usernames along our password list. All of these operations happen in a personal lab.
Important note: hacking in the wild is illegal! Do NOT do it out of the lab, unless you are a penetration tester with a signed contract!
Continue reading “How to brute force FTP users and passwords with Hydra? Ethical Hacking in real life!”
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