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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Automating APIs with Ansible

In today’s IT world, automation is not just a convenience, it’s a necessity. As organizations scale, managing infrastructure, applications, and services manually becomes impossible. This is where automation and configuration management tools like Ansible come into play. Ansible, with its simple yet powerful automation capabilities, can be used to manage a wide array of IT tasks, including API automation.

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Setting Up LUKS to Secure Your System

As cyber threats continue to evolve, ensuring the security of sensitive data is more crucial than ever. Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) is a robust encryption standard designed to protect data at rest. This article will guide you through the process of setting up LUKS on Linux, explain how it works, how to change the passphrase if needed, and how to configure your system to automatically mount the LUKS-encrypted partition at boot.

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Securing Your System with AppArmor

AppArmor (Application Armor) is a Linux security module that provides mandatory access control (MAC) for programs, allowing administrators to confine programs to a limited set of resources. It is an excellent way to enhance security by enforcing restrictive policies on applications, preventing them from performing unauthorized actions even if compromised.

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Podman Basics 08: Building Your Own Images

Sometimes you must create your own Podman images. Building your own Podman images allows for greater customization, control, consistency, and organizational efficiency compared to using only public images. The investment upfront can pay dividends in the long run through improved security, consistency, and maintainability of your container infrastructure.

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Podman Basics 04: Running Your First Container

After installing Podman you have to know and understand some of the terminology. Understanding the basic jargon of containerization will help you start with this lesson, and it will be beneficial later on too. You will learn about the image registries, images and containers in this lesson. You will take a look at how to pull, run and manage them.

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Podman Basics 03: Installing Podman

Containerization has changed the way we deploy and manage applications. Podman is a powerful container management tool that provides a seamless experience for running containers in production, development, and testing environments. We will walk through the steps to install Podman on three popular Linux distributions: Debian, Ubuntu, and Rocky Linux. This lesson will equip you with the knowledge to enjoy the power of Podman on your preferred platform.

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Podman Basics 01: Introduction to Containerization

In today’s fast-paced world of IT, there’s this game-changing idea called containerization that’s shaking things up. It’s basically transforming how we build, launch, and handle applications. Two key players in this field are Docker and Podman, each offering unique benefits to developers and system administrators alike. In this beginner level course you will get an insight into working with Podman.

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Ansible Basics 09: Ansible Roles

Ansible roles are a powerful organizational mechanism that allows you to structure your Ansible content in a modular and reusable way. They provide a structured approach to managing tasks, variables, files, and other artifacts within your playbooks. You can push your Ansible roles in SCM and follow the changes and different versions. Ansible roles are the industry standard way to distribute and share Ansible code with the community.

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Ansible Basics 05: Playbooks

Ansible playbooks are the core components of Ansible. Playbooks are written in YAML format and describe a set of tasks that need to be executed on the managed systems. A playbook consists of one or more plays, and each play defines a set of tasks to be performed on a group of hosts. Tasks are the individual actions or commands that Ansible should execute, such as installing packages, copying files, or restarting services. Tasks call out to the programmed code units called modules.

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Ansible Basics 04: The Inventories

An Ansible inventory is a structured list of hosts or nodes that Ansible can manage, providing a foundation for orchestrating automation tasks across a network. This inventory file typically contains information about the hosts’ IP addresses, connection details, and grouping, allowing users to organize and categorize systems based on their roles, functions, or other criteria.

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Protect Your Linux Server and Desktop with ClamAV

In today’s connected world cyber security is a huge concern. As the threat landscape continues to evolve, safeguarding your Linux system has never been more critical. One powerful tool in your security tool set is ClamAV, an open-source antivirus software designed to detect and defend against a wide range of malware threats.

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