Ansible can proxy through a jump host / bastion host to connect to systems, but there's something to watch out for that can cause a rather vague connection failure of failed to connect to host via ssh citing kex_exchange_identification Connection closed by remote host and Connection closed by UNKNOWN…
Using ansible with iptables is a bit clunky, particularly with rule ordering and duplication. The ansible iptables module does not check for existing rules before plopping new ones in, and older systems (without -C) can be tricky to check for existence of rules. This post explores using ansible to update…
I had a site that didn't have remote access (no ingress available), and I didn't have time to build a proper reverse tunnel, so instead I punched open a simple reverse SSH tunnel, then used that to double up the connection and load a virtual machine image that was used…
Guake is a nice terminal, especially on laptops, where screen space is scarce. My favorite feature of guake is how it can be toggled in and out of focus with a key press (I use F9) to be both instantly accessible, and yet never in the way. But on my…
When I SSH into some systems (such as an adtran appliance), they have an idle timer where if the user (me) doesn't enter a command in a set amount of time, the system will close the connection. It doesn't take much to keep the system alive – simply hitting Enter periodically…