lvm thin send/recv

A few days ago i found this mail on the LKML that introduces support for userspace access to LVM thin provisioned metadata snapshots. I didn’t know this is possible.

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Java timezone sheanigans

While running CI tests for a application that is implemented in C and Java, some configuration scripts set the current timezone. The C implemented parts catch the change just nicely, but the java related parts still report the default image timezone.

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updating to bookworm

Just updated to bookworm. Only thing that gave me headaches was OpenVPN refusing to accept the password/username combination specified via “auth-user-pass” option..

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fun with pygame

Next year my son will turn 4. I have quit playing computer games for a pretty long time now, but recently i questioned myself: what will be the first computer game hes going to play? Why not create a simple game by myself?

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fscom switch shell

fs.com s5850 and s8050 series type switches have a secret mode which lets you enter a regular shell from the switch cli, like so:

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Libvirt/KVM Backup on Debian Bullseye

The libvirt and qemu versions in Debian Bullseye support a new feature that allows for easier backup and recovery of virtual machines. Instead of using snapshots for backup operation, its now possible to enable dirty bitmaps. Other hypervisors tend to call this “changed block tracking”.

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How the latest Windows Update KB5005716 broke my CI environment

I depend on full provisioned virtual machine images for CI and unfortunately a major part of our customers still uses parts of the software i need to test on Windows 10. My environment uses vagrant for provisioning Windows 10 based images and then executes several tasks using the vagrant provisioning feature.

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CI on Power9 (PPC64LE) LPAR using snapper

Running a CI testsuite on Intel (or ARM) based hardware is quite common these days. Most of the time the software stacks involved are containers (insert your favourite container orchestrator here) or other neat solutions such as vagrant that allow to spin up pristine test environments.

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