alt text

Blog

Accessing Java Web Start based Server Remote Boards using Firefox

Accessing most server remote boards requires the browser to support Java, also known as Java Web Start (JWS). Unfortunately Java Web Start has been deprecated starting from Java version 9. Also current Firefox versions do not support Java anymore.

This makes accessing server remote boards increasingly difficult with current browsers. To make life a little easier, and by the help of Docker, we can still use an old Java version supporting Java Web Start together with an old browser version of Firefox to access Java based server remote boards.

read more

OpenStack und Nvidia Grafikkarten

Grafikkarten berechnen bestimmte Aufgaben effektiver als Prozessoren. Rechenintensive Anwendungen wie KI und Deep Learning profitieren davon besonders. Nvidia stellt auf genau diese Anwendungsfälle spezialisierte Highend-Grafikkarten her, die in virtuellen Umgebungen parallel in mehreren virtuellen Maschinen betrieben werden können. Das lässt sich der Hersteller aber auch dementsprechend teuer bezahlen. Von Lizenzkosten für die benötigte Software ganz zu schweigen. Der Kauf einer solche Karte will also wohlüberlegt sein. Es stellt sich die Frage: Geht das nicht auch mit aktueller Gaming Hardware?

read more

Create virtual machines with a grain of salt

Salt [1] is not only useful for configuration management or infrastructure automation in general but also a flexible platform to build your own specialized solutions on top. This blog post shows how easy it is to leverage Salt from within your own Python code and how it helped us to simplify and enhance a complex deployment process based on Xen-Hypervisors [5] and virtual machines.

read more

From Docker to podman: On the why and how

When Docker was released it felt like a revelation to developers and admins. For the first time a user space utility combined some old but very nifty kernel features in an easy-to-use package. But after some time, weaknesses of the Docker architecture were observed and alternatives to it emerged. In this article, we take a quick look at one of these alternatives and showcase its use with a popular internal use case at B1 Systems.

read more

Check tcp connections and firewall rules across networks using nc

Larger companies have a big network with different network segments. Often they have active components like routers and firewalls inside the network to avoid bad traffic and unauthorized connections. If you now like to implement a new (open source) software, which needs a connection to another server, you have to ensure that the connection is possible. You have two options for solving this problem. We’ll look into both of them.

read more

How to use bash completion for your own git aliases

If you are like me, you will likely work on several different projects on a daily basis – and all of them will be stored in git.

Sure, git is easy to use. But typing the same set of commands multiple times, every day, can be quite annoying. Fortunately, using bash and git together allows to create some user-defined shortcuts.

read more

Zeit- und Selbstmanagement – Schließlich hat der Arbeitstag nur acht Stunden

Größer könnten die Unterschiede nicht sein zwischen Admin und Manager. Während letzterer seine KPIs, den Durchsatz und die Deadlines nicht aus dem Auge verliert, konzentriert sich der Admin meist auf das operative Ergebnis. Dass seine Ziele und die seines Managers nicht immer zueinander passen liegt nahe – gerade in Bezug auf das Zeitmanagement. Doch wie funktioniert Zeitmanagement eigentlich? Wie kannst du deine Arbeitszeit sinnvoll planen? Dieser Artikel gibt dir einige Möglichkeiten an die Hand.

read more

Refactoring Part 3 – Spring Cleaning

As hinted in the second part of the series, code smells can be used as an indicator for a corresponding refactoring strategy. Some of these strategies seem like common knowledge, but shouldn’t be ignored as this is often the main cause of software issues.

read more