I regularly use SSH (Secure Shell) to control the various Raspberry Pis that I have set up as none of them are connected to a monitor / keyboard / mouse and it provides easy access from my laptop. Note: The first piece of advice when using SSH with Raspbian is to make sure the default account … Continue reading Changing SSH Port (Raspberry Pi)
Managing multiple Raspberry Pi devices can become a little bit of a task if done manually. Website gone down? SSH no longer connecting? Has a service stopped? Which is where Nagios comes into play. Nagios is software to monitor devices across a network and can be used to display the results via a webpage; making … Continue reading Monitoring Multiple Pis With Nagios (Raspberry Pi)
In my "test" environment I currently have 4 Raspberry Pis that all have an IP address reservation on the network but there is no local DNS. Without DNS the devices cannot find each other by device name, i.e. they cannot resolve the names to IP addresses. This could be resolved by making one of the … Continue reading Ansible – Updating Multiple Pis Hosts Files (Raspberry Pi)
Log files are a key aid to any technician. They help identify errors and why they might be happening and can be a gold mine of information. Sadly they are sometimes so full of information that it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. If a log file is in plain text (.txt) … Continue reading Python Log Reader V1 (Python)
Ansible is allowing me to control some devices, so what can I do with it to improve security on my Pi network? Note: This post forms part of the my collection of posts on Ansible including installation; SSH set-up and the basics of a playbook/commands. Chage Raspbian has a function called chage that lets you see … Continue reading Ansible – Looking At Basic Security (Raspberry Pi)
With Ansible installed and connections to other devices set up, it is now time to have some fun and start using Ansible. For this project I am using a Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspbian OS (Buster) with Ansible installed and two Raspberry Pi Zero Ws running Raspbian OS (Buster). The two previous blog entries discussed … Continue reading Ansible – Looking at commands & Playbooks (Raspberry Pi)
In the previous post I walked through installing Ansible on a Raspberry Pi and finished at the point of the Ansible inventory being set up but needing some SSH. For this part of the project I am using: A Raspberry Pi 3 with Ansible installed, running Raspbian OS (Buster). This is my controller. 2x Raspberry Pi … Continue reading Ansible Setting Up SSH (Raspberry Pi)
My professional day-to-day role sees me administrating Windows OS based systems using Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Active Directory/Group Policy. Knowing what tools are available to manage so many Windows systems at once I'm looking for something similar to manage several Raspberry Pi (Linux) systems at once. Previously I have looked at network … Continue reading Installing Ansible (Raspberry Pi)
Raspbian Buster is available and, if like me, you cannot currently afford to upgrade to a Raspberry Pi 4 and you don't want to install Buster from fresh then it is time to do an in place operating system (OS) upgrade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp50DoA6hCk&feature=youtu.be I am going to doing this in place upgrade on my Raspberry Pi … Continue reading Raspbian OS Buster Upgrade (Raspberry Pi)
In the previous post I discussed the basics of setting up the UFW firewall on a Raspberry Pi, now I'll dig into some of the slightly more advanced features. Numbered Rules Every allow, deny or limit that UFW is told about is remembered as a numbered rule. To view the numbering enter: sudo ufw status … Continue reading Configuring A Firewall (Raspberry Pi)
