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AI: Different LLMs With Custom Content – Does it work?

(2023-08-24):
AI is on everyone’s mind but what happens when we use our own and custom content like documents on different LLMs (Large Langauge Models)? Let’s have a short look at different LLMs like llama2, falcon and gpt. Within this case we do not just want to use the pre-trained data from the models but also process our own content. Here, we just use a public available price list (T-Mobile One Fact Sheet) in a PDF format and try to gather information by prompt requests. We will now try to gather some information from especially this section which provides information for additional lines and costs per month (file here ). Now, different LLMs are requested to answer the following questions: "How much is the monthly fee for 4 lines?" llama2-70b-chat: Based on the information provided in the context, the monthly fee for 4 lines would be ﹩140. This is calculated by .... [read more]

Released Changelog Fragments Creator

(2023-07-26):
Changelog Fragments Creator (a changelog generator in Python) may be used in development setups where working on a single CHANGELOG.md file might result in ongoing merge conflicts due to too many changes on the same file. This is where Changelog Fragments Creator steps in to solve this by creating YAML based files for each PR according to its planned release version. The output format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning. This changelog creator is written for minimal setups to be usable across almost all systems (platforms and distributions). Therefore, some dirty stunts were needed to avoid templating (jinja2), etc. to drop some imports that would require additional dependencies. It only requires a basic Python 3 installation on the system. Motivation This project has been created after a some frustrations in several projects where working with several developers on the same project with a .... [read more]

Ansible yum_versionlock Supports Versions for Pinning

(2023-07-13):
Ansible’s yum_versionlock module has been available in Ansible for several years. Since my initial release this module has also been tweaked and forked as dnf_versionlock. However, there has been a new feature request for supporting specific package versions to pin and lock. Starting with community general version 7.2, yum_versionlock is also able to handle specific versions instead of just plain package names. Links: feature( yum_versionlock ): Add support to pin specific package versions #6861 .... [read more]

Vagrant, Virtualization and Apple Silicon on ARM64 in 2023

(2023-03-25):
Many DevOps used Vagrant together with VirtualBox (Box) in their default setups to quickly spawn new VMs. However, when switching from AMD64 (Intel architecture) to Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) there was a lack of unsupported tools which broke many workflows. Currently, there’s an ARM64 supported build of Virtual Box but it doesn’t support ARM64 guests at all. This makes it necessary to switch to other alternatives. VMware Fusion A solution could lead into a free copy (for personal usage) of VMware Fusion for macOS which also supports ARM64 based guests. This alternative to Virtual Box supports all Apple Silicon Macs and even runs on the newest macOS which might be a pretty good alternative to Virtual Box. However, we still need Vagrant and a dedicated plugin (vagrant-vmware-desktop) for the VMware platform provider. This plugin supports VMware Workstation, VMware Desktop and VMware Fusion. Vagrant can still be installed in the same ways .... [read more]

Password Rotation Policy Nowadays

(2023-02-08):
Unfortunately, many companies still have security policies according to frequently password changes for endusers. Which first sounds like a good idea may fastly result in a less better security – I also often call this security by obscurity. So, why is password rotation a bad idea nowadays? First, let us have a look at the past before year 2000, where users had really short passwords with less than 10 characters. Many dynamic websites (e.g. free mailers, etc.) at that time enforced a password length of 6-10 characters and did not accept any special characters. As a result, it came to the well known passwords like abc123, 12345678, gyptazy2000, gyptazy89 etc. where users created an easy to guess combination of names, birthdates etc. With more compute power, brute force attacks became more easy. As a result, passwords got longer including further special characters. Within the first iteration, many special characters like .... [read more]

Ansible Packet Filter Module for BSD Systems

(2023-01-17):
My new module pf (packet filter) allows managing the BSD’s packet filter (pf – as a firewall) which is compatible with FreeBSD, OpenBSD etc. When running in dry_run mode a generated rule set file will be validated and printed within Ansible’s meta output (json). Rulesets can be loaded by filters (e.g. filter, options or nat) and tested in dry_run mode. Next to this, basic service management can be done by this module for starting, stopping and restarting pf. - name: Test a rule set pf: action: reload config: /etc/pf.conf dry_run: True - name: Load only NAT rules set pf: action: reload config: /etc/pf.conf filter: nat - name: Flush PF rules pf: action: reload config: /etc/pf.conf - name: Start PF pf: action: restart config: /etc/pf.conf Resources: Initial upload: initial upload of pf (packet filter) PR: PR#5857 .... [read more]

Plutono – Grafana 7.5 Fork with Apache 2.0 License

(2023-01-10):
Plutono is an interactive visualization web application that provides graphs, charts and also alerts. It is based on a Grafana 7.5 fork, maintained by credativ GmbH ( NetApp GmbH ), under the Apache 2.0 license which is limited to maintenance and security updates. In 2021, Grafana switched the licensing of its core products from the Apache License 2.0 to the more restrictive AGPL v3 (Affero General Public License) as an attempt to balance the values of open source with its monetization strategy. As this license switch might impact several users the Plutono project got initiated and comes with several other tools like Vali (as an alternative to Loki) and Valitail. Plutono Plutono brings further possibilities to query, visualize, alert on and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Explore, create and exchange dashboards with your team: * Visualize: Fast and flexible client side graphs with a multitude of .... [read more]

Released Monkey Switcher V1.2

(2022-11-19):
Monkey Switcher just got released in V1.2. witch your Bluetooth capable devices like Magic Keyboard 2, Track Pad, AirPods, etc. between multiple Macs (e.g. personal & business) with a single click for macOS. This can especially be helpful to avoid connecting you wired USB-C to Lightning cable to your Magic Keyboard to establish a peering session to another Mac and may fasten up your workflow. However, initially this must be done on all Macs where you like to use this app to be a known and authorized Bluetooth device. This application ships binary versions for amd64 and arm64 architectures of blueutil. Running the application is a toggle – when the Bluetooth device is connected it gets disconnected. If the device is currently disconnected it gets connected. This can be done in combination of multiple Macs where the bluetooth device should be connected to. Monkey Switcher is fully open-source. You can .... [read more]

Garden Linux with Firecracker Support

(2022-10-07):
Now, Garden Linux comes with Firecracker (microVM) images for running heavy workloads. You may also find some more information on Firecracker within my last post. Thanks to nkraetzschmar for adding Firecracker support within the Garden Linux feature system. Next to this, the Pytest pipeline needed further adjustments as well as a new IAAS type to perform tests on microVMs. With my PR feat(pytest): Add Firecracker IAAS for PyTest #1318 I recently added further support for Firecracker images as a new IAAS platform type. The new IAAS takes care for all image and network related adjustments to fit the Pytest’s RemoteClient object requirements. Creating a Garden Linux Firecracker Image Creating a Firecracker image is as easy as building regular images and can simply be accomplished by running: Production Image make firecracker # Dev image (autologin, etc.) make firecracker-dev This creates the kernel- & filesystem image artifacts: * kernel image: firecracker_dev-amd64-today-0ee7682b.vmlinux * .... [read more]

Garden Linux with SELinux Support

(2022-09-01):
While Garden Linux was running with SELinux all the time, Garden Linux finally supports running SELinux in enforcing mode. Within the last few weeks I made several adjustments to make sure we could switch from permissive mode to enforcing. By pushing the last commit , the gardenlinux-selinux-module gets reactivated in synergy with the patched refpolicy package within the Garden Linux build pipeline. All related packages are available on Garden Linux repositories, now. Unluckily, I had many issues based on Debian’s Testing refpolicy package which was a show stopper for several services including casual bash usage after login or systemd-resolved start ups (see also bug #1012755 ). Unfortunately, further bug reports and texting resulted into no solutions. Even no direct solutions could be found on DebConf 2022 by getting in touch with some people directly. Thanks to chrinorse for getting in touch with other ones at DebConf 2022. Therefore, I consider .... [read more]

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