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I got bitten by a project bug about a year ago. I bought a swag of Raspberry Pi 5 units with the aim to make a cluster out of them, and along the way learned a few things… I chose Gentoo Linux as the OS (because of course I did) and successfully built six of them into a computing collective, housed in a tower case from Core Electronics. To say they are a cluster is a slight exaggeration, since…

Last week I was in Dallas, USA, working with some of my “zAcceleration Team” colleagues on an exciting enablement capability for a new IBM product. Watch this space! Well, maybe not this space in particular… 😀 One of the tasks I’m performing for this project is the development of a sample web site to “underlay” what we’re delivering. I’d already been through the process of building the web…

I was introduced to the z/VM hypervisor in the early 2000s, around the time that IBM announced formal support for Linux on the System/390 family (earlier in my career I had heard of something called “VM/ESA”, and thought it sounded cool). I was part of the team that wrote the “ISP/ASP Solutions” IBM Redbooks publication, and during that residency I got to log on to “VM” for the first time. I had…

Making changes to Git repository access in CodeReady Workspaces

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com As part of the setup of an environment for a customer workshop, I installed Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces (RHCRW) in an OpenShift cluster on IBM Z. My Z environment is in a testing lab without direct Internet connectivity and that creates some challenges — easily overcome, but it does mean that nothing is quite straightforward… In setting up the environment I was…

LDAP on z/VM as an Open Authentication Source

I have been using LDAP as a central data store for a very long time. Back when I had a home Asterisk PBX, I had an LDAP directory that functioned as a household phone book and source of caller-ID data for the IP phones installed through the home. This LDAP directory was also the authentication source for the home Linux servers.

In 2012, when I was part of the team that wrote the first edition…

On global roaming for data

Like most international travellers in the Internet age, during our recent travel through Europe I was confronted by the ridiculous situation that exists for mobile data access.  By ridiculous I mean ridiculously expensive.

Warnings from Telstra when a customer connects to a roaming network.

Look, don’t get me wrong: the technology that allows GSM/UMTS global roaming is pretty magical[1].  But…

I had an unexpectedly emotional departure from Brisbane last week. It was supposed to be a standard flight to Sydney, but became something a lot more.

When I first started travelling by air, flights to Melbourne were on 737s and to Sydney were 767s. I guess you knew you were going to the “big smoke” when you were on the really big plane (sorry Melbourne, you know I love you). As flight schedules…

Among the coffee mugs in my cupboard at home is one I’ve had for over 20 years.  It was a gift; if I remember right, a semi-joke gift in an office “Secret Santa”.

“Works and plays well with others”. O RLY?

The slogan on it reads “Works and plays well with others”, and it’s a reference to one of the standard phrases seen on children’s school report cards.  It’s one of the standard mugs in my hot…

Relaunching… again

It’s been a long time since I wrote here. The earlier content you see here actually came from my previous blogs at veejoe-dot-com-dot-au and later viccross-dot-com, both of which for various reasons are… no longer available. So why relaunch? Well, mostly because I still have things to say! I have not decided exactly what yet, but let’s see where it goes.

To get things started, and to…