Yum/DNF Keep Old Packages

When you upgrade packages on RedHat based systems, the newer package replaces the older one except for install only packages e.g. kernel packages. Upgrading kernel package(s) with yum, dnf and even apt leaves 3 older versions—by default—of the kernel package(s) on the system. This can be useful in cases where you need to use to an older version.


Rebooting server(s) using Ansible

Ansible provides useful tools which we can use to for various purposes. In this blog post, we’ll talk about rebooting servers using ansible & pausing the playbook by waiting for a given amount of time for a given service on a given port to start.


Ansible 'Prompt' handlers

An awesome feature in that is not available in Ansible is immediate notification i.e. notifies :immediately. Ansible has notification handlers[1] but they are only triggered at the end of the current playbook unlike Chef’s[2] which can be triggered immediately! Moreover, you can configure Chef’s notifications to be triggered at specific times i.e. at the very end of a chef-client run i.e. :delayed or immediately i.e. :immediately.


Validity of SSL Certificates

OpenSSL provides several options for implementing SSL & TLS network protocols that you can use to securely communicate with a server. In this blog post, we’ll turn our attention to SSL certificates & the priceless information they contain.