Siyuan's Blog

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Ansible 101 for configuration management

Ansible is a tool for configuration management over SSH. I gave it a try recently and it has proven to be very useful since I need manage a set of servers. Here I would like to briefly introduce Ansible to you. Installation Ansible is written in Python, on macOS it can be installed with $ brew install ansible Getting read for using Ansible SSH keys Since Ansible talks with your machines with SSH, it’s recommended that SSH keys are preconfigured on target machines for password-less login.

Creating and publishing Python modules

I once developed a simple script to fetch course schedule and plan a timetable for myself. Later, I turned it into a Python module and published it to PyPi. Now, the module can be installed with just a simple pip install command. I would like to share with you how I created a Python module and successfully uploaded it to PyPi. Creating Python modules Creating Python modules are easier than most of you might think.

Gaining knowledge from the Internet

Internet has been around for more than 20 years. It connects people from all over the world and makes knowledge sharing easier than ever. However, it doesn’t mean all the knowledge just come to you. Over the past few years, I’ve been thinking and learning the ways to gain knowledge from the powerful Internet, and I would like to share some of the best ways with you. Two ways of gaining knowledge I think there are 2 ways of gaining knowledge.

Homebrew without Xcode

Recently I was cleaning up the disk space of my MacBook Air. I realize that Xcode takes up around 10G space and I’m not doing any iOS/macOS development. I know that the only thing I need from Xcode is its command line tools for homebrew. Therefore, I would like to uninstall Xcode while keeping the command line tools. Remove the Xcode application First thing to do is to remove the Xcode.

Controlling interactive process in Unix

In Unix systems, interactive processes refer to processes which are created from terminal sessions. This blog post aims to explain the basics of controlling interactive process in Unix systems. Foreground and background process There are two types of interactive process in Unix systems, namely foreground and background process. Foreground process is a process that runs continuously and only returns control to the shell after it finishes. Background process, on the other hand, refers to a process that runs in the background while the user has the control of the shell.