Linux Console Essential – Virtual Terminals, Terminal Emulation and configuring locale

Posted on December 9, 2022May 31, 2023 by Marco Antonio Carcano

Every time you interact with a computer, either using a command line or graphically, you are using a console. Despite its ease of use, a console must address and solve a lot of compatibility problems, for example properly interpreting control characters that may differ from terminal to terminal.

Being able to customize settings such as locale and keyboard layout is the basis, but it is not enough: , having at least a basic understanding of how a console works under the hood is certainly a valuable skill that lets you quickly and easily address some uncomfortable situations that sometimes arise, especially when connecting to old systems that, in the face of security best practices, for various reasons after decades are still there without being updated, maybe because very are running obsolete services that are not compatibles with up to date operating systems.

The "Linux Console Essential Virtual Terminals Terminal Emulation and configuring locale" post is meant to provide you everything it is necessary to know to solve the most common problems that may arise concerning the Linux console and locale.

Python Serialization as JSON or YAML exploiting YAML TAGS

Posted on November 30, 2022December 6, 2022 by Marco Antonio Carcano

Python enables you to easily serialize objects as either JSON or YAML: very often it is very convenient to leverage on these features exploiting them to enhance your own object. YAML serialization comes almost for free if you derive your classes from the YAML object, whereas automatic instantiation of objects from a YAML document requires a little bit of work and leverages on YAML tags. As for JSON serialization, it is bloody useful and enables you to quickly and easily serialize the contents of your objects into JSON documents that can be exploited for example to interact with or to develop a REST API.

This post, Python Serialization as JSON or YAML exploiting YAML TAGS, shows you how to develop a Python package that provides such kinds of objects. As usual we take particularly care of the code style, using a very clean and portable design and adhering best practices.

The operating environment used in this post is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 or Rocky Linux 9 - using a different environment may lead to having to adapt or even change things.

LVM Tutorial – A Thorough Howto On The Logical Volume Manager

Posted on November 9, 2022November 10, 2022 by Marco Antonio Carcano

It is almost impossible not having heard about or not having used LVM: it is one of the pillars of every Linux distribution from decades ago. Almost everyone using Linux has used it to create or modify the basic storage structures of its Linux system. The trouble is that very often people are focused on the specific task they are onto, and neglect the time to investigate its amazing features. The goal of LVM Tutorial - A thorough howto on the Logical Volume Manager is to provide an easy yet comprehensive explanation on the most interesting features of LVM that it is very likely you will need to use sooner or later.

GIT Tutorial – A thorough Git Howto About Using Remotes

Posted on September 19, 2022October 6, 2022 by Marco Antonio Carcano

Git is certainly the most popular Source Code Management (SCM) software: it is broadly used in almost every recent open source project, and even a lot of emblazoned legacy projects switched to it over the years.

In the previous post we thoroughly learned how to use it to version control sources, working only on personal - so local - repositories.

GIT Tutorial - A thorough Git Howto About Using Remotes completes our trip on learning how to professionally use Git, showing you how to link the personal local repository to shared remote bare repositories.
Knowing how to deal with this topic is of course a mandatory skill, since this is the only way you have to cooperate and work with other developers.

GIT Tutorial – A thorough Version Control with Git Howto

Posted on September 5, 2022October 6, 2022 by Marco Antonio Carcano

DevOps (and of course DevSecOps) are getting more and more adopted by companies: these methodologies rely on several frameworks and software skills, and working with a modern Source Code Management (SCM) such any kind of software implementing Git is certainly a must for every DevOps professional. This post is the first of a set of posts dedicated to Git and is aimed at providing a GIT Tutorial - A thorough Version Control with Git Howto on personal repositories, giving guidelines to proficient operating with it.
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A quick, easy yet comprehensive GPG tutorial

Posted on July 28, 2022June 6, 2023 by Marco Antonio Carcano

GnuPG is a freely available command line encryption suite based on OpenPGP encryption library, and it is probably the most used encryption suite in the world. Every IT professional sooner or later face use cases that require to know how to handle it, but the point is that, despite a trivial usage of this suite may look quite easy, there are some not so obvious nuances that if known can really improve the experience, also saving from making some hidden mistakes that can really painful if anything would go wrong.

This is a quick, easy yet comprehensive GPG tutorial with the aim to provide a quick yet thorough explanation of how to safely use this amazing encryption suite.