I’ve been meaning to do this for ages…. In the Puppet tarball is a directory called “ext” that contains some extras that aren’t exactly mainline but could be useful to people. You can see it’s current contents here. So the “ext” directory has got a number of useful tools, scripts and add-ons including: dqfix.sql - A script to remove duplicate resources from a MySQL Stored Configuration database emacs - An emacs mode for editing Puppet manifests ldap - The Puppet LDAP schema logcheck - Puppet configuration for logcheck nagios/check_puppet.

My new book, Pro Linux System Administration, is coming out on June 22nd, 2009. It’s written with my friends Pete and Den. Here’s a little bit of a blurb: “We can all be Linux experts, provided we invest the time in learning the craft of Linux administration. Pro Linux System Administration makes it easy for small to medium-sized businesses to enter the world of zero-cost software running on Linux and covers all the distros you might want to use, including Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS.

So, because I have so much copious spare time, I am running a panel on Configuration Management at OpenSourceBridge in Portland. The panel is on June 18th and entails: Configuration management tools are finally coming into their own. Powerful, automated infrastructure management is now available in a wide variety of open source tools. Tools written in different languages, using varying operational methodologies and embracing differing philosophies. Come meet some of the creators and maintainers of these cutting edge tools like cfengine, Puppet, AutomateIT, Chef, and bcfg2 and quiz them in the why and hows of their tools and the philosophies behind them.

I love writers festivals - never get to go to enough of them and certainly when I do I never get to attend all the sessions I want. Day job and all that. One of the ones I’ve heard quite a bit about (all good) in the last couple of years is PEN World Voices in New York. There is a great article talking about the festival and its running in the new Sydney Ideas magazine.

In a previous post I mentioned that the Nagios project had grown a fork. I also mentioned that there might be dirty deeds linked to the rationale of the fork. Ethan Galstad, Nagios’ developer, has responded to events with a post on the Nagios blog. It’s a bit of a mixed bag of a response and it left me a little underwhelmed and a little confused. On one hand, Galstad welcomes the fork as a sign that the community is alive and well.