December 2017 Meeting of ChicagoLUG: Ansible and More

For our December meeting, we'll be taking a look at how the DebConf video team uses Ansible, and will also get a look at the Linux Vendor Firmware Service.

## Ansible

Carl Karsten will provide a tour of how the DebConf video team provisions their video recording hardware. Whether he is putting the installer and config files onto bootable media, or serving it up using a PXE stack, Carl uses Ansible to turn the new box into one of the many types of machines needed: video mixer, frame grabber, encoder, nfs server, even the dhcp/pxe server that hosts all the scripts to do all the things.

Carl will focus on the Ansible parts of this deployment. If you are new to Ansible, maybe this will get you started. If you are an expert, you’ll be able to offer feedback on how things may be better.

## Linux Vendor Firmware Service

In addition to Carl Karsten's presentation about how Ansible is used by the DebConf video team, Jim Campbell will be giving a short talk on the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (https://fwupd.org/) project and its related utilities. The Linux Vendor Firmware Service project is a relatively new project out of Red Hat which allows for automated installation of firmware updates (e.g., BIOS and TPM updates) to both servers and workstations.

If you run any bare-metal servers or Linux Workstations, this talk will be of interest to you. We'll learn about how it works, which vendors and models are currently supporting it, and how to use its command-line utilities.

## Foodstuffs
We will have food! Probably pizza! At least a few of us typically bring some beverage to share, as well. We’re a community-run organization, so we recommend bringing a few dollars if you’d like to partake of the food. No one will be denied a slice of tasty pizza for inability to chip-in, though.