Boss

Code: https://github.com/DRuggeri/labinator_chef

Boss is the “brains” of the lab’s network operations and, like the heart of the lab itself, is managed with automated configuration management tooling. It is a Chef Infra cookbook, which is familiar from years of use. If the heart of this project were the building of Labinator with automation, I would have learned in much greater depth Ansible because it is a bit more appropriate for managing network gear (like OpenWRT on the firewall).

It’s very difficult to distill down into a small summary the number of lessons learned in the creation of this cookbook. The README of the project captures the overal list of daemons that had to come together in order to function. The commit history of each recipe should show a good enough series of trial/error/learning over the course of the project.

Top of mind things for me to expand on later:

• Cheap USB -> HDMI dongles are windows specific?!
• Keeping desktop very slim and looking decent
• Firefox and marionette mode