Writing
Blog
Engineering stories and short field notes from building, breaking, and operating real systems. Read the full story, or pick up one useful discovery.
6 field notes · Small discoveries, practical fixes, and lessons from the work.
Field Note
"Already compliant" is a success state
An Ansible task should succeed when the machine is already in the desired state.
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Field Note
Cloned VM = same host keys + machine-id
A cloned lab VM needs its own identity before it joins the cluster.
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Field Note
Isolated-machine mode disables SSH agent forwarding — by design
The OrbStack isolation setting behind an unexpected SSH authentication problem.
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Field Note
OrbStack VMs ship without openssh-server
An SSH connection failure in the lab started with a missing service, not a bad key.
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Field Note
A single tab in a YAML heredoc
A small indentation mistake that stopped an Ansible playbook before it could run.
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Field Note
A good day of building and learning
Refreshing programming fundamentals, making progress on a side project, and giving LearnWithSK its own identity.
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