On a KVM virtual machine I have, I want to have the MySQL (well, MariaDB) database running on NFS, which means that I need MariaDB to only start up after NFS becomes available.  This would normally require editing the default systemd unit file for MariaDB.  This is a bad idea, since your changes will be reverted every package upgrade.  Here’s how to fix that.

The following line will generate (pseudo-randomly) a static MAC address, suitable for use with a KVM virtual machine;

… you’ll want to know about this bug.  Put the following string in the end of your /etc/mysql/conf.d/mythtv.cnf ;

I’d like for the VMs I’m deploying to be entirely headless (that is, no virtual graphics card at all, serial console only).  Turns out that you can do ISO-based installations of CentOS-7, headless, without having to unpack the ISO and mess with stuff.  Enter virt-install, the swiss army knife of KVM O/S installs;

Messing with KVM as a replacement for my Microserver setup at home.  With KVM, you can define a thin-provisioned VM image file (a qcow2 file), which is a sparse file on the filesystem.  You can then configure the guest O/S so that TRIM support works, and it can then unmap unused blocks by the guest FS and have those blocks get unmapped the whole way down the stack (released from the sparse file, and ultimately trimmed from the underlying SSD if there is one).

I picked up a few LoLin NodeMCU v3 boards the other day (you can read a comparison of the various NodeMCU dev boards here).  However, I had a hiccup with it.