How to contact me

My GPG key fingerprint is:

83C9 2481 D471 4FA4 B460 C449 B0BA ACA1 1B75 966C

Where the last 8 characters are the key-id.

I also like to receive books, whisky (Single malt, Scottish Islay), gadgets and CD’s :-) and I talk about and “do” technology, don’t like politics and love food (especially Indonesian) and cooking for friends and quiet dinner parties.

I’m also on Twitter as @TonKersten, on Mastodon @tonk@mastodon.social and on Libera.Chat IRC as TKersten

Just about me

  • UNIX/Linux consultant and Trainer @ ATComputing
  • Linux Geek (started in 1992 with 0.966α)
  • Shell script nerd
  • Open Source enthusiast
  • Programming (Python)
  • Loves DNS
  • Configuration management with Puppet or Ansible
  • Plain text aficionado
  • Big fan of things that just work

Education

I studied computer science at the Venlo Polytechnic (called IHBO Venlo, aka HTS Venlo), where I received the Bachelors degree in January 1989.

In 1986 this is where I was introduced to the lovely UNIX operating system.
Thanks Mr. Wim Euwe.

UNIX / Linux Certification

Red Hat Certified Specialist in Developing Automation with Ansible Automation Platform
2022-04-17
Red Hat Certified Specialist in Advanced Automation: Ansible Best Practices
2022-04-26
Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
2021-08-09
Red Hat Certified System Administrator
2020-11-23
Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation
2018-01-19
LPI 101
2013-03-21
LPI 102
2013-08-15
Novell Certified Linux Administrator
2013-08-15

Prince2 Certification

On May 13 2009 I took the “Prince2 Foundation” exam and succeeded.

So, now I do have a “Prince2 Foundation qualification”.

Maybe, when time comes, I will do the “Prince2 Practitioner” as well.

Prince 2 foundation
2009-05-13

LinkedIn

You can see my personal and public profile on LinkedIn

UNIX/Linux

I live in Groesbeek, in the Netherlands, near the German border and I run all kinds of Linux and UNIX. For instance my laptops run Ubuntu or Fedora and my servers run a variety of stuff, like CentOS and FreeBSD.

When I first met UNIX in 1986 I was immediately very impressed with the flexibility and the ease of use. I got hooked, bad, very bad.

And then Linux came long, which I started using way back in 1992, when the kernel version was at 0.96α. This was a 40 floppy SLS (Soft Landing Systems) distribution, the predecessor of Slackware, running on my Intel 486 PC with only 8MB of RAM. And it worked like a charm. I was completely sold. Later on I switched to Yggdrasil and after that I switched back to Slackware again. This all until my boss decided we needed to use Red Hat Linux. In fact I really don’t care what distro to use, as long as it’s not to exotic.

After a lot of work of the Open Source community configuration and installation of a Linux machine is much simplified and I believe it’s almost there to take over Windows.

Even after all these years I’m still charmed with the simplicity and ways to tweak a UNIX / Linux system. It does what I want it to do and not the other way around.

AT Computing

Moving my work a step forward and focus solely on UNIX and Linux I joined forces at AT Computing in 2001 as a senior UNIX/Linux consultant and UNIX/Linux teacher.

At this moment in time I teach these courses:

UNIX/Linux part 1 a.k.a. The UNIX/Linux starters course
Introduction to the Linux/UNIX “philosophy” of working. It teaches the basic concepts and the elementary functionality of UNIX/Linux systems.
UNIX/Linux part 2 a.k.a. shell scripting
The scripting facilities of the UNIX shells ksh and bash, the batch-editor sed and the report generating language awk.
The Python Programming Language
Introduction to the Python Programming Language, including the standard library, regular expressions and object oriented programming.
Ansible
An introduction to the Ansible Configuration Management and Continues Integration tool
Ansible II - Advanced
Build your own modules, dynamic inventory, including inventory plugins, lookup plugins and get acquainted with the inner workings of Ansible

What Not To Do

HTML formatted email has a very high chance of ending up in my spam box, where it will probably be discarded. Also, please use a subject line in your message.

I will not authenticate messages sent to people with strict anti-spam tools, like mail blocks and stuff. I have better things to do with my time. We all hate spam, but don’t push the problem to other people.

Please, do not send me spam email (doesn’t everybody want that??). I will charge you a dollar or a euro for every spam mail sent to me for transport, storage and annoyance. So if you send spam, be prepared to pay.

HAM Operator

I’m a licensed HAM operator (with CW included) with call sign PA1TON and my QTH is in Groesbeek, The Netherlands. The Maidenhead locator is JO21xs.

This site can be reached with the DNSSEC secured URL as well.

Geek info

Have a look at the Geek Code to see what it means. And, yes, I do think that I am a nerd. And I am proud of it. I’m glad I’m not a sports-jock. I would get rather bored with asking: “Would you like fries with your burger, sir?”

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GCS/E/IT d- s-:+> a+>? c++ ULSHA*++++$ P++ L+++ E--- W++ N++
O- K- w--- !O M V PS+ PE+ Y+ PGP++ t++@ !5 X+ R-> tv+()
b++>+++ DI++ D G++>+++ e++ h r+++ y+ C++
-----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

Github

I write a lot of shell scripts, Python stuff, Ansible goodies and other things for customers and for myself. Some of these could be useful to others, so I did put some of this on Github. Go ahead and use it.

Disclosure

While I am not a representative of Red Hat and my views about Red Hat are my own, I am a member of Red Hat Accelerators community which gives me a connection to Red Hat and through which I engage with other Red Hat Accelerators.

This site and all the software available for download is completely copyright by me (Ton Kersten) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License (except when stated otherwise).

Creative Commons License

So, if you like an article and want to use it for something, please do go ahead. You do need to link to my site and mention me when you do use it. That’s all. And, please, do not use this for commercial purposes, it’s my gift to the Open Source community and not intended for resale.

How it’s created and maintained

This site is generated with Hugo and Vim and is served from Linux with Apache.