Fake Name's questions

I'm working on getting a docker-based distributed task system running, and the major sticking point I'm running into is how to get credentials into each docker VM.

Basically, each instance needs to have a unique name and either a password/SSL cert. It then connects back home on startup, and starts processing tasks.

Making the instance is fairly straightforward, but what is a good approach to injecting the credentials into each instance? The general consensus seems to be "use environment variables", but using a 500+ character environment variable (e.g. the whole SSL cert) seems crude.

Right now, the application I'm trying to pack up uses a simple JSON file for configuration. Is there any way to add files to a docker instance at runtime, or something similar? Perhaps a last build-step that takes a parametrically defined file?

I have a Windows Server 2012R2 hyper-v host. It is running a number of VMs, including a few linux VMs.

I have one linux VM that has been occationally, but somewhat regularly crashing somewhere in the kernel, resulting in the VM becoming completely unresponsive.

I know hyper-v has a "heartbeat" facility, and it successfully detects the VM crashing as a loss-of-heartbeat.
However, I'm at a loss as to how to set up hyper-v so that it actually does anything with the heartbeat signal. Apparently at one point, there was the option to reset the VM if a heartbeat is lost for > 1 minute, but it's either been removed, or placed somewhere I cannot find.

I only have this one server, so doing things like clustering or fail-over are not really viable (this is a home lab server).

Before anyone comments, Yes, I am trying to track down the cause of the crash in the VM, but it's irregularity has been making it difficult.

I have a Windows 7 (W7 Pro, SP1, up to date) desktop, and a Windows Server 2012R2 server, running the Hyper-V role with a number of VMs.

I've gone through with HVRemote and set everything up on both ends, HVRemote's diagnostic check claims I have no issues at either end, and yet the Hyper-V Manager consistenly fails to connect ("The operation on computer '{Computer Name}' failed.")

Can W7 remotely administer Server 2012R2? I've previously used the same desktop to manage a remote Hyper-V instance on server 2012 (not R2).

I don't know where else to look. I've dug through the event logs and not found anything promising, and I'm out of ideas for how to try and diagnose the issue.

I have a PFSense box running as an OpenVPN server. There are several remote devices that connect through the VPN (as tap devices).

The VPN stuff is working, I can access the remote hardware by looking up the IP assigned to each device on the PFSense router.

What I'd like is to have it so I can resolve the remote hardware addresses via DNS while on the local network. Note that this is only local-network -> remote-device (they're backup boxes). I don't need to have the remote devices resolve using the local DNS forwarding agent.

I have the rest of the devices on the network that need to be accessible via DNS report their name during the DHCP process. However, the IP assignment for OpenVPN tap clients, while it is dynamic (which is why I need DNS), does not seem to use the local DHCP server.

How can I have my openvpn server add information for it's clients to the dnsmask resolver? Is this setup even reasonable (I'm not familiar with openVPN at all)?

What is the best / least abusive way to determine Internet connection state at a high rate (once a second or better)?

I can just ping a well-known IP (like google's DNS - 8.8.8.8 or similar), but it seems to me that continually generating traffic to such public servers could be interpreted as abusive, particularly if it's at a high data rate.

Is there a better way, or any servers that explicitly allow continuous pinging, or a similar tool?

On linux with policykit, if you try to use most GUI-based administration tools over a remote connection, they refuse to authenticate.

I believe this is an issue with policykit (for example, system-config-firewall fails with the error org.fedoraproject.slip.dbus.service.PolKit.NotAuthorizedException.org.fedoraproject.config.firewall.auth:)

However, the documentation for how to manage policykit rules is almost non-existant.

I've found a few bug-reports that seem related (here, here and here). However, they all seem to be slightly different, but related issues.

I'm a bit over my head here, and this is really a big deal for us, since the server I am working on is supposed to be run headless, and as it is, I cannot disconnect the monitor and properly administer it.

FYI, I'm using NX for remote admin, but it seems that the issue is present on NX, VNC, and tunneled X (ssh -X).

OS is CentOS 6.2.