Throwback Thursday: Thermostat
Jan 12, 2017
I’ve decided to occasionally look back on some of the weird and wonderful projects I have had over the last couple of years to remind myself of the journey I have taken.
Today I am writing about a project I created to fix a problem with a misbehaving version of our CRM software (to remain nameless).
Backstory So this tale begins when I worked as first line technical support at an internet service provider (ISP).
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Chmod 0777; when permissions go bad and using the Sticky bit!
Jan 08, 2017
I recently got tested on an important piece of Linux file permissions trivia and must admit I fumbled the answer a bit.
My main reasons for not instantly getting the question right probably stems from my own personal mantra, “DO NOT 0777 ALL THE THINGS!”. I like to think that I put some thought into file and directory permissions rather than applying the same permissions to user, group and others. It is something that I have (on occasion) bullied a lot of developers about during my dictatorship employment as a (junior) Linux SysAdmin.
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OpenBSD 6.0: Simple NAT with pf
Dec 23, 2016
This post is more of a “note to self”, but this is a summary of a simple NAT setup between an “Internal” interface and an “External” interface on our OpenBSD server or router.
Why would we do this? Well we might have an OpenBSD machine acting as a router and so 1 public IP address on our “External” interface which is to be shared between our devices on our “Internal” network.
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Salt Master on OpenBSD 6.0
Nov 21, 2016
Let’s get started with SaltStack, but let’s put a twist on it and install our Salt Master on OpenBSD 6.0.
Why OpenBSD? In the world of “Cloud Computing”, more and more data is no longer hosted on-site and on a huge scale. Security is, and should be, the biggest concern. Whilst no OS can mitigate poor code, a good secure OS out of the box helps. Our Salt Master must remain secure at all costs as it will touch on all of our infrastructure.
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New Keyboard
Oct 17, 2016
Today I have finally unboxed my brand new WASD keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches.
This is a custom keyboard that I had partially funded by previous employer as a leaving present (aww, cheers guys).
Here’s the layout I chose:
… and this is what arrived… (apologies for the potato quality photos)
Getting started with RacherOS using Docker-Machine
Oct 10, 2016
Sadly, RancherOS is no longer available on Vagrant so dipping your toes in Rancher is a bit less easy. Or is it? The folks are Rancher are suggesting you use Docker-machine, a really nice command line tool for provisioning and managing Docker hosts! If you are used to Vagrant you already have a bit of a head start on getting to grips with Docker Machine.
What’s best is that we are going to do this in the comfort of our own VirtualBox installation.
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Mounting EFS outside of AWS
Sep 08, 2016
Why EFS? Well, despite being 3x more expensive than Elastic Block Volumes, EFS is sharable between EC2 instances and it is literally Pay As You Go (PAYG), no over-provisioning in sight.
So for that NAS like experience without the need to buy hardware, EFS would sound like a winning solution. Unfortunately at the time of writing this (September 2016) it is not yet possible to directly mount EFS outside of your Amazon VPC.
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Two underrated Bash aliases
Sep 07, 2016
Digital Ocean recently posted an article on must have Bash aliases.
Here are two unfortunate ones that are becoming part of my requirements to use a system.
alias dicker='docker' alias goit='git'
Dokuwiki Farm in a (Docker) Container
Sep 06, 2016
Today I released my Dokuwiki Farm container image on Docker Hub.
It is perhaps a little clunky and experimental, but it is the first image that I have published but it’s a fairly simple solution to hosting Dokuwiki.
It can run in single wiki mode, or it can run as an entire wiki farm with the option of shared logins between farm animals.
The base image For this we are taking the nginx:mainline-alpine image as it is very small and has the basic Nginx setup.
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So this happened...
Sep 02, 2016
I may have geeked out my car. #tuxftw!
