The ramblings of a computer geek
There are a number of ways to protect secrets you wish to use in your Playbooks. I’ll show a simple example here of how you can encrypt a string, copy it into your Playbook for use and then run the Playbook, where the string is de-crypted in-line and used without exposing it in plain text … Read more
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is managing infrastructure using a DevOps type methodology. Where the current configuration of your infrastructure is represented in code, any additions, changes or deletions are also made through this code. There are various methods to codify your infrastructure, some proprietary like AWS Cloudformation, others are generic like Ansible or Terraform. The … Read more
Containerisation is an increasingly popular method to deploy and run applications on both your computer but also for enterprise applications. Containerisation essentially bundles an application’s code with all the files and libraries it needs to run. Having a layer of abstraction like this means that as long as you are running the same Operating System, … Read more
To install Docker on Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS you can use these simple instructions, these are based on a standard Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS installation and using a user called “ubuntu”. Once downloaded make sure it is executable with: Now run the installation with the following, the script has sudo commands added so you may need to … Read more
A simple HTML based status page tool that allows you as a system administrator to just edit a CSV file and have the tool generate you a pre-formatted HTML status page that you can upload to your favourite website. The tool uses Python to read the CSV files for the status (of services) and any … Read more
A very quick overview of how you can use Python virtual environments. https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/guides/installing-using-pip-and-virtual-environments/ Install the Virtual Environment First install the virtual environment. Create the Virtual Environment Let’s say I have a project called “python-static-site”, so we’ll create the virtual environment within this project directory along with all the source files. The second argument is the … Read more
Assuming you’ve read and followed part 1, now on part 2 we’ll get our SSH keys created, and the gitlab-runner registered with gitlab as a “runner” so we can create our pipeline. Configuring the SSH Keys for Gitlab-Runner To make the local gitlab-runner on your machine have the correct keys, you need to generate them … Read more
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a useful way to maintain the configuration of your infrastructure components. It provides a way that you can store your infrastructure or application’s configuration in a versioned location and then coupled with CI/CD brings you the benefits of being able to enforce gatekeeping on any changes to the configuration, automate … Read more
When working with Git repositories on the Linux command line, it can often be helpful to see the branch on which you are using at the command prompt, rather than having to identify the branch via a command like “git branch”. To install it just run: Then logout and back in again to reload your … Read more
Here’s a simple run through, let’s say you have a Git Repository (repo) that you want to clone to a development machine, in this case the machine is running Ubuntu Linux 22.0.4.2 LTS. A good way to authenticate with Git is with an SSH key, which is a public private key pair that can be … Read more