Docker

Multiplatform Images: Practical Guide

Have you ever wondered how Docker knows which image layer is required to run a container in your operating system? The answer is multiplatform images; this piece walks you through the build process.

AWS

Mastering AWS EC2 Auto Scaling: Getting Started

In this post, I describe how AWS EC2 Auto Scaling can optimize your cloud infrastructure, improve performance, and reduce costs. I'll cover the key concepts, benefits, and implementation steps. Introduction to AWS EC2 Auto Scaling If you’re working with Amazon Web Services (AWS), you’ve probably heard

Crafting Smarter LLM Prompts: A Brief Guide to Prompt Engineering

In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI, we have seen a massive growth in Large Language Models (LLMs). In fact, just two weeks ago, OpenAI released GPT-4o to the public, the newest version of their extremely popular chatbot ChatGPT. It has become clear, now more than ever, that being able

AWS

Exploring AWS Free Tier: 8 Cloud Services You Can Use Without Being Charged

If you’re looking to dive into the world of Amazon Web Services (AWS) without incurring costs, the AWS Free Tier is an excellent place to start. Whether you’re a student, a developer, or an IT professional, the Free Tier offers a range of services that allow you to

Tomcat

Reconfigure Tomcat to HTTPS 443

There are a lot of notes, blogs, and references on how to reconfigure Tomcat from the default HTTP 8080 port to HTTPS 443. Granted, this is for a sandbox installation. The many responses on Stack Overflow were partial and confusing, so here we are. This blog post describes how to

Raspberry Pi

Home Assistant over Raspberry Pi; for Home/Environment Security!

As the world evolves and people get more busy, lifestyles have started to lean towards more automation for most tasks. How many of the tasks around us could be automated? How many security breaches could be physically prevented? A lot of security monitoring events such as the following can be

OCI

Oracle Support Chat "powered by OCI Generative AI" is garbage

When I log in to the OCI console, the region on the top bar is always defaulting to "US West (Phoenix)". We have no resources in that region. In fact, as shown in the screenshot below, when I click on "Manage region", it is showing US

Registry

Oracle Container Registry Tips

Oracle offers Container Registry, a large set of containerized Oracle licensed and open-source products. Unfortunately, this product is not the most user-friendly, and instructions on third-party sites do not improve the situation.

Functionize

Creating your first Functionize functional test

This post describes how to create a simple test case in Functionize for first-timers. These instructions are is based on Functionize V.5.3.24.3. Install the Functionize Extension on Chrome Functionize works best on Chrome because the Functionize Architect (or Architect for short) is the recorder tool and

Jenkins

Installing Jenkins (zip version)

These instructions are quick and easy to follow steps for installing Jenkins (the zip version). It requires Tomcat, which in turn requires JDK. Instructions here are specific to Linux, but with simple adjustments can apply to Microsoft Windows too. The software versions here are based on the latest versions as

The Evolution of AI-Language Models: GPT-3.5 vs GPT-4

GPT-4 has already been released a while back (March 14, 2023 to be exact), promising consumers with even more advanced capabilities. But how is it different from GPT 3.5? Concepts and Overview OpenAI is a research and deployment company that focuses on AGI, or artificial general intelligence. They have

AWS

How I Kickstarted My AWS Learning Journey: A Beginner's Guide to Cloud Journey *with Varonis Insights

As I embarked on my journey towards the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification, my practical experience with Varonis, managing and securing data across various platforms (on-premises, SaaS, and cloud), significantly enriched my understanding of cloud environments. This blend of AWS learning with real-world data security practices has been invaluable in my

OCI

Unable to add statement to 'Tenant Admin Policy' in OCI

I've been with OCI over 10 years, from the early days of their Gen1 cloud. So I've seen a lot in the journey of changes. One area of evolution is within their IdAM. Problem When trying to add a new statement to the default Tenant Admin

OCI Featured

OCI Function Deployment Error

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers serverless functions. For OCI, function development requires tools to create and deploy code in accordance. This set of independent tools often results in mysterious errors.

OCI

Cloud resources and services no longer showing up on OCI console

Our OCI services have been working fine for years. They are used to host a few blog platforms, websites, development environments, and other odd services. A few months ago, none of my administrator accounts could see any service or resource in the OCI console/dashboard. This completely baffled me. The

Terratest

Some common solutions to Terratest Go test errors

This post provides a few resolutions to some Terratest errors encountered. Problem: You get a go: cannot find main module error as shown when running a go test: ahmed@devhost:/u01/terraform/test> go test -v -timeout 1m -run TestVM go: cannot find main module, but found .git/config

Database

JDBC URL: Short And Secure

For years, Oracle SQL*Net offered a secured connection to the database and a prevalent unencrypted one. With the Zero Trust Architecture, that is no longer an option; you should get ready for end-to-end encryption in any environment, including your workstation.

Security

Python: Testing Secure Connections

Security control validation and enforcement are tasks we have regularly. We have created a small Python application that simplifies socket tests

Oracle Database

Database: Rolling Password Change

Recently, I've found about great Oralce Database 21c feature: Gradual Password Rollover. Here is the best part it was backported to the Database 19c.

Git

Git: From SSH to Personal Access Tokens

Accessing remote repositories over SSH is a convenient, reliable, and secure way to sync your local and remote repositories. However, architectural changes and security requirements encourage moving from SSH to HTTPS/TLS protocols.

Eclipse

Eclipse pom.xml error "Downloading external resources is disabled"

I am using the most recent Eclipse IDE build id 20231201-2043 and created a barebones Maven project. However, out-of-the-box there is an error in the pom.xml file. Problem: Here in the pom.xml file you can see an error: When hovering over the first error icon, the error is:

OCI

HTTP 400 Bad Request when calling OCI REST due to "Unable to parse message body"

I was able to successfully use the instructions in a blog post titled Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) REST call walkthrough with curl written by the Oracle A-Team to call an OCI REST service to create an Autonomous Database without using oci-curl. I was able to use the bash script (no

Ansible

AAP: Code Compatibility

Our good old Red Hat Ansible Tower was recently upgraded to the Ansible Automation Platform. Although the AAP adoption was fast, Ansible compatibility tack derailed half an O&M templates in our organization. The error message says, "Invalid data passed to 'loop', it requires a list,

Selenium

Setting up Selenium/Java to test Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

This post describes how to set up Selenium and run a test case to authenticate with multi-factor authentication (MFA). By following these instructions, you can use Selenium and Java to authenticate to Login.gov and enter a one-time code using your Java code to simulate an authenticator app. 1. Install

SSH

Putty error "PuTTY key format too new"

I recently received a "PuTTY key format too new" error when trying to SSH into one of my cloud VMs. Simply download the latest version of Putty from https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html and you should be good to go.