Google Ghost: Building an Instance I publish journal notes of my cost-effective blog engineering challenge. This time I'll walk you through the cornerstone of my design - compute instance. Bear with me for a few more minutes, and I'll walk you through the chain of decision points to the final solution.
GCP Ghost: Architecting a Test Site My previous topic described preparation steps for my new pet project - a test site in the Google Cloud. This post describes the design stage with my train of thought explanation and the current design state. Let's start with the requirements reiteration and then review the design steps.
Database Oracle Database: Zoning Conundrum The Oracle Database has long and complicated relations with time-aware data. It has gotten even more interesting in the internet era and global data processing. As usual, it's a story about how a single line of code at the design time could save many work hours in maintenance.
OCI OCI: Secure Load Balancer It started as a routine wildcard certificate renewal and updating on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It usually takes about 20 minutes, but not today when the certbot offered me a private key update.
Bash A Shell Tricks: Session Color Coding The best way to understand what server you deal with is color-coded command line prompts. Different Shell interpreters and different terminals offer different commands and capabilities, but modern server-side world is extremely Linux centric, where the BASH dominates the market.
Bash A Shell Tricks: Forwarding X session I use MobaXterm as my primary terminal client. Besides some excellent features, it has a selling point - the built-in X server. Yet you may still be in a position where you can't just forward your X windows to your local machine and have to make some extra steps.
Bash A Shell Tricks: Search and Replace It's easy to use VS Code to search and replace text entries. Yet, mass file renaming is a fairly common task, especially when you move Ansible inventories or other artifacts across environments.
Ansible Ansible: Date and Time Anyone who works with Ansible knows how to access the current date and time. But have you ever dealt with something a bit more advanced? There are a few tips you may find helpful.
Conda Conda: Environment configuration With a high probability, you own a powerful computing device that could be used as a standalone system for developing, debugging, and testing applications. And it would be a good idea - to use virtual environments to limit cross-project dependencies and keep your OS package list under control.
JSON JQ is a new GREP If you are a cloud system administrator, security analyst, or data scientist, you already use jq (JSON Query), and if you don't, you should.
Documentation Pandoc: My Missing Tool With the "everything as a code" approach, it's natural to treat documentation as a code and use the same source code management and delivery techniques. I know how to create and deliver documents. And now I found my missing link, static content generator - pandoc.
Ansible Ansible: Markdown Reports The previous post [https://chronicler.tech/ansible-simple-reports] promised a simple reporting solution and two potential possibilities. Now it's time to go through the solution that would help you with report publications. The diagram from the previous post depicts information flow between components. Ansible Markdown Reports on Git/GitLab
Ansible Ansible: Format e-mail body. The whole automation idea is to minimize or exclude humans from the process. However, you need to notify users and sometimes you should do it in style.
Ansible Ansible, YAML, and JSON Ansible is very flexible with data types, and easily transforms primitives and even JSON strings, but from time to time you need to process and transform something a bit more complex than String to Boolean conversions.
Ansible Ansible: Iterations Iterations in Ansible are not first-class citizens. The language allows you a single task loop with one nested iteration. Anything more sophisticated than that should be implemented as a separate module. Again, the include_tasks command gives us a helping hand.
Ansible Ansible: Selections Let's discuss selections in Ansible: if-then-else and case/switch operators. Ansible offers conditional execution for single tasks, blocks, and task imports. In addition, it allows effectively simulate if-then selection.
MySQL Ghost Upgrade: A Bit of MySQL This morning I accidentally brought down this site. The Ghost CLI told me that there is a minor upgrade to version 4.11.0. Unfortunately, even though the start version was 4.10.0, schema update has broken the server. We use MySQL as a Ghost blog database, and it&
Ansible Ansible: Subroutines The second post in the Ansible: Control Structures [https://chronicler.tech/ansible-control-structures/] series describes using Ansible core components to emulate subroutines - procedures and "packages." The whole paradigm of Ansible is the opposite of some core programming languages principles - encapsulation and isolation. Any task on the same
Ansible Ansible: Control Structures Red Hat Ansible is a powerful and easy-to-learn automation product. Simplicity is one of the basic principles of the language. Yet, any task a titbit more complex than installing and starting an HTTPD server requires good old procedural control flows.
Ansible Ansible Variables: a Rookie Mistake The mistake I made could be excused for Java Developer, but not for a guy who spends days with Ansible. The root cause is the different variable visibility model. Red Hat Ansible does not appreciate role or play boundaries and dynamically evaluates a variable value for each impacted host.
Ansible Ansible: Conditional Playbooks I have praised Ansible tags all about the previous post. Unfortunately, tags don't go along with Ansible Tower's complex workflows. Let me guide you through the playbook transformation we've done. The answer to this challenge is extra variables.
Containers Maven Project with Docker Compose This little tweak streamlines the development lifecycle and simplifies build and test operations. If you build something with Docker and Apache Maven you could find this article useful.
Ansible How to run Ansible playbooks à-la Tower Our Red Hat Ansible projects drift to the Ansible Tower. I found that it much faster to do quick fixes and debug playbooks from the server rather than go through the full chain VSCode -> Git -> Tower. Well, to be productive, I automated the automation.
OpenSSL Quick Certificate Validation Check certificate validity for a site; what could be easier? It's a click away if the address of interest is in your browser. Learn how you can check expiration dates for multiple Learn how you can check expiration dates for multiple host or virtual hosts with SNI.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Enforce HTTPS With OCI Load Balancer To enforce secure connection you should enforce rewrite rules to rout your clients toward secure listener. The same could be done with load balancer in Oracle Cloud.
