Streamline Magento installations with n98-magerun, a handy command-line tool, for efficient setup and deployment of Magento with sample data.

Quick Magento Installation

As part of work I have to install Magento with its sample data a lot for proof of concepts, while the installation is simple it can quickly become a chore. Because of this I have started to use n98-magerun↗ . It can be installed using the following commands; Quick Magento Installation 1/2 curl -o n98-magerun.phar https://raw.github.com/netz98/n98-magerun/master/n98-magerun.phar chmod +x ./n98-magerun.phar cp ./n98-magerun.phar /usr/local/bin/ n98-magerun.phar self-update Once installed you can do clean installation by running the following command where you would like Magento to be installed; ...

April 19, 2014 · 1 min · Russ Mckendrick
Efficient Puppet setup on CentOS with quick deployment scripts for Puppet Master and Agents, including a GitHub repo for easy configuration management.

More Puppet

I have been playing my Digital Ocean↗ server a lot recently. Breaking it, fixing it and then rebuilding it, while I had documented my puppet installation it was getting to be a pain to copy and paste with each rebuild, so I pulled together a few scripts↗ from various sources to make the rebuilds a little less of a chore. To install fresh Puppet Master all I need to do now is run the following command; ...

February 23, 2014 · 1 min · Russ Mckendrick
A beginner's guide to Docker on CentOS, covering installation, running containers, and basic management with an introduction to Docker commands.

Docker

Been playing a little with Docker↗ this afternoon, while its something I have been aware for a while its not something I have really looked into. As I prefer working with CentOS rather than Ubuntu its taken me a while to get the motivation to do any more than some reading, however as the latest version now runs on RHE compatible Docker 1/4 yum install http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm yum -y install docker-io service docker start chkconfig docker on Once the services are installed pull down some images to test with; ...

February 15, 2014 · 2 min · Russ Mckendrick
Explore handy Jekyll snippets for enhancing static site generation, including unique presentation of the latest post and consistent post excerpts.

Jekyll Snippets

Had a go at converting a mostly static but dynamically rendered site to use Jekyll yesterday, it was a lot more straight forward than I thought it was going to be. As part of the conversion I needed to display the first post differently, after consulting the all knowing Google I settled on the following method; Jekyll Snippets 1/3 {% for post in site.posts offset: 0 limit: 1 %} <div class="some-style"> <a href="{{post.url}}"> <h3 class='news-title'>{{ post.title }}</h3> <span class='news-date'>{{ post.date | date_to_string }}</span> </a> <p>{{ page.excerpt }} <a href='{{post.url}}'><span class='read-more'> Read more</span></a></p> </div> {% endfor %} ...

February 2, 2014 · 2 min · Russ Mckendrick
A deep dive into using Vagrant and Puppet for setting up reproducible development environments, mirroring production with local Virtualbox instances.

Vagrant & Puppet

Vagrant allows developers to bring up local development machines in a controlled method using pre-built configuration files called boxes. Once a box has been installed on the developers local machine it can be powered on with the following command; Vagrant & Puppet 1/2 vagrant up When the box is brought up it automatically provisions itself using a number of provisioners including Puppet, this means that the production deployment scripts can also be run on local development copies of the instances. The instances on the local machines are powered by Virtualbox and there Windows, Linux and Mac versions of Vagrant. ...

January 12, 2014 · 3 min · Russ Mckendrick
My top 10 albums of 2013, a rich mix of genres with highlights from Monster Magnet, David Bowie, and more, showcasing the year's standout music.

Top 10 2013

Keeping up the yearly tradition here is what I have been listing to in 2013 …. Monster Magnet — Last Patrol↗ David Bowie — The Next Day↗ Coheed and Cambria — The Afterman: Descension↗ Gary Numan — Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind)↗ Gregory Porter — Liquid Spirit↗ Clutch — Earth Rocker↗ Public Service Broadcasting — Inform — Educate — Entertain↗ How to Destroy Angels — Welcome Oblivion↗ Sigur Rós — Kveikur↗ Katatonia — Dethroned & Uncrowned↗ The Temperance Movement — The Temperance Movement↗

December 8, 2013 · 1 min · Russ Mckendrick
Explore the essential tools and services that enhance my efficiency as a developer and sysadmin, from code editors and version control to server hosting.

Stuff I use

I am trying to streamline my workflow at the moment. Currently on the Mac these are; StormSSH↗ — Key Managment Vagrant↗ — Local Server testing Packer↗ — Build Machine Images SublimeText↗ — Text Editor Z↗ — Jump around the CLI Le-git↗ — Adds some GIT features Git Tower↗ — GUI for GIT Home Brew↗ — Install “missing” stuff and on my servers; ...

November 17, 2013 · 1 min · Russ Mckendrick
A comprehensive guide on setting up Cobbler on CentOS 6.x for mirroring repos and server kickstarts, including EPEL enablement and security setup.

Installing Cobbler on CentOS 6.x

I needed a simple way to mirror some repos, and potentially kickstart some servers at a future date. While something like The Foreman↗ would do the build side of things it doesn’t repo mirrors (yet). So I did an install of Cobbler↗ . This turned out to be more stright forward than I thought, first you need to ensure EPEL↗ is enabled …. Installing Cobbler on CentOS 6.x 1/1 yum install http://ftp.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm yum install cobbler cobbler-web pykickstart chkconfig cobblerd on chkconfig xinetd on service httpd restart service xinetd start service cobblerd start service cobblerd status cobbler get-loaders vim /etc/cobbler/modules.conf # Make the following changes …. [dns] module = manage_dnsmasq [dhcp] module = manage_dnsmasq [authentication] module = authn_configfile [authorization] module = authz_allowall # once done save and run the following …. cobbler check cobbler sync # cobbler sets the username and password for the web interface to cobbler / cobbler, change that by running …. htdigest /etc/cobbler/users.digest “Cobbler” cobbler ….. all done. You should be able to access your installation at ….. ...

October 13, 2013 · 1 min · Russ Mckendrick