Tools 🧰

All my posts about varous tools

Catch up on my recent absence from blogging and learn about the highlights, including the release of Docker 1.0, CentOS 7, updates to the site's theme, and new music releases. Plus, explore my blog post on multi-factor authentication in AWS.

What’s in the toolbox?

It’s been a while since I listed what I am using day-to-day so I thought I would do a quick update; Desktop Apps SublimeText↗ — Text Editor GitHub Mac Client↗ — The Mac GitHub client Marked2↗ — Preview Markdown in real-time Photoshop↗ — For ermmmmm Photos OmniGraffle↗ — For diagrams and stuff 1Password↗ — Locking all my passwords away Reeder 2↗ — For reading all my newsfeeds Commandline Apps Home Brew↗ — Install “missing” stuff on macs Cask↗ — Install Mac Apps using the command line using Brew StormSSH↗ — Key & hosts management known_hosts↗ — A simple cli known hosts manager Packer↗ — Build machine images Z↗ — Jump around the CLI Jekyll↗ — What this blog is published with Server Stack CentOS 7↗ — The Base OS Puppet↗ — Configuration Management SaltStack↗ — Infrastructure management Docker↗ — Run Linux containers New Relic↗ — Server Monitoring Services Digital Ocean↗ — Server Hosting AWS↗ — Server Hosting CloudFlare↗ — CDN & Stuff Github↗ — Code Hosting Pinboard↗ — Bookmarks EverNote↗ — Note taking RememberTheMilk↗ — Task management Feedly↗ — For managing all the newsfeeds Pocket↗ — For reading articles later The biggest change since the last update is ….. ...

High Availability Central Logging in AWS

As part of another work project I needed to install some central logging to run in AWS. Simple you may say, create an instance and use Puppet to install ELK server stack↗ on there, or go back to basics and create a rsyslog↗ server. Normally this would be well and good, however I needed to ensure that all parts solution were highly available and fully redundant, this meant that I would have engineer a lot of HA into my ELK or rsyslog servers. ...

Documentation

I am currently working on a technical project for work where I need to keep a combination of code and technical documentation together, at the moment it is only me working on the project though other people may start to contribute later. Normally on projects like this I dump all of my work in either a Google Docs ↗ document or use files in Basecamp↗ however as this was mostly technical documentation along side snippets of code I decided I wanted to use Markdown↗ . ...

Cask

I did a clean installation of my laptop this weekend, rather than go through the list of apps I had installed and do a manual installation of each one using the “Download and drag” method I decided to use Cask↗ . Cask is a Homebrew↗ package which automates to the download and install part. Here is pretty much my entire installation process …. Cask 1/1 ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)" brew doctor brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask brew cask install google-chrome brew cask install dropbox brew cask install google-drive brew cask install sublime-text brew cask install github brew cask install spotify brew cask install libreoffice brew cask install virtualbox brew cask install skype The only downside is that it installs the packages into the users Application directory which set my OCD off, it was quickly remedied though by simply moving the link once I had installed everything I needed. ...

Sysdig

Sysdig↗ looks like it could be a useful addition to a sysadmins list of tools, it is described as; Sysdig is open source, system-level exploration: capture system state and activity from a running Linux instance, then save, filter and analyze. Think of it as strace + tcpdump + lsof + awesome sauce. With a little Lua cherry on top. It’s easy to install↗ …. Sysdig 1/1 curl -s https://s3.amazonaws.com/download.draios.com/stable/install-sysdig | sudo bash …. and even easier to run …. ...

Highlighting the critical need for server security with personal experiences of port scans and brute-force attacks, and how Fail2Ban provided protection.

Hackers

Since I have been playing with Docker for the past few weeks I have had more servers on-line. I don’t have a static IP address at home so while I have a jump host setup I found I was still being port scanned and brute forced. I only caught a sniff of it in the logs while looking at another problem, even though password authentication is disabled and I only use keys I decided install Fail2Ban↗ to start blocking people, just in-case. As I use Puppet↗ I installed a module and enabled it. Since then I have been flooded with emails !!! ...

Enhance your Docker experience with Puppet-managed containers, featuring a suite of trusted builds for databases and PHP environments on the Docker Index.

Yet More Docker

Since my last post about Docker I have been playing a lot more, rather than use a GUI like Shipyard↗ I decided to use @garethr’s excellent Puppet Module↗ to manage and deploy my containers. This allowed me to take a better look at the builds I had over at the Docker Index↗ . The following is a list of builds I have deployed so far ….. General Containers Base↗ — Base build for use with other Docker build Jump Host- Build which can be used as a SSH jump host Database Containers MySQL 5.5 — Build which runs MySQL 5.5 MySQL 5.6 — Build which runs MySQL 5.6 PHP Containers Apache & PHP 5.4 — Build which runs Apache with PHP 5.4 Apache & PHP 5.5 — Build which runs Apache with PHP 5.5 NGINX & PHP 5.4 — Build which runs NGINX with PHP 5.4 & PHP-FPM NGINX & PHP 5.5 — Build which runs NGINX with PHP 5.5 & PHP-FPM See the GitHub Repo↗ and my Docker Index Profile↗ for more information. ...

Deploy a stable Docker setup on CentOS with Shipyard for container management, using Puppet for installation and Supervisor for high availability.

Deploying a Stable Docker Setup on CentOS with Shipyard

Been playing with Docker↗ again this weekend, this time rather than just doing for the sake of doing it I went for something a little more stable. I started off by creating a new DigitalOcean↗ droplet with the latest CentOS installed to run as a base. I then installed docker using the Docker Puppet Module↗ . So now I had Docker installed now what? I looked at some PaaS services, a bulk of them require Ubuntu (which I simply don’t do on servers), however Shipyard↗ looked good. It was simple to install; ...