Varying degrees of difficulty...

Open Shift Express with Identity Cert project

2011-05-31T09:57:00.001-07:00

I decided to test out openshift offering by redhat. It runs python via the wsgi framework approach. So I decided to try and deploy the Identity Cert project I'm working on.

After a couple changes in the application startup / library configuration based on PyToaster. I was ready to deploy. (Still need to incorporate the changes back into pytoaster project from identity cert for next projects I do, also some duplicate code cleanup)

Here is some of the steps I ended up having to do:

In identity cert project, grab a copy: git archive --format zip --output ~/temp/identitycert.zip master
Create project for open shift: rhc-create-app -a osidentitycert -t wsgi-3.2.1
cd osidentitycert
Add files from identity cert repo: unzip ~/temp/identitycert.zip
Resolve depends: ./bin/resolvedepends
Add everything: git add .
Commit all: git commit -m"initial commit"
Add to open shift: git push

So now its up at: http://osidentitycert-driedtoast.rhcloud.com/. App still needs a bit of work though. Now I have some motivation to complete it. Some gotchas I had to deal with:

Pathing of files, used os.path.dirname(__file__) to get abs paths
Debugging of app, have to download app via rhc-snapshot -a osidentitycert (which downloads a tar you look into appname/logs)
Forgot my url for testing it, used rhc-user-info to find it

Overall its still a bit clunky of a service, all command line (would be nice to have a little dashboard for quick url viewing) and debugging is a bit annoying.

Posted via email from varying degrees of difficulty

Sketchbook pro for Android...

2011-04-01T08:36:00.001-07:00

My first attempt, got to get used to drawing on a phone. Sketchbook from autodesk is probably the best drawing program I've used. Sort of painter meets a touch screen environment.

More to come as I get used to it.

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Trying out android posterous

2011-04-01T07:36:00.001-07:00

If this works well I might just start posting more on different things.

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Workaround for NX Capslock problem

2011-02-15T06:23:00.001-08:00

Create a script for your path, like so:

#!/bin/sh
xsendkeycode 66 1
xsendkeycode 66 0

and install lineakd (which contains the xsendkeycode).

Posted via email from varying degrees of difficulty

Setting up the mac via command line

2010-11-09T08:28:00.001-08:00

Thought I would try to play around with setting up a mac via the command line, based on http://commandlinemac.blogspot.com/2008/12/installing-dmg-application-from-co.... Hopefully it makes it easier to get a machine setup.

Here is the script:

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simple ssh script fun

2010-11-09T06:11:00.001-08:00

Just playing around with bash to make it a little easier to add keys to different servers.

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Mac oddity - Terminal Fun 1

2010-07-01T06:57:00.001-07:00

So I was looking at my files today via the terminal and noticed an @ sign next to one of the files. This is sort of odd since the file was just a text file and I downloaded it as part of an open source project.

Check it:

Notice the special apple command "ls -@" to show the details of what that @ means. It indicated extra metadata on the file. Thanks to Flester's blog on the post.

Some other details of the @ sign is over on mac hints.

I fixed it just by "cat changes.txt > newfile.txt; rm changes.txt; mv newfile.txt changes.txt".

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Coffee Pot Protocol

2010-05-20T12:05:00.001-07:00

Its been about 12 years since it was proposed, now where is the coffee pot protocol?

http://rfc.askapache.com/rfc2324/rfc2324.txt

I'm disappointed with the standard bodies on this one.

Posted via web from varying degrees of difficulty

Changing my DNS to google

2010-05-04T04:42:00.001-07:00

From what I can tell, almost all cable internet providers have horrible DNS issues. This lead me to search for a way to set my DNS provider to someone else last night, since it was down yet again (thanks charter). I was able to get to google, so I searched and found Google Public DNS. It's not to bad, set your primary and secondary DNS entries to the 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 addresses and voila faster DNS lookups. I wouldn't recommend it behind corporate firewalls, etc... but for home use that beats dealing with DNS going down from your ISP. Google gets infrastructure right at least.

Posted via web from varying degrees of difficulty

Share an S3 Bucket with boto

2010-04-29T07:25:00.001-07:00

Here is a simple script for sharing a private S3 bucket with another amazon account.

You need the canonical user id which is on the bottom of your Account page.

There is a link to show it (big long uuid looking string).

Posted via web from varying degrees of difficulty

Browsers and Memory footprints

2010-04-22T10:02:00.001-07:00

Was getting sick of Firefox 3.6 taking up tons of memory, so I did an experiment with a couple browsers.

The experiment involved the following:

24 tabs / sites open at a time (same ones)
Same bookmark count on all

Browsers tested on a MacBook Pro:

Safari (latest)
Firefox 3.6
Camino 2.0.x
Chrome beta

So based on the criteria the memory footprints were as follows:

Safari - 250 M
Firefox 3.6 - 350 M (remember the days of mosaic 2m install?)
Camino 2.0.x - 175 M (better)
Chrome Beta - 65.5 M (nice, more memory to work with)

I using Chrome from now on.

Posted via web from varying degrees of difficulty

Next version of Postgres

2010-04-22T06:58:00.001-07:00

Looks like the creator of postgres started up an new database called voltdb. Its based on the concepts from the MIT/Yale H-Store.

Its still pretty early yet to see how this will shape out, but definitely something to watch in the db space.

Posted via web from varying degrees of difficulty

Using javascript as your app framework

2010-04-09T07:55:00.001-07:00

The amplesdk is very interesting idea that you can use all javascript and markup languages to provide a RIA feel to a web application. This could be used nicely with the new spring 3.0 REST annotations if you want to just serve pages that react to xul, json, etc... via javascript interpretation.

The ample sdk could be used as a replacement / augmentation of a flex front-end. The approach for each is pretty much the same in relation to the backend application architecture.

Posted via web from varying degrees of difficulty

Iterating through Satellite/Spacewalk channels

2010-04-08T14:25:00.001-07:00

Been having to work with spacewalk lately.

I wanted to sync the RPM packages up to an S3 bucket, so I wrote a script in python to iterate through the channels and push them.

This is just a snippet to get a list of channels and print out the rpm path.

The RPC API is at http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Network_Satellite/5.3/API_Overview/h...

Its fairly easy to use.

Posted via web from driedtoast's posterous

Deleting S3 Key via boto

2010-04-08T14:08:00.001-07:00

I've been using the boto library for some AWS management and found there wasn't an example on how to delete a key from s3.

So I thought I would create a gist for it.

Gives me an excuse to test out posterous gist support as well.

Posted via web from driedtoast's posterous

Inline UML in your java code

2010-03-12T05:08:00.001-08:00

PlantUML is a nice alternative to using a diagram based modeler. It allows you to put UML and interaction details within the comments of your code. And as you navigate the class files in eclipse it displays the diagram associated with the class within the plantuml view. It also has a doclet that allows you to build the images and documentation from ant.

This approach is quite nice allowing for the documentation to be within the context of the work that is being done.

Posted via web from driedtoast's posterous

Blue Tarp becomes Art

2010-02-25T04:22:00.001-08:00

Came across a very fascinating site that portrays blue tarp as center stage. The project Toyko Blues is a dramatic look at tarp. Goes to show how we take the colors and forms we see everyday for granted.

Posted via web from driedtoast's posterous

Landscape art, a thing of beauty

2010-02-12T06:59:00.001-08:00

Just got sent a link for Matthew Albanese's portfolio. He works with various materials to reproduce natural large scale landscapes in miniature models. Very nice techniques, take a look at his portfolio.

Its definitely painstaking and takes a lot of patience.

Posted via web from driedtoast's posterous

Setting up a new AMI image for fedora 11

2010-02-11T08:24:00.001-08:00

Since its a bit of a pain to create the fedora 11 ami image for use in EC2, I thought I would share a script.

First part of the script sets up the variables used through script.

#!/bin/sh

EC2_MODULE="2.6.21.7-2.fc8xen-ec2-v1.0" ## set the ec2 module

SCRIPT_DIR="/var/awsscripts" ## scripts to setup the amazon stuff, will be copied to the image

IMAGE_DIR="/var/awsimage" ## directory to store the img file and ami image in

RELEASEVER=11

ARCH=i386 # x86_64

IMAGE_SIZE=2560 ## set the image size

## amazon stuff

EC2_HOME=~/.ec2

AWS_USER=<Your account number >

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<Your access key>

AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<Your secret access key>

EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=$EC2_HOME/pk-<Your private key name>.pem

EC2_CERT=$EC2_HOME/cert-<Your public key name>.pem

BUCKET_NAME=< s3 bucket name to store the image >

export EC2_HOME AWS_USER AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY EC2_PRIVATE_KEY EC2_CERT BUCKET_NAME

IMAGE_NAME=$1 ## passed in to the script

BASE_NAME="ami-fedora$RELEASEVER-$ARCH_$IMAGE_NAME"

IMG_FILE="$BASE_NAME.img"

echo "Image file is: $IMG_FILE"

echo "Base Name: $BASE_NAME"

if [ ! -d "$IMAGE_DIR" ]; then

mkdir $IMAGE_DIR

fi

In the above, you need to setup your keys and access keys for amazon. This is used later in the script to publish the image to the s3 bucket. It also assumes you have the ami tools downloaded and installed. This also assumes you are using fedora 11 to build the image (I use parallels with fedora 11 on it).

Now we need to make an img and mount to it and push files to it.

## Setup image

dd if=/dev/zero of="$IMAGE_DIR/$IMG_FILE" bs=1M count="$IMAGE_SIZE"

/sbin/mke2fs -F -j "$IMAGE_DIR/$IMG_FILE"

mkdir "/mnt/$BASE_NAME"

mount -o loop "$IMAGE_DIR/$IMG_FILE" "/mnt/$BASE_NAME"

mkdir "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/proc"; chmod 555 "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/proc"

mkdir "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc"; chmod 755 "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc"

mkdir "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/root"; chmod 750 "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/root"

mkdir -p "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/var/lib/rpm"; chmod 755 "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/var/lib/rpm"

mkdir -p "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/var/cache"

mkdir -p "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/var/log"; chmod 755 "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/var/log"

mkdir -p "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/var/lock/rpm"; chmod 755 "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/var/lock/rpm"

mkdir -p "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/var/tmp" ; chmod ugo+rwxt "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/var/tmp"

touch "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/mtab"; chmod 644 "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/mtab"

for i in console null zero urandom; do /sbin/MAKEDEV -d "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/dev" -x $i; done

### ---------------------------------------------------------

## setup filesystem

FS_STAB="/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/fstab"

echo "/dev/sda1 / ext3 defaults 1 1 " >> $FS_STAB

echo "none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 " >> $FS_STAB

echo "none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 " >> $FS_STAB

echo "none /proc proc defaults 0 0 " >> $FS_STAB

echo "none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 " >> $FS_STAB

echo "/dev/sda2 /mnt ext3 defaults 1 2 " >> $FS_STAB

echo "/dev/sda3 swap swap defaults 0 0 " >> $FS_STAB

chmod 644 $FS_STAB

The above also sets up the fstab file and the directories we will use to add things to.

Next we setup the yum repo files and the start installing the fedora 11 package.

## setup repo

rm -f ./yum.all.repo

DIR="/etc/yum.repos.d"

SUFFIX="repo"

for i in "$DIR"/*.$SUFFIX

do

cat ${i} >> ./yum.all.repo

done

sedscript="s/\$basearch/$ARCH/g"

sed -i $sedscript ./yum.all.repo

sedscript="s/\$releasever/$RELEASEVER/g"

sed -i $sedscript ./yum.all.repo

## setup fedora

mount -t proc none "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/proc"

yum -c yum.all.repo --installroot="/mnt/$BASE_NAME" -y groupinstall Base

RPMS="tar wget gzip bzip2 curl ruby *openssh* kernel-xen kernel-xen-devel"

yum -c yum.all.repo --installroot="/mnt/$BASE_NAME" -y install $RPMS

The above also installs some base rpms. Now for the amazon parts such as the module and tools.

## kernel-xen

if [ ! -f "ec2-modules-$EC2_MODULE.tgz" ]; then

wget "http://ec2-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-modules-$EC2_MODULE.tgz"

fi

tar zxvf "ec2-modules-$EC2_MODULE.tgz" -C "/mnt/$BASE_NAME"

/usr/sbin/chroot "/mnt/$BASE_NAME" cp -R /lib/modules/$EC2_MODULE /lib/modules/2.6.21.7-2.fc8xen

/usr/sbin/chroot "/mnt/$BASE_NAME" /sbin/depmod -a

wget "http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-ami-tools.noarch.rpm"

cp ec2-ami-tools.noarch.rpm "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/opt/sysadmin/"

/usr/sbin/chroot "/mnt/$BASE_NAME" rpm -ivh --nosignature /opt/sysadmin/ec2-ami-tools.noarch.rpm

Now we start modifying some of the base system files to work in EC2.

## update ssh file

echo " GSSAPIAuthentication yes" >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/ssh/sshd_config"

echo " Protocol 2" >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/ssh/sshd_config"

echo " X11Forwarding yes " >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/ssh/sshd_config"

echo " AcceptEnv LANG LC_CTYPE LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME LC_COLLATE LC_MONETARY LC_MESSAGES " >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/ssh/sshd_config"

echo " AcceptEnv LC_PAPER LC_NAME LC_ADDRESS LC_TELEPHONE LC_MEASUREMENT " >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/ssh/sshd_config"

echo " AcceptEnv LC_IDENTIFICATION LC_ALL " >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/ssh/sshd_config"

echo " PermitRootLogin without-password" >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/ssh/sshd_config"

## replace networking file

echo "NETWORKING=yes" > "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/sysconfig/network"

## replace ifcfg-eth0 file

"DEVICE=eth0" > "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0"

"BOOTPROTO=dhcp" >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0"

"ONBOOT=yes" >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0"

"TYPE=Ethernet" >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0"

"USERCTL=yes" >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0"

"PEERDNS=yes" >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0"

"IPV6INIT=no" >> "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0"

Now for general customization and including of amazon scripts, which are described below.

## Update more packages

yum -c yum.all.repo --installroot="/mnt/$BASE_NAME" -y erase cups ## erase printing, can do more customization here as well

yum -c yum.all.repo --installroot="/mnt/$BASE_NAME" -y install fuse-devel fuse fuse-encfs fuse-libs fuse-sshfs java-1.6.0-openjdk xen-runtime ruby

## update services

/usr/sbin/chroot "/mnt/$BASE_NAME" /sbin/chkconfig --level 1345 sshd --add

/usr/sbin/chroot "/mnt/$BASE_NAME" /sbin/chkconfig --level 1345 sshd on

/usr/sbin/chroot "/mnt/$BASE_NAME" /sbin/chkconfig --level 345 ip6tables off

## add scripts to startup

cp -R /$SCRIPT_DIR/* "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/$SCRIPT_DIR"

chmod +x /mnt/$BASE_NAME/$SCRIPT_DIR/*

echo "source /$SCRIPT_DIR/awssetup" >> /mnt/$BASE_NAME/etc/rc.local

## wrap everything up

yum -c yum.all.repo --installroot="/mnt/$BASE_NAME" clean all

sync

umount "/mnt/$BASE_NAME/proc"

umount "/mnt/$BASE_NAME"

You can add your own little flare to the above section to talk to chef, puppet, or equivalent to install the rest of the server, its up to you.

Now ship it off to amazon, you'll have to register it once you are done.

ec2-bundle-image --image "$IMAGE_DIR/$IMG_FILE" --prefix "$BASE_NAME" --cert "$EC2_CERT" --privatekey "$EC2_PRIVATE_KEY" --user "$AWS_USER" --destination "$IMAGE_DIR" --arch "$ARCH"

ec2-upload-bundle --manifest "$IMAGE_DIR/$BASE_NAME.manifest.xml" --bucket "$BUCKET_NAME" --access-key "$AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID" --secret-key "$AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY"

Below is the amazon setup script (awssetup) that is referenced above and will be executed on startup, taken from an amazon fedora 8 image, mostly verbatim.

#!/bin/sh

# $Rev: 45452 $

# This script will be executed *after* all the other init scripts.

# You can put your own initialization stuff in here if you don't

# want to do the full Sys V style init stuff.

echo "-----VERSION : ""\$Rev: 45452 $""-----"

# Stuff we want to do once at launch and never again:

if [ -f "/root/firstrun" ]; then

# Update AMI tools to the latest version:

   # [ -x "/usr/local/sbin/update-tools.sh" ] && /usr/local/sbin/update-tools.sh

# Try to find kernel modules matching current kernel:

# [ -x "/usr/local/sbin/update-modules.sh" ] && /usr/local/sbin/update-modules.sh

# Some kernels use xvc0 as their serial console device:

if [ -c /dev/xvc0 ]; then

if ! grep -q 'co:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty xvc0 9600' /etc/inittab; then

echo 'co:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty xvc0 9600 vt100' >> /etc/inittab

echo 'xvc0' >> /etc/securetty

kill -1 1

fi

fi

# Ensure devpts is mounted to prevent ssh hang-ups

mount | grep devpts > /dev/null 2>&1

if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then

devpts="none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0"

( grep -v "\#" /etc/fstab | grep devpts > /dev/null 2>&1 ) || echo $devpts >> /etc/fstab

mount -a >/dev/null 2>&1

fi

# Randomise the root password as the last operation

# We ideally have some more entropy at this stage

echo "-----RANDOMISING ROOT PASSWORD-----" |logger -s -t "ec2"

dd if=/dev/urandom count=128 2>/dev/null|md5sum|passwd --stdin root >/dev/null 2>&1

rm -f /root/firstrun

# Regenerate the host keys at this stage

# Having more entropy to work with

echo "-----TRIGGERING HOST KEYS REGENERATION-----"|logger -s -t "ec2"

echo "Removing existing keys"|logger -s -t "ec2"

rm -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key.pub /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub \

   /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key

echo "Bouncing sshd to force regeneration"|logger -s -t "ec2"

   /sbin/service sshd restart

echo "Setting sshd to start as a service"|logger -s -t "ec2"

/sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 sshd on

fi

touch /var/lock/subsys/local

# Get your chosen keypair credentials

/var/awsscripts/get-credentials.sh

givenhostname=`curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/local-hostname`

echo "HOSTNAME=$givenhostname" >> "/etc/sysconfig/network"

# =*Output ssh host keys to console*=

[ -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key ] || (ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key -t rsa1 -C 'host' -N '' | logger -s -t "ec2")

[ -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key ] || (ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key -t rsa -C 'host' -N '' | logger -s -t "ec2")

[ -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key ] || (ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key -t dsa -C 'host' -N '' | logger -s -t "ec2")

echo "-----BEGIN SSH HOST KEY FINGERPRINTS-----" |logger -s -t "ec2"

ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key.pub |logger -s -t "ec2"

ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub |logger -s -t "ec2"

ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub |logger -s -t "ec2"

echo "-----END SSH HOST KEY FINGERPRINTS-----" |logger -s -t "ec2"

Here is the script for get-credentials.sh that is called in the above script, which is also found in a base amazon image.

#!/bin/bash

# Version : $Rev: 45328 $

# root's public keys

PUB_KEY_URI=http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-keys/0/openssh-key

# PUB_KEY_URI=http://169.254.169.254/1.0/meta-data/public-keys/0/openssh-key

PUB_KEY_FROM_HTTP=/tmp/openssh_id.pub

PUB_KEY_FROM_EPHEMERAL=/mnt/openssh_id.pub

ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS=/root/.ssh/authorized_keys

# We need somewhere to put the keys.

if [ ! -d /root/.ssh ] ; then

mkdir -p /root/.ssh

chmod 700 /root/.ssh

fi

# Fetch credentials...

echo "-----CREDENTIALS RETRIEVAL-----"|logger -s -t "ec2"

# First try http

echo "Attempting to retrieve public key from [$PUB_KEY_URI]"|logger -t "ec2" -s

curl --retry 3 --retry-delay 5 --silent --fail -o $PUB_KEY_FROM_HTTP $PUB_KEY_URI

if [ $? -eq 0 -a -e $PUB_KEY_FROM_HTTP ] ; then

if ! grep -q -f $PUB_KEY_FROM_HTTP $ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS

then

cat $PUB_KEY_FROM_HTTP >> $ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS

echo "New key added to authrozied keys file from parameters"|logger -t "ec2" -s

else

echo "Already have your key"|logger -t "ec2" -s

fi

rm -f $PUB_KEY_FROM_HTTP

elif [ -e $PUB_KEY_FROM_EPHEMERAL ] ; then

echo "Meta-data fetch failed, trying from legacy ephemeral store location [$PUB_KEY_FROM_EPHEMERAL]"|logger -t "ec2" -s

# Try back to ephemeral store if http failed.

# NOTE: This usage is deprecated and will be removed in the future

if ! grep -q -f $PUB_KEY_FROM_EPHEMERAL $ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS

then

cat $PUB_KEY_FROM_EPHEMERAL >> $ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS

echo "New key added to authrozied keys file from ephemeral store"|logger -t "ec2" -s

fi

chmod 600 $PUB_KEY_FROM_EPHEMERAL

fi

if [ ! -f $ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS ]

then

echo "*!*!*! FATAL ERROR *!*!*! No able to find authorized_keys file [$ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS]"|logger -t "ec2" -s

else

echo "Setting permissions on $ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS to 0600"|logger -t "ec2" -s

chmod 600 $ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS

fi

Posted via web from driedtoast's posterous

Diagram via sentences

2010-02-04T08:56:00.001-08:00

Just ran across diagrammr today. Its quite interesting. You describe the components in an architecture or some sort of relationships and it takes the first and last words as the components and draws a line between them.

So for instance, you write:

"loadbalancer routes to webserver"

and

"webserver routes to appserver"

There will be 3 boxes, one for loadbalancer, one for webserver and one for the appserver. There will also be lines connecting the 2 of them. I've decided to start to use this for quick diagramming of architectural concepts. Beats drawing lines yourself, give it a try.

Posted via web from driedtoast's posterous

A way to manage a cloud infrastructure

2010-02-01T13:50:00.001-08:00

As I was looking for other projects out there to see if I was being redundant with the teaparty project on github, I found <a href="https://scalr.net/">scalr<a/>. Its a commercial product and has some similar concepts that I was thinking of adding to my own project, but some of the concepts are not really done.

The application management and role management is a bit weak and the infrastructure is based on crontabs with curl calls to a php app for config registration and such. They could of done a lot better relying on a 3rd party configuration management tool such as cobbler, puppet or chef.

Posted via web from driedtoast's posterous

Redhat creates a new mag online

2010-01-28T09:20:00.001-08:00

Redhat is starting a new magazine online about news and information regarding opensource companies and projects. Should be interesting to see this magazine's growth, might just turn into slashdot. E-Zine is called opensource.com. This is definitely a sign of technology companies shifting their business model.

Posted via web from driedtoast's posterous

Starting using posterous...

2010-01-26T04:47:00.001-08:00

Its got a way to simplifying your posting to multiple places such as blogger, twitter, etc...

Hopefully this helps to simplify a couple things around my notes and such.

Testing it out with this post.

Posted via web from driedtoast's posterous

Wireframing the flash way

2010-01-22T17:46:00.000-08:00

Finally, an online based wireframing tool and its made in non-other than flex/flash. Check out iplotz. It allows you to do basic storyboarding for building out website UI specs.

Colored Pencil Sculpture

2010-01-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

I got an email with some pictures of colored pencil sculpture art. It is quite extraordinary. Most of the pencils are cut into smaller pieces and are sharpened to a fine point. The small pieces of pencils must be pretty difficult to work with. I assume they are put together with a type of wood glue. Take a look at Jennifer Maestre's Art.

Many of the pieces look like sea urchins and inspired by plants. Have to try this some day.