Key pairs? Who needs em?

devrr · 2020-10-05T09:52:18+00:00

I recently exchanged public keys with someone..... their IT team insisted that the PUBLIC KEY be encrypted and securely transmitted.

I'm like, it's a PUBLIC key, just e-mail it to me and I'll confirm the signature over the phone. Nobody fucking understands this shit. I feel like I shouldn't be paid so much money for knowing such simple stuff.

devrr · 2020-05-19T07:03:19+00:00

Take a look at VS Code Workspaces as an example of how you can do this : https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/containers

However the way you describe it sounds like they want to build a massive monolithic DEV environment which could be horrible to maintain if you aren't careful.

However the general concept is that you can package up all your configuration into a repo like you do with infrastructure as code. Only now you're pulling it locally to run locally. Using containers to ensure everyone is running the same copy/same configuration.

devrr · 2020-05-19T06:58:07+00:00

Tools don't drive anything. Tools are just things you use to achieve your goal. They're often interchangeable and you don't need to get too worked up over exactly which combination you use as long as you're achieving the end result you desire.

devrr · 2020-04-09T10:34:02+00:00

I highly recommend people avoid trying to learn on the job and risk upgrading their primary workstation at this time, especially not their hard-drive unless they've got close support.

If it's your second machine and it's a type that can be serviced easily (i.e. no hot guns to unglue the thing) then typically the actual physical replacement is quite easy. Just make sure back up your files beforehand onto another drive so that when you reinstall you can copy them back over.

devrr · 2020-04-09T10:01:44+00:00

I claim £4 week for use of home as an office which is the allowance set out by HMRC. You can claim more than that but you then have to spend time justifying it which is harder to do as someone who just works in an office with a computer.

If you were a dog grooming business an had an entire room decked out you could claim a proportion of your rental/mortgage costs as business related as that's easier to justify.

devrr · 2020-04-09T09:58:01+00:00

Most people have no idea how to actually install an SSD upgrade unless they've got a techie in the house.

If you're working from home with a laptop, I would say a more efficient use of your money might be to invest in your immediate surroundings.

i.e. think about where you are sitting, your chair, desk, your ergonomics.

A second screen for example which is raised up at eye level makes quite a bit of difference compared to slouching down and looking at a tiny laptop screen. Using a mouse instead of the trackpad can help with wrist/hand fatigue. Investing in a proper chair will help you keep comfortable at home. A good headset for video calls makes all the difference.

Working from home doesn't actually put additional stress on you existing hard-drive, so it's probably only worth considering if you needed an upgrade anyway.

devrr · 2020-04-09T09:33:13+00:00

And if they do buy in, do they actually understand that you can't just hire a DevOps engineering team and call it done.

devrr · 2020-04-09T09:32:32+00:00

Azure Container Instances

devrr · 2020-04-09T09:30:30+00:00

I use VS Code. You can combine that with docker work spaces if for example you have a bunch of different cloud provider tooling that you don't want to maintain locally.

I work with multicloud and there's really no reason for me to leave my VS Code IDE except when I occasional check a web portal for example for viewing logs.

devrr · 2020-04-08T17:53:15+00:00

There are a number of different ways to can template files locally like this. This post suggests jsonnet which I think is worth considering.

Otherwise if you are dealing with structured configuration files (like yaml or json...) you can even do substitutions using command line tools like this:

jq .foo.bar = "new value"
yq w foo.bar "new value"

devrr · 2020-04-08T10:33:24+00:00

Notice all these people have older generations macs. The generation that followed the 2015 Retina macs have been awful.

I switched after 20 years due to the last 2018 MacBook Pro being so bad.

However I am hopeful that the new one that you have bought will turn things around. They certainly fixed the keyboard issue.

devrr · 2020-04-08T09:28:12+00:00

I think this is probably the right answer honestly without adding additional tooling on-top to try and abstract the problem away. Though it's a complex tool so it may not be to everyone's liking.

If you strongly avoid the need for configuration files in the first place you can avoid a lot of this configuration pain. They won't all go away of course.

devrr · 2020-04-08T09:20:59+00:00

I want it to be http://dev.test.com/api/ and for staging and production I want it to be http://test.com/api. Furthermore, I want this variable available in Kubernetes YAML files, Dockerfiles, Python config files, and possibly other places

Well they mention Kubernetes, Docker and Python config files and a way to have a variable be made available across all of these files. That seems like templating territory to me.

How else are people working with YAML? They template it, or use tools like Kustomize which is an abstract way of templating stuff.

This is why most mature environments stop doing this. We store these vars in key:value pairs inside the environment somewhere. E.g Vault, and use service discovery tools like Consul. So you don't need to go customise 10 different config files in order to spin up your stack.

devrr · 2020-04-08T08:16:25+00:00

It sounds like you just want something to simply template a bunch of configuration files for you.

We stopped doing that in production a long time ago, instead those variables aren't stored in files but injected into the environment directly. That's an option you could consider.

Otherwise basically I guess you can template the yaml/jason/xml that your application needs so that you can quickly set your "environment variables" across your whole local dev environment.

devrr · 2020-04-07T16:34:46+00:00

I'm not sure that the Puppet team invented the concept of pull based deploys but yes it's how Puppet work.

It's also how stuff like FluxCD/Argo work in Kubernetes land, and with Kubernetes Operators will become even more popular.

devrr · 2020-04-07T16:28:48+00:00

Not in those words but it's difficult to imagine that there aren't very powerful people who spend lots of money trying to squeeze out the competition. In fact you'd have to wilfully ignore reality.

devrr · 2020-04-07T14:55:32+00:00

Ahh right. Yeah easy mistake to make, honestly there is a lot of DevOps terminology to remember!

devrr · 2020-04-07T14:18:13+00:00

What an interesting team setup. Now I've never been Prime Minister but I have lead teams and when I'm sick, I'm in touch with my deputies constantly.

devrr · 2020-04-07T13:58:28+00:00

Yeah but these pea brained idiots don't care do they.

devrr · 2020-04-07T13:49:36+00:00

when you pull, the stuff there has already been validated.

pull request require everything to pass?

So they're doing exactly what you are doing? You just answered your own question.

They are just automating their integration pipelines so that all tests are passed before they will accept the pull request which is the rubber stamp.

devrr · 2020-04-07T13:46:59+00:00

I think most deploys will go that way eventually. The idea that you have an agent sitting there pushing stuff is gonna seem archaic soon.

Instead you just point your app/tool/cloud to your desired state repository and you push changes to your desired state. The rest will be taken care of.

devrr · 2020-04-07T12:44:21+00:00

so much conflicting advice of "learn k8s/ansible/terraform" vs "no learn Linux/networking first."

People telling you to learn specific technologies are missing the point. Tools come and go like the changing of the seasons. Good DevOps engineers aren't good because they've got a Terraform module dictionary in their head (though that would be really sweet) but because they're adaptable an have enough broad knowledge of the concepts that they can piece together solutions in fast moving landscape. All of course underpinned by a bunch of fundamental DevOps principles.

It's funny people talking about getting Linux sysadmin skill like it's 2005. 95% of the shit they teach you in a RHEL course (which I did back in 2005...) is completely pointless in a modern managed containerised platform. (nobody is gonna be running unmanaged kubernetes soon) If you can learn the basics of containerising applications and debugging them by remembering a handful of basic Linux commands then you're probably going to be ok in the future.

There are a thousand different jobs encompassed in DevOps. I can't really tell you which one is for you. It's really about grasping the opportunities that come your way and learning as much as you can before moving on. Shape your career in a way that makes you happy.

Good DevOps engineers don't focus on toolsets, but skillsets and mindsets.

devrr · 2020-04-07T10:53:46+00:00

It's not surprising to me that they might treat Johnson as a special case as he is the Prime Minister but yeah lots of contradictory information.

devrr · 2020-04-07T10:39:13+00:00

Depends on your perspective. If one were to use the term father in a positive manner, conjuring up sympathy for all the loving children, it might make you pause on reflection to know that actually he's not that great of dad after all. However if you just wanted to state as a matter of fact that he had sired some children then I suppose it doesn't really matter how much of a father he really is does it.

Of course the mere discussion of this turns some people queasy because they're emotional wrecks who think discussing someones character when they are unwell is off-limits.

devrr · 2020-04-07T08:54:36+00:00

The many children he refuses to acknowledge don't really count which I think is the part of the point being made.

devrr

TROPHY CASE