Welcome to my encyclopedia of shitty code!
-
Squid: Configuring Whitelisted URLs
PROBLEM To configure a proxy server that only allows whitelisted URLs through. SOLUTION Install Squid… in this case, on Ubuntu. Ensure the service is running. Create a file ( /etc/squid/whitelist.txt ) containing the whitelisted URLs. In this example, only one URL is whitelisted. To simplify the configuration, backup /etc/squid/squid.conf and create the same file with… Read More…
-
Docker: Executing Startup Script When Running Container Interactively
PROBLEM When running the Docker container interactively (ex: docker run –rm -it myimage), you want to run a startup script every time. SOLUTION For Ubuntu, Debian and Centos images, write the startup script to /root/.bashrc: For Alpine image, it’s a little different because it uses Ash shell. Besides writing the startup script to /root/.profile, you… Read More…
-
Gone From Our Sight…
Gone from our sight, but never from our hearts. – Unknown Read More…
-
Git: Querying Tags Without Cloning the Repository
PROBLEM A typical way to get a list of tags from a repository is to clone it before running git tag:- versionsort.suffix=- ensures 1.0.0-XXXXXX comes after 1.0.0. To retrieve the latest tag:- While it works, it requires us to clone the repository first, and if we want to retrieve tags from multiple repositories, we are… Read More…
-
Nginx: Requesting and Configuring SSL Certificate
INTRO Step by step instructions for my future self to obtain the SSL certificate and to configure it in Nginx because my fragile little brain cannot retain them at the moment. INSTRUCTIONS Generate a private key and store it in a safe place. Generate a certificate signing request (CSR). Request a SSL certificate from Certificate… Read More…
-
GCP Logging Agent: Converting Unstructured to Structured Logging
BACKGROUND The GCP logging agent uses modified fluentd, which allows us to do either unstructured logging or structured logging. The structured logging relies on JSON payload while the unstructured logging can be any texts. The advantage of structured logging is we can leverage log features in GCP Log Viewer. UNSTRUCTURED LOGGING Installing the unstructured logging… Read More…
-
GCP Stackdriver Agent: “write_gcm: can not take infinite value” Error
PROBLEM When running the stackdriver-agent (v6.x), the log file contains the following errors:- SOLUTION By default, the swap metric is enabled. To verify, go to /etc/stackdriver/collectd.conf and locate the following configuration:- This error occurs because the VM instance does not have swap memory, hence this metric plugin tries to divide by 0. To verify the… Read More…
About Author
This author has 20+ years of experience in software engineering and cloud engineering. In an industry where knowledge becomes obsolete in the next three months, he learns anything that crosses his path indiscriminately. He floats from one technology to another like a moth and stings the problem sets like a mosquito. This author codes Java while drinking Espresso and writes Spock specifications while listening to Groovy beats. He masters Google Cloud Platform just like how he masters the art of predicting the movement of dark clouds over his backyard, where 60% of the time, he is right every time.
This author suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect, where he overestimates his competence and underestimates his ignorance. Technology buzzwords never faze him, for he does not know enough to be afraid of in the first place. GCP, GCS, GCR, GKE, GWT… everything sounds the same to him. He never fears acronyms, synonyms, or antonyms, for he has ChatGPT in his back pocket. This author is a jack of all trades but a master of none. He writes like he knows all the answers, yet he googles for better solutions from elsewhere. He fakes it until he makes it; if he doesn’t, that’s okay because he has the attention span of a squirrel. The blog posts are his buried walnuts, in case he needs them one day.
In conclusion, this author is full of something. He apologizes in advance if you are trying to solve your company’s real problems with his shitty solutions. There, he has successfully written paragraphs of nonsense because every professional blogging website needs a section about the author, with a too-cool-to-smile portrait staring sideways into the abyss.