test please delete

[BR14]

Useful bit of housekeeping done

Not around the actual house; that would be far too much hassle. But I have a bunch of Chef cookbooks for configuring various servers, which I'd initially had in one Git repository because it seemed, a couple of years ago, to make things easier when using AWS Opsworks. However, since then I've learned ways of working with both Opsworks and Chef that make it much easier if they each live in their own repository.

So I've gone through one-by-one, extracting them to their own repositories while keeping their history, created a GitHub repo for each one, and pushed them all up.

Just a bit more work to be done around the tooling to smooth out a couple of remaining wrinkles in the workflow, and I might then get around to creating something new

[DoctorStrangelove]

WBR14S.

[NickFitz]

Infrastructure as code, don'cha know

A Chef cookbook is a library of functions (written in Ruby) that configure a server. So, for example, when working on the forum fixes, I wrote a Chef cookbook that set up a server running the same version of Linux as the site runs on, installed the same versions of MySQL and PHP, installed the forum software, set up the Apache web server, all that kind of thing. Then I could execute the cookbook to create a virtual machine running on my Mac, and have an equivalent of the live forum to work on without any chance of breaking anything. I could throw that VM away, then start another one up, and it would be guaranteed to be configured exactly the same.

Then when admin and I were dealing with the database character encoding shenanigans, I was able to run the same cookbook on AWS to create a server there, meaning admin could log into it at the same time as me so we could work together. And both he and I could check it all out and make sure everything was all right, because it's just another website that only we know the IP address of.

If something had messed up, I could have just trashed that server and started another which would be created in a pristine state so we could have another go. (In fact, I started and trashed about six or seven CUK servers on Saturday, just to make sure everything was ready and to try some experiments.)

And as such cookbooks are just code, they can be kept in a version control system such as Git. This means that, for example, one could add new functionality to a working app server and, if it broke everything, just roll back to the previous version of the cookbook and have everything up and running again exactly as it was before while you worked out what had gone wrong.

It's quite nifty really

[BR14]

I'll take your word for it

I'm just a lowly Z/systems engineer, honest

[NickFitz]

I'll take your word for it

I'm just a lowly Z/systems engineer, honest

Chef to Support IBM’s Linux on z Systems - Chef Blog

[BR14]

Chef to Support IBM’s Linux on z Systems - Chef Blog

I Don't do Applications, - thats for pondlife developers

[NickFitz]

By emptying various hidden caches and removing stuff like virtual machines I don't need, I've reclaimed a further 130GB or so of space on my MacBook Air

Some of the vagrant-berkshelf caches apparently dated back to 2014

So not only were they definitely no longer of any use, they didn't even contain any code that had ever been executed on this machine - they'd come along for the ride when I imported my stuff from the previous MBA

[SimonMac]

By emptying various hidden caches and removing stuff like virtual machines I don't need, I've reclaimed a further 130GB or so of space on my MacBook Air

Some of the vagrant-berkshelf caches apparently dated back to 2014

So not only were they definitely no longer of any use, they didn't even contain any code that had ever been executed on this machine - they'd come along for the ride when I imported my stuff from the previous MBA

The joys of time machines, I’ve found some really random hidden stuff on my new MacBook Pro from laptops gone by

[DoctorStrangelove]

X7 home.

It was full

I had to sit at the back over the engine.

And nearly brained myself because of the low ceiling height.

Tea/dinner was M&S battered haddock, an unexpectedly generous piece which might explain the less than generous other pieces.

It was very nice.

Uncertain as to what this evening's epic is to be after the imminent shower.

I shall update following the <intersticely paused hiatus>

Half pissed now on port. <hic>

In other news, one of my mates is being made redundant (compulsory).

And he's at least 10 years younger than me.

It may be significant that he doesn't sprechen zie Cymraeg unlike those who aren't in the firing line.

This last is, of course, purely a coincidence.

[DoctorStrangelove]

The joys of time machines, I’ve found some really random hidden stuff on my new MacBook Pro from laptops gone by

Did that yesterday with the discovery of a directory full of porn on a 256Mb pendrive.