Zespre Chang starbops

Automation for the People

Long ago, the first time I read "The Pragmatic Programmer", I read some advice that really stuck with me.

"Don't Use Manual Procedures".

This in the chapter on Ubiquitous Automation. To summarize, they want you to automate all the things.

The trouble was that I hadn't much of an idea how to actually go

Don't use VPN services.

No, seriously, don't. You're probably reading this because you've asked what VPN service to use, and this is the answer.

Note: The content in this post does not apply to using VPN for their intended purpose; that is, as a virtual private (internal) network. It only applies to using it as a glorified proxy, which is what every third-party "VPN provider" does.

A Russian translation of this article can be found here, contributed by Timur Demin.
A Turkish translation can be found here, contributed by agyild.
There's also this article about VPN services, which is honestly better written (and has more cat pictures!) than my article.

CA - based on gnutls-bin

this directory holds CA key + wildcard certificates created for new infrastructure the CA key/cert is "ca-cert.pem/key"

TODO:

create scripts to re-generate client certificates based on NEW CA
develop procedure to generate client/server certs from template (partialy done)
develop procedure to generate clr files + revocate certificate + distribute them on public places

Here's a little walkthrough of how Yannick and I are using feature branches and pull requests to develop new features and adding them to the project. Below are the steps I take when working on a new feature. Hopefully this, along with watching the process on Github, will serve as a starting point to having everyone use a similar workflow.

Questions, comments, and suggestions for improvements welcome!

Start with the latest on master

When starting a new feature, I make sure to start with the latest and greatest codebase:

git checkout master

Bash Shortcuts

Moving

command	description
ctrl + a	Goto BEGINNING of command line

Combining two git repositories

Use case: You have repository A with remote location rA, and repository B (which may or may not have remote location rB). You want to do one of two things:

preserve all commits of both repositories, but replace everything from A with the contents of B, and use rA as your remote location
actually combine the two repositories, as if they are two branches that you want to merge, using rA as the remote location

NB: Check out git subtree/git submodule and this Stack Overflow question before going through the steps below. This gist is just a record of how I solved this problem on my own one day.

Before starting, make sure your local and remote repositories are up-to-date with all changes you need. The following steps use the general idea of changing the remote origin and renaming the local master branch of one of the repos in order to combine the two master branches.

	# Simple No-ip.com Dynamic DNS Updater
	#
	# By Nathan Giesbrecht (http://nathangiesbrecht.com)
	#
	# 1) Install binary as described in no-ip.com's source file (assuming results in /usr/local/bin)
	# 2) Run sudo /usr/local/bin/noip2 -C to generate configuration file
	# 3) Copy this file noip2.service to /etc/systemd/system/
	# 4) Execute `sudo systemctl daemon-reload`
	# 5) Execute `sudo systemctl enable noip2`
	# 6) Execute `sudo systemctl start noip2`

	# User ssh configuration file ~/.ssh/config
	# Gist https://gist.github.com/terrywang/3997931
	# man ssh_config for more information
	# Inspired by the blog post below to fight the NSA
	# https://stribika.github.io/2015/01/04/secure-secure-shell.html

	# Github needs diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1 some of the time but not always
	# Host github.com
	# KexAlgorithms [email protected],diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1,diffie-hellman-group14-sha1

	# Ubuntu Server automated installation
	# by Scott Lowe ([email protected])

	d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US
	d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
	d-i keyboard-configuration/layoutcode string us
	d-i netcfg/choose_interface select eth0
	d-i netcfg/get_hostname string hostname
	d-i netcfg/get_domain string domain.com
	d-i netcfg/wireless_wep string

	# Assume we are in your home directory
	cd ~/

	# Clone the repo from GitLab using the `--mirror` option
	$ git clone --mirror [email protected]:mario/my-repo.git

	# Change into newly created repo directory
	$ cd ~/my-repo.git

	# Push to GitHub using the `--mirror` option. The `--no-verify` option skips any hooks.