Posts in Random
Switching to molecule-plugins
- 28 April 2023
Ansible roles are a great way to organize and share your infrastructure-as-code between projects. Those roles can be tested with Molecule, which is a great tool to test your roles against multiple platforms and Ansible versions. Running these tests in a CI/CD pipeline is a great way to ensure that your roles are working as expected and that you don’t introduce regressions.
These tests can be executed in different forms, but the most common one is to use Docker containers. This is one of the configurations for Molecule, and it works great. The example workflow below shows how to run Molecule tests in a GitHub Actions pipeline:
How to manage your dotfiles
- 21 May 2022
On Unix systems, dotfiles are files that are stored in the home directory and contain configuration information. The XDG Base Directory Specification already splitted them in three categories and most applications how store their files in .cache, .config, and .local based on their purpose. And a small subset of application sticks to the root of the home directory like the most shells. In most cases you don’t need to manage your dotfiles across multiple machines, but for the ones you want to manage across multiple machines or want to be present in your devcontainer, you can use a utility like RCM and a dotfiles repository.
The first step is to create a repository on GitHub and we use the GitHub command-line tool for this, but it can also be done via the web interface. After creating the repository, it is renamed to .dotfiles at the root of the user’s home directory and makes it hidden.
Archiving YouTube
- 01 October 2020
YouTube is one of the biggest video streaming sites on the Internet and you can find a video for basically everything on it. But in some cases, you can’t find a video anymore or it has been taken down or set to private for some reason. Having a local copy for personal or legal purposes can be useful, but by default YouTube only allows creators to export their content.
With the tool youtube-download, you can download the audio and/or video, and also subtitles in the languages you desire. The example below downloads the audio and video, and subtitles in English and Dutch. Also, it limits the frame size to 1920×1080 and stores everything in an MP4 container.
Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet
- 16 September 2016
Bruce Schneier has an interesting article about a development that brings back memories from when Stuxnet was discovered.
Over the past year or two, someone has been probing the defenses of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet. These probes take the form of precisely calibrated attacks designed to determine exactly how well these companies can defend themselves, and what would be required to take them down. We don’t know who is doing this, but it feels like a large a large nation state. China and Russia would be my first guesses.