How to Manage GitHub Actions Environment Variables and Secrets

Hey guys,

Muhammed Ali just wrote a new blog post you may enjoy on the ATA blog.

"How to Manage GitHub Actions Environment Variables and Secrets"

Summary:
Learn different ways to save your GitHub Action environment variables and secrets you can use when required while working with GitHub Actions.

https://adamtheautomator.com/github-actions-environment-variables/

https://redd.it/ra753u
@r_devops

What do folks use to draw network architecture diagrams?

I learned about plantUML and nwdiag in particular in the not so distant past but never really used it. I like the idea of documenting things in code and just generate the images whenever they're needed; makes updating and revising things real easy.

What do you guys use at work?

https://redd.it/raccx8
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I have a CNAME pointing to our auth service, but customer wants a TXT verification record?

So I have a CNAME record: login.example.com \-> auth.com which works but our customer is requesting a TXT record for verification of DNS.

​

I don't know exactly what they're asking for and I'm not sure how I should go about doing this, anyone able to point to the right direction?

https://redd.it/rahiex
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How to apply the same resource-policy in all buckets

Hi, guys.

I have a lot of s3 buckets on which I have to apply the same policy. Is there any way to do all with less effort?

There is another point that confuse me. Why if this apply only bucket by bucket, there are examples where use two or more resources.

{

"Id": "ExamplePolicy",

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "AllowSSLRequestsOnly",

"Action": "s3:*",

"Effect": "Deny",

"Resource": [

"arn:aws:s3:::DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET",

"arn:aws:s3:::DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/*"

],

"Condition": {

"Bool": {

"aws:SecureTransport": "false"

}

},

"Principal": "*"

}

]

}

https://redd.it/rakd1g
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Opensource CA for client cert management

I am looking for a project that runs a CA to manage client certs and CRLs. I'd like to have a gui I can hand over to operations people that can generate client certs for customers and revoke them as needed. Any recommendations? Thanks in advance.

https://redd.it/razpsk
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So, it looks like AWS us-east-1 is experiencing issues…

https://downdetector.co.uk/status/aws-amazon-web-services/

Does that mean I can go home early for Christmas?

https://redd.it/rb27i2
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What are the biggest security challenges for DevOps?

Feel free to suggest other options for things that keep you awake at night (including pager calls).

View Poll

https://redd.it/raydwi
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How stressful is working in DevOps in comparison to other fields/industries? Survey

We had a very peculiar hypothesis the other day:

"Working in DevOps is MUCH more stressful than in any other IT-related field".

So, we came up with a survey to compare the level of stress in different industries, focusing on DevOps.

If you had 8-10 minutes to spare and would be able to answer a few "stress in the workplace"-related questions, it would mean the world to me.

Here's the survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfIgTcwb8kqTmPeYe-JlLLIcwRSTCbBBUHKaDBEukLASWPLiA/viewform?usp=sf\_link

Of course I'll share the results with the community as soon as we get them together :-)

I'd really appreciate any help you can provide.

https://redd.it/rb67mn
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Ansible, Terraform, Puppet, or Chef for Personal Project - No Devops Background

Context

Working on a side project involving GCP VM instances. I am looking to scale my project and starting to encounter bottlenecks/inefficiencies in my workflow. I have no DevOps experience so seeking guidance from gurus.

​

Background

Engineer proficient in Matlab
Familiar with basic coding from school but no work experience with other programming languages i.e., C, Java, etc

​

Infrastructure

4 google cloud VM instances using T4 GPUs on Windows 2016 Datacenter

2 from unique accounts, another 2 from one account.
Controlled by a personal Windows 10 computer

In the future, possibly scale to 20+ VM instances.

​

Starting Instances

I've been manually starting the instances using the GCP VM browser GUI and logging in manually using passwords.

I recently learned that the preferred login method is ssh. I'll be looking into that.
Sometimes the external IP changes so I must manually change the IP address on my rdp session.
Q1) Is there a way to better log into VM instances when the external IP changes?

​

Setting Up Instances

Each instance takes a while to setup i.e., installing software and configuring it.

Instances created from one account are manageable as I can create machine images with the same setup. However, instances on unique accounts are annoying because I must do a fresh setup.
I am constantly improving the workflow, so I am introducing new software. It's a pain to go through each instance and set it up, especially if the setup takes 10+ minutes each time.
Q2) Is there a better way to install software and configure amongst many/specific VM instances.

​

Main Workflow

On startup it runs a dumb exe that opens programs and clicks on buttons (dumb in the sense that it was created using a macro recorder)
User manually enters in information to a GUI based program (TCPViewer) for each vm instance.
User manually starts a script that opens and closes a program until a desired image is detected.
Once detected, a screenshot is taken and sent to a discord webhook.
Script pauses until user manually confirms a dialog box to continue the script.
Q3) Looking for a better way to send inputs/commands/information across multiple/specific vm instances.

​

Overseeing VM Instances

Viewing the vm instances, I have a rdp session for each instance partitioned in a wide screen monitor

This won't scale well if I significantly increase the number of instances.
Q4) Is there a better way to view many VM instances?

Q5) Is there a way to simultaneously control multiple VM instances with mouse & keyboard inputs?

​

Pain Points

Q1) Is there a way to better log into VM instances when the external IP changes?

Q2) Is there a better way to install software and configure amongst many/specific VM instances.

Q3) Looking for a better way to send inputs/commands/information across multiple/specific vm instances.

Q4) Is there a better way to view many VM instances?

Q5) Is there a way to simultaneously control multiple VM instances with mouse & keyboard inputs?

​

DevOps Software

From my scant google searching, I stumbled upon some tools that might solve my pain points; Ansible, Terraform, Puppet, Chef

This is a personal project so I can’t fork out enterprise $$$$.

Q6) Any suggestions on which tool best solves the above pain points that is free/cheap and easy-to-use?

https://redd.it/rb3b85
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Junior DevOps Engineer - Accenture Interview Preparation.

Hey DVs,

Was trying to see if anyone has ever interviewed with Accenture for this exact role or something similar? It’s going to be 45 min technical interview. To try and study up I found this online:

https://www.credosystemz.com/accenture-devops-interview-questions/

Would this happen to be accurate? Just don’t want to get so nervous. But this would be a break through as I do have some familiarity with DevOps more using DevOps tools but no so much the “building/scripting” part.

Thanks in advance for the advice! All is appreciated.

https://redd.it/rb98yo
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logging best practices

I need to improve logging of several microservices that do speak with other as well as other external services. So I wanted to ask you how should I go with logging the requests between the microservices that I have control over and the external ones so I have good observability over the whole picture.

Of course you have also other points that I should consider for the internal services including trace ids, the data to be logged etc.. I'd appreciate it and thanks.

PS: nodejs and ts are used for the ms and self-made middleware for the logging

https://redd.it/rbb92x
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Newly recruited DevOp Engineer

Hi there fellow DevOps Engineers!

I got a offer recently and i accepted it of course about a position for a DevOps Engineer role. Its abroad so they are offering also a relocation package and they seem to have a very good culture as company but still i feel so stressful because the truth its that i dont have any real experience with DevOps.
Yes i have good experience with Linux and command lines yes i know a bit of Ansible and Amazon Cloud and recently i have study a lot about Docker and Kubernetes but still if you throw me to a corporate environment of production i ll need some time to adjust.

The technical interview was quite easy and i had just to talk about Kubernetes and its Resources or Services and very general how it works and a bit of Docker...They asked me some commands of it and if i know also Python which i said yes but still i am just studding it so i am not a developer.

I have few weeks till i ll start this new job and i am trying to study as smart possible so i can catch up easy when the time comes but i ll appreciate any advice or info that they can help me further because the truth its that i am a bit under-qualified for this job...

Yes they are saying they are offering also some training etc but still...

I know also that they dont expect me to be a senior from day one and the position was more of midlevel but still...

I want to be make a good impression because they trusted me..I dont have done much jobs in my life expect some junior Linux System administration...

https://redd.it/rbbxgr
@r_devops

Any in-depth material to compare the different deployment methods and which deployment method is best suited for which situation

I understand blue green, rolling upgrades and canary. But there doesn't seem to be any in depth content for the pros and cons and advice for which deployment strategy to employ for which situation. Every article is just surface level. Blue green requires additional set of resources and have ease of roll back. Rolling update doesn't require additional resources etc..

Is there any reference material for more detailed analysis?

https://redd.it/rbddfq
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Expose your Kubernetes service

Is it possible to Expose your Kubernetes service with ingress controller without having dedicated domain or even without ingress controller?

https://redd.it/rbaymt
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Offline kubernetes

Anybody ever tried to setup this nightmare before? I hope somebody can give me some pointers on how to troubleshoot this. I've got a working online cluster. I export the downloaded images using podman. I reverted the controller/nodes using a snapshot. I imported the exported containers into the controller and tried a kubeadm init. It say the image names/version matched and attempted to create a new cluster but failed somewhere in the process. What I'm running into is when I use crictl or podman to try and list my containers or view logs there are none. I've confirmed the exporting is the cause with resetting my online cluster and importing the saved images. Can anyone point in the right direction on troubleshooting this? Either with what went wrong with exporting or why the containers aren't starting in the cluster. I've tried using podman/crictl logs function but there are no containers when kubeadm exits. Any containers kubeadm tries to create with the imported images are gone. Should my next attempt just be to find out where an online master saves the images and tarball all the files up?

https://redd.it/rbfx1j
@r_devops

How to build a self-service container management system for your team

Last chance to register for this live event! Discover how to build a self-service container management system for your team, featuring Portainer Technical Evangelist, Adolfo Delorenzo.

To succeed with containers, you need to give end-users secure access to the tools they need to do their job. Portainer makes it easy to set up and configure a complete service delivery engine.

In this session, you’ll learn more about -
1. Resource management
2. Resource assignment (namespaces, registries etc)
3. User roles
4. Cluster security


EVENT DETAILS
Wednesday 8th December
8am San Francisco
11am New York
1pm Rio De Janeiro
4pm London
5pm Berlin
7pm Moscow
Midnight Singapore


Register here
https://lnkd.in/d8ycgE7E

https://redd.it/rba3f7
@r_devops

Alternatives to Terragrunt

Hey guys, as us-east-1 is down, I'm looking to reduce the annoying repeated code from not being able to use variables in the backend.tf files. Are there any other tools aside from Terragrunt that could help with this?

https://redd.it/rb8r59
@r_devops

Did anyone else experience errors from the Jira API in the past 2 hours? (0200 - 0400 UTC)

Was getting an x509: certificate signed by unknown authority error.

Anyone else experienced the same?

https://redd.it/rbir80
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Azure AD Resiliency Deep Dive

I created a video to explore the resiliency of Azure AD. This includes what Microsoft does and what we can do as architects, as developers, as administrators to improve it.

https://youtu.be/Zk7A9U39JeI

Hope you find it interesting.

https://redd.it/razzzx
@r_devops

Is AWS hard to use or am i a total moron?

i am a web developer on a project with a lot of background tasks. i did some digging and found out about kubernetes jobs.

I tried to setup our background jobs to run on kubernetes on Google Kubernetes Engine. It took me about 30 minutes to set everything up (create a gke cluster, connect to it, create a cloud function to trigger job in the cluster, create a cloud build trigger to watch our repository and build image each time i push something).

Then i was sure that kubernetes jobs was working for us.

but AWS gave us bunch of credits (10k usd) so i had to move my setup to aws. Creating a cluster on aws took about 15 minutes (it hangs in "creating" phase for 15 minutes). then i couldnt connect to it because i created it with root user and had to read a bunch of documentation for a while. then i decided i shouldn't create cluster from UI with my root account so i deleted it and created cluster again with awscli. when i created cluster with awscli my root user didnt get any permissions for the cluster so i couldnt do anything from the ui.

all i wanted to do was create a damn cluster and connect to kubernetes api. why is this so hard? and aws cloud console in the web interface is not good for anything. i thought it would be like google's cloud shell, but no you still need a lot of mambo jambo to connect your own resources.

at this point i really dont understand why people keep using aws. i am planning to move to gcp despite having 6 month worth of credits in aws because i feel like i cant debug any problem in aws without having a lot of experience and knowledge about it and it scares me.

i had very similar experience with aws elasticbeanstalk. it supposed to be very easy to deploy your app but i spent couple hours and learn some aws scripting language to be able to change CORS settings for our api backend.

https://redd.it/rblcgh
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Using Older Oracle Linux Release With DNF Install/Update

I recently migrated our software from CentOS 8.2 to Oracle Linux 8.4 and everything was going smooth for a week or so. Then a new kernel was released (kernel-4.18.0-305.25.1.el8_4) which broke our dependencies, and then a new minor version (8.5) soon after. I need to lock the version to 8.4 to keep it as stable as possible which is seeming to be difficult with Oracle.

With CentOS I just set Artifactory to use the mirror for 8.2, but Oracle is either latest or 8.4 for BaseOS only (older kernel etc.) and I really don't want to have to deal with switching kernel versions for our product again. Anytime the kernel changes or any other major change happens, it breaks our ISO build process which is an absolute PITA to fix.

I've tried using --releasever=8.4 among many other things including -C option to prevent updating (cache gets cleared in docker multiple times due to nested containers), using --exclude=*el8.5* (still gets newer kernel than I'd like) and manually pruning el8_5 rpms in a textfile output by repoquery (causes dependency issues as it doesn't replace with el8_4 version).

I'd like to lock it to use 8.4 but get the latest packages for that version if possible without upgrading anything to Oracle 8.5. With 50-100 packages using something like Versionlock doesn't seem like the best/easiest/cleanest way to do it if there are other options.

Anyone have anything else I can try? Thanks!

-----

Edit:

I just found out you can Versionlock with a text file, so I think I'll just do that using all the packages with the versions I want until I can come up with something better.

https://redd.it/rblm5h
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