Cleanup After Script Exit

Many of my scripts work with temporary files, usually relative to the scripts directory1, while at the same time using set -e to exit as soon as something fails.

In this scenario the script leaves behind these temporary files by default, which is not desireable.

We can however do a proper cleanup using the trap concept.

[Read More]

Vault CLI in Containers

In many CI/CD workflows interfacing with Hashicorp Vault is required.

However, their CLI (or better called unified binary1) is stupidly big with more than 400MB and they seem to have no interest in making it any smaller2.

This is often a undesired size increase, especially when optimizing for pull and run time in CI/CD.

This note outlines a solution that brings us down from 400MB+ on disk for vault to about 300KB using curl and jq.

[Read More]

Caddy: Manual Maintenance Mode

Coming from NGINX and others the concept of a maintenance mode that can be manually enabled is something I have used many times before.

With Caddy it is equally as easy, just using a less obvious syntax.

[Read More]

PicoCSS Sticky Footer

A sticky footer using [[picocss]]

html,
body {
  height: 100vh;
}

body > footer {
  position: sticky;
  top: 100vh;
}

HaProxy: Think About DNS Resolution

By default HAProxy resolves all DNS names in it’s config on startup and then never again.

This might cause issues down the road if DNS records, for example the ones for backends, change.

This section of the documentation is a good starting point as it describes IP address resolution using DNS in HAProy really well: https://docs.haproxy.org/3.0/configuration.html#5.3

Additionally this guide can also be helpful: https://www.haproxy.com/documentation/haproxy-configuration-tutorials/dns-resolution/

Renovate Bot: Limit Manager To Folder (Ignore Paths)

When using Renovate it can sometimes be required to run a specific manager only on a sub-set of the matching files. Naively you might expect this to be achieved by overwriting the fileMatch property of the manager. However this is not possible, as this property gets merged together, effectively meaning we can only append to it, not replace it. What I found working is an approach using either includePaths or ignorePaths, depending on the situation. [Read More]

Interactive Containers Cheatsheet

Most of these should work the same with any OCI compliant client. Tested with podman and docker, unless otherwise indicated.

# Run container interactively
podman run -it IMAGE:TAG SHELL

# With auto removing the container on exit
podman run -it --rm IMAGE:TAG SHELL

# With current working dir mounted to container
podman run -it -v ${PWD}:/tmp/host-dir/ IMAGE:TAG SHELL

# Detaching from the interactive session
# Keybinding: Ctrl+P, then Ctrl+Q

# Attaching to a container
podman attach "ID OR NAME"

Windows 11: Taskbar

For some reason Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided to no longer support moving the taskbar to other edges of the screen with Windows 11.

Using a utility like ExplorerPatcher the whole task bar can be reverted to something close to Windows 10, including moving it to all screen edges.

Wait for Port to Close Using Ansible

Sometimes it is useful to wait for a port to be closed, for example when updating an app that can’t always properly be shut down using other Ansible modules.

This can easily be achieved using the ansible.builtin.wait_for or ansible.builtin.win_wait_for module.

[Read More]

PicoCSS

My preferred minimalistic CSS framework, which is usually enough for small websites and even simple SaaS apps. It feels like a super power to write almost plain HTML and get something that looks presentable, supports dark mode and has just enough components to cover most use cases for me.

Navigate to Script Directory

Often times when writing scripts I want to reference files in the same directory, but keep the script portable in case it is part of a git repository being checked out somewhere else or just the folder getting moved.

[Read More]

My First Show Hacker News

Experiences & Statistics

A while back I built tech-playground.com, which I describe like this: A playground that runs your config on real servers for you, a bit like CodePen for server tech. At the time of writing this includes nginx, HAProxy, Jinja, Django Template Engine and Go Template. Having released the project to the public back in June of 2023, through my social media channels and some private groups, it got moderate usage - about 2-3 requests per day that were not me using it in my daily work. [Read More]