Marco Kamner

Given the recent rise in text-based language models, sometimes called AI tools, I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences in using them, especially in the context of blogging.

There are many ways to run your own server, from setting up a Raspberry Pi on your desk to renting a physical server at a provider.

In this post, we will focus on setting up a virtual server with DigitalOcean, which is one of the easiest ways to get started.

In the world of technology, we are moving further and further away from operating directly on servers, but there are still significant benefits to be gained from running a personal server.

I have been running some kind of personal server for many years now and I strongly believe anyone working in technology can benefit greatly from doing so. Here’s why:

In this post I will go over the MVP building phase of Honeypot Login, from idea to launched product and what my next steps will be.

The 1Password CLI op works either in connection with a client app, like on the Mac, or standalone, useful on a server.

# Login
eval $(op signin)

# Get favorites
op item list --vault "Private" --favorite

# Get a specific item
op item get <ID>

# !! Important: Sign out at the end
op signout

Some helper functions

Helpers to more easily work with the op cli.

1login() {
    eval $(op signin)
}

alias 1signout="op signout"

1search() {
    term=$1
    if [ -n "$2" ]
    then
      vault="$2"
    else
      vault="Private"
    fi
    echo "Searching for '$term' in vaut '$vault'"
    op item list --vault "$vault" --long | grep "$term" --ignore-case
}

1get() {
    op item get $*
}

Things I do to be a good code reviewee.

A simple Python client to interact with ArgoCD.

The problem

If you use ssh-agent with an encrypted ssh key it does not persist when you open a new terminal window.

The solution

Use keychain instead.

1. Install

   sudo apt install keychain
   

2. Add to your shells rc file, eg. .bashrc or .zshrc

   # Repeat this line for all keys you want to unlock and use this way
   /usr/bin/keychain -q --nogui $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa
   source $HOME/.keychain/wsl-sh
   

3. Unlock your keys on shell startup and enjoy

Running any kind of personal infrastructure sometimes requires your attention based on certain events or failure states, no matter how much you automate tasks.

Over the years I have used E-Mail, Telegram bots and a variety of other tools for this purpose. However all of them have the drawback that they mix with other kinds of information and are not easilly usable in scripts.

Sometimes you may want to commit only the files you have changed and not any newly created files, this can easily be achieved by this command: git commit -a

Export a CSV formatted report of projects in user-namespace on a GitLab instance.

This is especially useful if you think about limiting or disabling this feature.

The other day I was playing around in WSL with a colleague of mine and we did this:

The problem: Docker itself can’t be run in WSL2 as it requires the docker daemon, usually run though systemd.

The solution: Podman works just fine and can easily be installed, although we will need to configure some things to make it work properly.