Build servers and source control are like the peanut-butter and jelly of devops; they just go together. That would make us suspect that it shouldn't be that big of a deal to setup push notifications to trigger builds, right? My GitLab instance shows that it will gladly trigger a build via web hook when it receives a new commit. My Bamboo shows that it will just as cheerfully scan for changes when it gets a web request.…

It's not Monday, so why am I posting something new? Just a quick announcement: I've migrated joshuarogers.net from http to https. http://joshuarogers.net now just returns a 302 Redirect to the appropriate https page.…

Last week we started looking at the web proxy Fiddler, or the “Fiddler Web Debugger” as it unfortunately bills itself. While the name is accurate, I can't help but feel that it is a bit of an understatement, much like calling the Hulk “somewhat tempermental”1, or MacGyver “good at assembling things”. Sure, Fiddler is a debugger, but it's less of a simple tool and more the web equivalent of a swiss army knife that contains an entire Home Depot2.…

If you've done any amount of web development on Windows, you've probably used a program called “Fiddler” a few times. Fiddler is a small proxy server that allows you to see all of the requests made by your system. Sadly, for most people, I'd guess that that is all that Fiddler is. It's a shame because Fiddler offers up so much more power than that. So, let's fix this. For the next several weeks, we're going to explore some of the under noticed functionality that Fiddler provides us.…

Introduction The concept of dependencies seems rather straight forward. If “Thing A” depends on “Thing B”, then we can understand that we can't possibly use “Thing A” until we have “Thing B”. It's not even a development principle really, it's more of an “even small kids realize this” kind of principle. It's sort of a universal given, unless you happen to be Gallifreyan. Taking that a step further, if you want me to make an application for you using some web services you've published, it might be prudent to give me access to those services, right?…

If you've spent any time looking at the items that I post, you've probably gathered that I'm a developer, but that I have a rather strange habit of not talking about code. I talk about build automation, source control, compiler output, virtualization, proxy servers, and continuous integration, but I barely talk about matters of code. So if I love coding, why do I spend my time talking talking about DevOps rather than code?…

The drunken scribblings of a mad man. Possibly some kind of ancient cuneiform. A random page out of the Middle Earth phone directory. Whatever it was, it was the server password, not that it matters now: the little Post-It note reminder had long since thrown itself into the waste paper bin. Somewhere a landfill sat, knowing our password and chuckling away at our misfortune. It seems that our hero is in a bit of trouble, if only slightly self-inflicted.…

If you've spent any amount of time running a Linux machine on a Windows network, you've probably had the need to share files between the two. This seems like it should be a trivial matter, but as often as not, it seems to produce bouts of sheer insanity. The problem usually lies in the realization that Windows uses SMB and that Linux tends toward transit over SSH (rsync, scp, sftp.)…

The universe is most surprisingly finite, it seems. Technology even more so. A few posts ago, I lamented that n IP addresses always need to be split n+1 ways. If it is true with IP addresses, it's twice as true with hardware. Given three servers, there will be demand for, at minimum, five. Certainly there must be a way for us to sneak out of this problem too, right? We could always just install multiple sets of services on the same bare metal.…

Alright Internet, we need to talk. You've grown up quite a bit over the last several years, but I've never taken the time to have thetalk with you. You know the one. The safe passwords talk. Your requirements for a minimum length, and a diversity of characters in passwords made many classes of brute force attack more difficult. You've gotten a bit carried away though, it seems. You're actually making the internet a more untrustable place.…