Software Engineer

Jason Hancock

last update:

I’m going to assume that we need to sync some files to a remote server called sftp.example.com as the user exampleUser and use a private ssh key located at /tmp/exampleUser_id_rsa First, create an ssh config file. I’m going to put it at /tmp/exampleUser_ssh_config with the following contents: IdentityFile /tmp/exampleUser_id_rsa Then, initiate your sftp command, but add the -F flag: sftp -F /tmp/exampleUser_ssh_config exampleUser@sftp.example.com Why would you do this? Perhaps you don’t want to create a user called exampleUser on your system, or perhaps you don’t want to use your default ssh key for the file transfer.

I needed to extend the sudo password timeout for a group of users on our machines at work. Sebastien Wains had a great article on how to do it for individual users, but it didn’t cover groups. Here is how you would set the timeout to 60 minutes for a group of users called thegroup: Defaults:%thegroup timestamp_timeout=60

I’ve been doing a fair amount of work on my home network/servers lately. It started innocently enough with wanting some place to test puppet without breaking out development environment at work. I set puppet up on my server at home. I realized that there were several non-trivial configurations that I had applied to that server that I didn’t want to loose should I have to rebuild or migrate that server, so I started puppetizing everything.

If you use nfs, you’re probably familiar with the showmount command. It usually results in output like this: $ showmount -a All mount points on nfs.example.com: 192.168.0.5:/nfs/path1 192.168.0.5:/nfs/some/other/path 192.168.0.6:/nfs/path1 This is fine and dandy with only a couple of machines, but with 50 or 100 different machines in a complex network, using ip addresses can get a bit frustrating….if only there was a way to get the hostname instead of the IP.

horchata

Found a decent recipe for horchata: 2 cups of milk 1 cup uncooked white long-grain rice 5 cups water 1⁄2 tablespoon vanilla extract 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon 2⁄3 cup sugar Blend the water and rice in a blender for about a minute. Let the water and rice mixture stand at room temperature for 45 minutes to an hour. Strain out the rice from the mixture so you are left with the rice water.

Puppet 25.4 and 25.5 leaks MySQL connections when using stored configurations and using MySQL as the database backend. This is a well known issue and appears to have been recently fixed for an upcoming release. I want to implement stored configurations, but I can’t have leaking MySQL connections in production, I don’t want to wait until the fix gets released, nor do I want to integrate the patch and build my own RPM.

one month old

Dexter is one month old today. It has been an amazing experience. The baby announcements will be in the mail soon….expect them in your mailbox sometime next week.

dexter

sudo /etc/init.d/dexter start Starting dexter [FAILED ]sudo echo"birth-type=cesarean">> /etc/sysconfig/dexter sudo /etc/init.d/dexter start Starting dexter [OK ]sudo /etc/init.d/dexter status Process "Dexter Brian Hancock"started at 2010-08-17 19:55:00 Length 22inches Weight 7lbs. 15.4 oz.

interviews

Had a good interview yesterday with a company in Beverly Hills. The drive would suck, but it might be a good opportunity if they decide to call me back. Have a phone interview set up for tomorrow with another company in Culver City. Hopefully that one will also go well. Laura is getting pretty anxious about giving birth and I don’t blame her. We’re both ready for this part of the journey to be over so we can begin to get to know our son.

I entered the workforce shortly after I turned sixteen years old. Since that time, I have never been without employment. The company I was working for closed shop today and laid everyone off. I’m feeling depressed, anxious, and slightly liberated. The part I’m the most nervous about is I am expecting the arrival of my first child within two weeks and this sudden lack of employment has called my health insurance situation into question.