Installing Wget via Xcode on Mac OSX

April 15, 2020

Install Xcode

First, you will need to ensure that Xcode is installed, and you can install it via the App Store here https://apps.apple.com/au/app/xcode/id497799835?mt=12

1	xcode-select --install

Installing Wget

Next, we need to get the latest copy of Wget. We will use curl for this command.

1 2	cd ~/Downloads curl -O https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-latest.tar.gz

We will extract the tar.gz

1	tar -zxvf wget-latest.tar.gz

Change your directory to the wget folder that was extracted. Then configure it.

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cd wget-1.20.3

ln -s /usr/local/opt/openssl /usr/local/ssl

./configure -with-ssl=openssl -with-libssl-prefix=/usr/local/ssl

Now we need to make wget, and then install it.

1 2	make make install

Let’s test it to make sure it works

1	wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-latest.tar.gz

devops, mac, systemadmin, wget, xcode

DevOps, System Administration

How to loop blocks of code in Ansible

June 20, 2019

Eric Anderson

In this blog post I will cover how we can loop groups/blocks of tasks within Ansible. Currently using - block: will not work. However you can use - include_tasks: my_grouped_tasks.yml to loop a group of tasks. Within that tasks file you can use {{ item }} on each of your tasks and It will copy from the item during the loop. At Avi Networks we’ve used this for much of our internal task groupings which have items that depend on creation of each other and cannot independently run loops without causing issues.

In the following I have some visual representations to show what the goal origianlly was, and how you can accomplish it.

PROBLEM:

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# playbook.yml

---

- hosts: localhost

connection: local

vars:

ip_addresses:

- 10.0.0.10

- 10.0.0.11

tasks:

- block:

- name: Copy using inline content to first file

copy:

content: |

ip_address={{ item }}

dest: /etc/some_config_file.conf

- name: Copy using inline content to second file

copy:

content: |

ip_address={{ item }}

dest: /etc/some_other_config_file.conf

loop: "{{ ip_addresses }}"

SOLUTION:

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# playbook.yml

---

- hosts: localhost

connection: local

vars:

ip_addresses:

- 10.0.0.10

- 10.0.0.11

tasks:

- name: deploy files with network address in them

include_tasks: network_files.yml

loop: "{{ ip_addresses }}"

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# network_files.yml

---

- name: Copy using inline content to first file

copy:

content: |

ip_address={{ item }}

dest: /etc/some_config_file.conf

- name: Copy using inline content to second file

copy:

content: |

ip_address={{ item }}

dest: /etc/some_other_config_file.conf

This will effectively do a loop over your multiple tasks. I know it’s a bit annoying, but this is currently the only working solution to looping over blocks of tasks.

ansible, blocks, devops, loops

Ansible, DevOps

1 Comment

Integrating Zabbix w/Slack for Channel Notifications

January 16, 2019

Eric Anderson

I’ve been using Slack and Zabbix now for a few years, and figured since there’s not too many guides out there on how to integrate the two easily. I know there are a few examples so far, but this is what’s worked best for me.

First I use this script, and put it in your alertscripts directory, ex. /usr/lib/zabbix/alertscripts .

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#!/usr/bin/python

import sys

import yaml

from slackclient import SlackClient

slack_config_file = '/etc/zabbix/slack.yml'

with open(slack_config_file, 'r') as ymlfile:

slack_config = yaml.load(ymlfile)

slack = SlackClient(slack_config['slack_api_token'])

channel = sys.argv[1]

message = "```Status: %s\n%s```" %(sys.argv[2], sys.argv[3])

response = send_slack_message(channel, message)

if response["ok"]:

print("Message posted successfully: " + response["message"]["ts"])

# If the message failed, check for rate limit headers in the response

elif response["ok"] is False and response["headers"]["Retry-After"]:

# The `Retry-After` header will tell you how long to wait before retrying

delay = int(response["headers"]["Retry-After"])

print("Rate limited. Retrying in " + str(delay) + " seconds")

time.sleep(delay)

slack.api_call("chat.postMessage", channel=channel, text=message)

Notice there’s no field for credentials. That’s because over time I found it easier to deploy with a configuration file that was in yaml format.

Make sure you create an API token for slack by creating a Slack App, then using it’s Verification Token. Hopefully in the future I revisit this and make use of the Client ID, Client Secret, Signing Secret configuration.

So to provide that file we need to create the following in your zabbix configuration directory ex. /ext/zabbix/slack.yml .

1 2	# Zabbix - Slack Configuration slack_api_token: {{ zabbix_slack_api_token }}

This makes it easier at least for me to deploy and separate configuration from the script itself.

Next steps include creating the Slack Media Type.

Navigate to Administration > Media types

Select “Create media type”, and fill out the following:

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Name: Slack

Type: Script

Script name: zabbix_slack.py

Script parameters:

{ALERT.SENDTO}

{ALERT.SUBJECT}

{ALERT.MESSAGE}

Enabled: Checked

Don’t forget to save!

Your first value is going to be “Channel” the rest fill in the message details.

devops, notifications, operations, ops, slack, zabbix

Zabbix

Using Avi Ansible modules to Patch your Avi Controller

January 16, 2019

Eric Anderson

So I’ve been working for a company called Avi Networks for a while now. Working on customer deployments, internal devops automation, customer migrations, and tons of other projects including getting Avi to have the largest module library available out of any load balancer on the market. Well, today were going to show how to use Avi’s Ansible modules to patch your Avi Controller. It’s easy, here’s how.

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---

- name: Patch Controller | Upload package on controller

avi_api_fileservice:

avi_credentials: "{{ avi_credentials }}"

upload: true

timeout: 300

path: /patch_pkgs/

file_path: "{{ patch_path }}"

- name: Patch Controller | Upgrade controller

avi_api_session:

avi_credentials: "{{ avi_credentials }}"

http_method: post

timeout: 300

path: cluster/upgrade/

data:

image_path: controller://upgrade_pkgs/{{ patch_path|basename }}

force: true

disruptive: true

patch: true

- name: Patch Controller | Wait for the Controller Upgrade to finish

avi_api_session:

avi_credentials: "{{ avi_credentials }}"

http_method: get

timeout: 300

path: cluster/upgrade/status

register: upgrade_status

until: upgrade_status.obj.result == "SUCCESS"

retries: 120

delay: 10

This will also wait for the controller to come back up 🙂

avi, avinetworks, devops, network, patching

DevOps

DevOps Really…..

March 1, 2016

Eric Anderson

What is DevOps?

DevOps is not one thing, its a plethora of ideas, and practices that have revolutionized Operations and the Release Process. It’s a culture change. DevOps is using development practices and applying them to operations. Then using those methods to automate everything. It starts to join both Operations and Development together, consider it as a hybrid, I mean it is DevOps, it’s the joining of Development and Operations. DevOps was created to empower developers to quickly integrate and build environments to test code, and allows the operations teams to quickly deploy and monitor applications just as fast as the developers and QA teams can approve it, thus leading to Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment. DevOps teams that I have started tend to do well with another great practice called Scrum, which are just as important to operations as it is to development, if you don’t believe me try it for a month, then see how effective your team starts becoming. As you may have noticed many of these things are part of Agile practices, if you aren’t familiar hopefully reading and following this blog you will be. DevOps and Agile go hand in hand. DevOps helps reach the goals of Agile effectively, also much easier. You don’t want Operations to be a blocker….that looks bad…wait…it looks really bad.

Some extremely popular concepts come into play here.

Scrum
Operations Early
Infrastructure as Code
Automate Everything
Test Driven Development for Ops (CircleCI, TravisCI, etc.)
Integrated Operations
Pets vs. Cattle

Over the next few weeks I will cover all of these, and hopefully more. There’s just way too much to type up in one blog post, and all of it is important (I mean there’s entire books written about this stuff, there’s even series of books written about these practices).