Using the Git tag as a version number via PSake

April 4, 2015 - [5 mins read]

I have been spending most of my time splitting up a monolithic system into separately deployable NuGet packages. The system is monolithic in the sense that there are multiple domains that are deployed as independent WCF services, but all reference the same set of base projects. This means that all the source sits in the same repository. The first step has been to move these common libraries into NuGet packages served from a local network folder and referencing them in each of these solutions as a package rather than project.

External MSBuild for WebApi in VS 2013 fails

March 30, 2015 - [1 min read]

Earlier today, I ran into the following error when trying to build a new WebApi solution using the command-line and MSBuild: This is odd as v11 is Visual Studio 2012 and don’t even have 2012 installed. The issue manifests when you try to build the solution with: msbuild /t:Clean;Rebuild /v:q /p:Configuration=$projectConfig $source_dir\$projectName.sln /p:Platform="Any CPU" The cause and solution is discussed on Stack Overflow - TL;DR version is this is due to adding the feature for older versions of Visual Studio, but then not setting the correct version number.

Git checkout error for public repo

February 27, 2015 - [1 min read]

One of those djissis duh moments - trying to check out a public git repo, but failing due to authentication … git clone git@github.com:cobusbernard/Scripts.git Cloning into 'Scripts'... Warning: Permanently added the RSA host key for IP address '192.30.252.131' to the list of known hosts. Permission denied (publickey). fatal: Could not read from remote repository. Please make sure you have the correct access rights and the repository exists. So I checked my ssh setup / keys, but nothing in there looks dodgy:

Replacing mdadm drive

February 19, 2015 - [6 mins read]

Update 2016-01-09: In the previous version, I never added the command for creating the array and since then I needed it for a new server. When the array starts rebuilding, it will look like there is a failed drive: this is normal. When it builds from scratch, it is actually doing the rebuild process and will indicate a failed drive until the array is rebuilt. # mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=5 --raid-devices=3 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 # cat /proc/mdstat md0 : active raid5 sdd1[3] sdc1[1] sdb1[0] 4294702080 blocks super 1.

Moving DNS to Amazon Route 53, Dynamic Updates

February 17, 2015 - [4 mins read]

In my previous post, I set up OpenVPN on my home network and everything was awesome. Until this morning: I could not connect to my VPN. I had forgotten to set up some kind of dynamic DNS updater for it. That should be easy enough, I had previously done this using DynDNS. Only problem was that the service is no longer free. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem as I have a couple of my own domains - yes, I will one day still get round to finishing my pet project ‘Tinkle Tones’ ;)

Home VPN with OpenVPN

February 14, 2015 - [2 mins read]

Having just set up an external VPN to pretend to be in the US, I wanted one to get into my home network as well when on the road. I ran into the issue while in the USA recently where I was unable to purchase Steam games as their servers picked up that I was in the States, but my payment method was South African. Never thought I would need to spoof my own IP Address to pretend to be in South Africa.

Personal VPN - OpenVPN in Docker on DigitalOcean

February 13, 2015 - [3 mins read]

I was playing around on a random site today, when I received the message This content is not available in your country yet. As a South African, we run into this a lot as our online presence it not that large and most international companies do not feel it is financially viable to run their services here. So I decided it is time to get a VPN going to avoid this.

Converting Putty keys to OpenSSH

February 8, 2015 - [1 min read]

I was playing with Docker yesterday and needed to convert a key that I had been using in Windows with Putty for a while. First attempt with puttygen didn’t work at all, then I found this Stack Overflow post, copying the details here so I know where to find it next time :) To install the required tools, use Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install putty-tools OSX: brew install putty After the required tools have been installed, use the following 2 commands to extract the private and public portion of the key:

Basic Jekyll GitHub Blog

January 26, 2015 - [5 mins read]

So I finally got round to sorting out the tech blog. I chose to use Jekyll rather than WordPress as I didn’t want to deal with constant updates, security vulnerabilities and backing up of the site. Jekyll generates a static site based on the posts created, but still has the advantages of a CMS like tags and categories. Posts are written using Markdown in a plain text file, making it very easy to do the formatting.

Linux SSH rate limiting

January 28, 2013 - [1 min read]

Everyone who has an SSH port open to the world knows the amount of brute force attempts you will get. It doesn’t matter if you only accept keys, the script kiddies will still try. Easiest fix for this is rate limiting: you can only attempt to login 3 times per 10 minutes. This does not include successful logins, only failed ones. To do this, use the following IPTables commands: sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --set --name SSH --rsource sudo iptables -A INPUT -m recent --update --seconds 600 --hitcount 4 --rttl --name SSH --rsource -j DROP sudo iptables-save > /etc/iptables_rules Add the following to /etc/rc.