The Grinnell College Digital Library Application Developer's Blog
Call it The GCDLADB if you like.
About Me 1 min read May 23, 2019 | Updated: Oct 6, 2021 08:07
I am DevOps and I love Hugo… in spite of the fact that the logo colors clash with my blog theme. 😄 More About Me What more do you need to know? Ok, so my official title at Grinnell College is actually Digital Library Applications Developer. ...
Removing Traefik's Weak Cipher Suites 2 min read May 10, 2019 | Updated: Sep 4, 2019 15:28
Most of the servers I deploy to and manage here at Grinnell College are now “Dockerized”, and all of those use Traefik to manage traffic, of course. Before a web app or server can be opened for access to the world here, it has to pass a vulnerability scan, and I’m not privy to the specifics of that scan. However, I do know that “weak cipher suites” are a common source of failure among my newest servers. It took a couple of weeks of searching, and trial/error solution attempts to identify the nature and specific source of these weaknesses, and to eradicate them. ...
Developing This Blog 1 min read May 20, 2019
I realized today that I previously documented how to “begin” a blog like this using Docksal to assist, but I failed to remind myself how to make structural/programming changes to it now that it is well-established. Since I’d like to add BleveSearch to this blog, and similar sites, I need to make some “structural” changes, and I want to do so locally before pushing them to production. The process of making updates like this is basically: Open a local terminal and navigate to this project. ...
Search Me? 2 min read May 19, 2019
Yes, yes you can! It’s not “done” yet (is anything ever really done?) but you can now ‘search’ the content, titles, and tags of this blog! For now just visit the new /search page and enter the term(s) you would like to look for. I’ll explain this better once it is “done”, I hope. This wonderful addition to the site comes to you compliments of this awesome gist, with a little hacking by your’s truly. There’s just one problem, perhaps summarized in my comment on the gist posted moments ago. ...
Updating This Blog with Atom 1 min read May 16, 2019
So I have my Atom config stored in a Github repo so that I can easily keep Atom in-sync between the various platforms I use here and at home. Today I added the atom-shell-commands package to my Atom config and have configured it with a “command” that takes care of updating my blog when I add a new post (like this one). The command configuration in my .atom/config.cson looks like this: "atom-shell-commands": commands: [ { name: "Update My Blog" command: ". ...
Testing SSL Vulnerabilities 1 min read May 15, 2019
This is a subject that’s grabbed my attention recently here at Grinnell College. Specifically, I wanted a way to run my own SSL vulnerability scans of servers inside the campus firewall, something that outside agents could not do effectively. About a month ago I came upon a tool for this task, testssl.sh, and I’ve installed it on my Docker staging server, DGDockerX. The tool resides in the islandora user’s home directory on DGDockerX and I’m able to run it from a terminal open to that node like so: ...
docker-bootstrap Workflow 2 min read May 15, 2019
This post is as much about adding an image to a “live” Markdown document (this blog post), as it is about my docker-bootstrap workflow. The workflow is perhaps best described and summarized in a diagram I recently created, and exported to a PDF. It should be self-explanatory, and with any luck you can see it below… Posting an “inline” image into a Markdown document is pretty easy using syntax like this:  But, does that work if the “image” is a PDF? ...
Bleve Search - Note to Self 1 min read May 14, 2019
Had a conversation about lots of topics this afternoon and bumped into bleve, along the way, including a discussion about adding search capability to a Hugo site. bleeeve is based on the Go programming language, as is Hugo, so I hope implementation is super simple. I think in the near future I’ll have a look at adding such a feature to this blog, and perhaps to the Visualizing Abolition and Freedom site too! In conversation we also bumped into Lunr JS and I might consider attempting to implement it instead. ...
Bypassing Docker Hub Auto-Build 3 min read Nov 29, 2018
One of the really cool things I like about the workflow documented in Juan Treminio’s blog post is the ability to setup auto-build in Docker Hub. Unfortunately, that comes at a cost. Docker Hub’s ‘free’ account option will support only one parallel auto-build, so if you have more than one project you’d like to auto-build at Docker Hub you’ll need to pay for an account. The current cost is, I think, $7/month for an account that will handle up to 5 parallel auto-build projects. ...
Pushing This Blog to Production 4 min read Nov 20, 2018
Juan Treminio’s blog post does a nice job of covering the steps necessary to engage Watchtower, GitHub, and an automated build configuration in Docker Hub. The entire process can be used to push your initial Hugo project to production, watch for changes in your GitHub project repo, compile the changes, build a new Docker image, and automatically push it to production. Like I said, it’s an awesome workflow, and there’s no need to repeat much of it here. However, I will provide some insight into issues we encountered, and the solutions we employed. ...