The Grinnell College Digital Library Application Developer's Blog
Call it The GCDLADB if you like.
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. ...
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: ...
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. ...
Building this Blog with Hugo, Docker, Docksal, and More 11 min read Nov 19, 2018
In this post I will attempt to chronicle the steps my associates and I took to complete the configuration of static.grinnell.edu, and to eventually create this blog following Juan Treminio’s lead. Small portions of Juan’s blog post are reproduced here, with permission, so that you can follow along in his work. Those passages appear with a colored background like so: …I will walk you through the complete process of setting up a static website that you can deploy new versions with a simple git push. ...
Posts 0 min read Nov 18, 2018
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A Blog is Born 2 min read Nov 18, 2018
Have you ever wondered how a blog is born? The story behind this blog begins with my interest in stepping back from the CMS world, primarily Drupal, to discover the joys of static site generation. The journey begins in earnest at the 2016 DLF Forum: Milwaukee on the eve of the United States’ 2016 national election, when all the buzz that wasn’t political, was about building static web sites, and Jekyll. A few weeks after the DLF Forum this server was born, thanks to the my colleagues in the Grinnell College (GC) Libraries, and Grinnell’s Information Technology Services (ITS) department. ...
Site Search 0 min read Jan 1, 0001
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