Docker Command-Line Tips for Beginners

While I often utilize Docker as part of a hosting and deployment system, I also use it locally for all sorts of exploration, spikes, and development. There are a couple of especially useful patterns and invocations that I show to people when I am introducing them to Docker and its usage.

Making Practical Use of OpenSSL’s s_client

I frequently troubleshoot SSL/TLS server configurations, X.509 certificates, and other SSL/TLS-related concerns. One of the most useful utilities in my toolbox is OpenSSL. I use it for a huge number of tasks: generating new X.509 certificate signing requests, generating random strings for encryption keys, retrieving server X.509 certificates, testing support SSL/TLS ciphers, etc.

Checking for GraphQL Errors with JMeter

JMeter is a load testing tool for a variety of network services. It supports features such as parameterization, assertions, cookies, and additional functionality through plug-ins.

Creating Zendesk Tickets from Slack Slash Command

We use Zendesk to help manage internal support requests that the IT operations team handles internally. Zendesk provides multiple methods (or channels) to submit requests, such as e-mail and the Zendesk Guide (Help Center). However, most internal communication with the IT operations team now occurs via Slack. In order to make submitting requests easier, I […]

Preparing to Launch a New Application – Domain Registration & DNS Hosting

One of the most consistently under-recognized operations in preparing to launch a new web application, particularly if migrating from an old one, is managing DNS (domain name system) concerns.

Coordinated Cache Refill with Redis and Node

After launching a new Node.js app we built as part of a recent redesign for a high-volume site, we found some performance problems occurring every five minutes:

Secure HTTP Proxy with Static IP

Sometimes, we work with APIs that require whitelisting of origin IP addresses for access. This can prove challenging when applications run on SaaS platforms hosted in the public Cloud—you cannot be guaranteed that your application will make requests from a consistent IP address (or range of IP addresses). For example, hosting on Heroku means that […]

Formatting AWS CloudFront and ELB Logs for Easy Review

Access logs from AWS CloudFront distributions and AWS Elastic Load Balancers can be essential to diagnosing problems with an AWS infrastructure. AWS provides the ability to store these logs in AWS S3 buckets. However, the log files are often in very many small files which need to be combined in order to get a full […]

Avoiding Incomplete/Corrupted Files During Processing Operations

Applications that work with files on disk can encounter incomplete or corrupted files if a target file is actively being written to disk by another process. Typically, this happens when two different systems or processes are interacting with the same file independently.

Five of My Favorite Command-Line Utilities

I spend a lot of time on the command line (generally, GNU/Linux), and often work on automating processes and tasks. My work often occurs on a remote machine to which I do not have access, and it generally must be headless (no GUI). As a result, I have collected an arsenal of command-line interface (CLI) […]

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