31–40 of 180 posts
"Wanna just use fucking shell scripts to configure a server? Read on!" Step 0: Install the gem # gem install fucking_shell_scripts # gem: command not found wat.
Who in their right mind wgets and builds software on a production machine...?
Every time I go to write a shell script I'm like "do I need to put quotes around this variable to interpolate it? How do I do looping again?" then I give up and use Python or Perl or something.
Honestly this is not a bad idea. Since bringing up a new instance VM will always be in exactly the same state, the shell script is completely deterministic. If any line fails to run, you could simply log an error and automatically shut down the VM. The bash script itself is also extremely straight forward and is easily testable with a built in REPL (you know, bash). Anybody who vaguely knows unix is also going to be…
Typically shell scripts are fine in the beginning, but over time the complexity rises and it becomes an unmaintanable mess, and you'll end up reimplementing it in a proper programming language. Shell scripts are not easily portable either, unless by "portable" you mean "works in Linux". Node.js scripts, for example, really (mostly) work on Linux and other platforms like Windows. Until you hit some nasty "path is long…
The problem is so many programmers don't take the time (or care to take the time) to learn to use the well thought out design of Unix tools opting instead to see every problem as a nail corresponding to the latest trend in hammers (programming languages).
This has led a lot of programming types to create advanced tools for managing Unix systems which largely ignore the design of Unix.
Got a good laugh out of me, seems a little hypocritical to depend on ruby (which chef et al. use) So far I only have experience with puppet, and it seems really annoying to tie phases like "install postgres" -> "Reinitialize the database in UTF-8, but known to work on ubuntu" -> "Update the configs so non-localhost connections can actually connect" -> "Okay, now it can start." The above problem is something I do not…
The nice thing about an approach like this is that you don't actually need to use shell for your scripts - you could use Perl, Python, etc. The point is you can just write in whatever scripting language you like/gets the job done and not need to worry about learning a new domain-specific configuration language. Does anyone else here see value in a configuration management system that centers around installing files a…
Bottom line, if you are just running a small startup with a few servers and a few people, then by all means use FSS, but eventually you will need real CM.
Coauthor here. Well, this is a surprise! This project was mainly borne out of our frustrations with Chef and then Ansible for configuring our servers. A few thoughts: 1) This project is incomplete and is more of a concept than anything. We wrote it literally in an afternoon, and were giggling like schoolgirls the whole time. 2) There is value in what Ansible provides. It does a lot of things for you. FSS did not repl…
We're using Chef right now, and evaluating other options. They seem to either be between way too over-engineered, or not flexible enough, but nowhere in between. I'd love to see a tool like yours be brought to full maturity, then I think I'd love to use it.
Coauthor here. Well, this is a surprise! This project was mainly borne out of our frustrations with Chef and then Ansible for configuring our servers. A few thoughts: 1) This project is incomplete and is more of a concept than anything. We wrote it literally in an afternoon, and were giggling like schoolgirls the whole time. 2) There is value in what Ansible provides. It does a lot of things for you. FSS did not repl…
Lately I've been researching a way to automate things for a bunch of vps I own (nothing important, mostly self-hosted services like tt-rss), and obviously I looked at Chef/Puppet/Salt/Ansible and the likes. While those are valuable and awesome tools, I feel that they're too complicated for my simple needs.
FSS seems exactly the right compromise between running everything manually and using a full blown management tool.