Category Archives: Software development

LDAPGUI a LDAP GUI program in Python and Tkinter

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I wanted to automate certain operations that we do very often, and so I decided to do a PoC of how handy will it be to create GUI applications that can automate tasks.

As locating information in several repositories of information (ldap, databases, websites, etc…) can be tedious I decided to create a small program that queries LDAP for the information I’m interested, in this case a Location. This small program can very easily escalated to launch the VPN, to query a Database after querying LDAP if no results are found, etc…

I share with you the basic application as you may find interesting to create GUI applications in Python, compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac.

I’m super Linux fan but this is important, as many multinationals still use Windows or Mac even for Engineers and SRE positions.

With the article I provide a Dockerfile and a docker-compose.yml file that will launch an OpenLDAP Docker Container preloaded with very basic information and a PHPLDAPMIN Container.

Installation of the dependencies

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install python3.8 python3-tk
pip install ldap3

Windows and Mac:

Install Python3.6 or greater and from command line.

For Mac install pip if you don’t have it.

pip install ldap3

Python Code

#!/bin/env python3

import tkinter as tk
from ldap3 import Server, Connection, MODIFY_ADD, MODIFY_REPLACE, ALL_ATTRIBUTES, ObjectDef, Reader
from ldap3.utils.dn import safe_rdn
from lib.fileutils import FileUtils

# sudo apt-get install python3.8 python3-tk
# pip install ldap3


class LDAPGUI:

    s_config_file = "config.cfg"

    s_ldap_server = "ldapslave01"
    s_connection = "uid=%USERNAME%, cn=users, cn=accounts, dc=demo1, dc=carlesmateo, dc=com"
    s_username = "carlesmateo"
    s_password = "Secret123"
    s_query = "location=%LOCATION%,dc=demo1,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com"

    i_window_width = 610
    i_window_height = 650
    i_frame_width = i_window_width-5
    i_frame_height = 30
    i_frame_results_height = 400

    # Graphical objects
    o_window = None
    o_entry_ldap = None
    o_entry_connection = None
    o_entry_results = None
    o_entry_username = None
    o_entry_location = None
    o_button_search = None

    def __init__(self, o_fileutils):
        self.o_fileutils = o_fileutils

    def replace_connection_with_username(self):
        s_connection_raw = self.o_entry_username.get()
        s_connection = self.s_connection.replace("%USERNAME%", s_connection_raw)
        return s_connection

    def replace_query_with_location(self):
        s_query_raw = self.o_entry_location.get()
        s_query = self.s_query.replace("%LOCATION%", s_query_raw)
        return s_query

    def clear_results(self):
        self.o_entry_results.delete("1.0", tk.END)

    def enable_button(self):
        self.o_button_search["state"] = tk.NORMAL

    def disable_button(self):
        self.o_button_search["state"] = tk.DISABLED

    def ldap_run_query(self):

        self.disable_button()
        self.clear_results()

        s_ldap_server = self.o_entry_ldap.get()
        self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Connecting to: " + s_ldap_server + "...\n")
        try:

            o_server = Server(s_ldap_server)
            o_conn = Connection(o_server,
                                self.replace_connection_with_username(),
                                self.s_password,
                                auto_bind=False)
            o_conn.bind()

            if isinstance(o_conn.last_error, str):
                s_last_error = o_conn.last_error
                self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Last error: " + s_last_error + "\n")

            if isinstance(o_conn.result, str):
                s_conn_result = o_conn.result
                self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Connection result: " + s_conn_result + "\n")

            s_query = self.replace_query_with_location()
            self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Performing Query: " + s_query + "\n")

            obj_location = ObjectDef('organizationalUnit', o_conn)
            r = Reader(o_conn, obj_location, s_query)
            r.search()
            self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Results: \n" + str(r) + "\n")
            #print(r)

            #print(0, o_conn.extend.standard.who_am_i())
            # https://github.com/cannatag/ldap3/blob/master/tut1.py
            # https://github.com/cannatag/ldap3/blob/master/tut2.py

        except:
            self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "There has been a problem" + "\n")

            if isinstance(o_conn.last_error, str):
                s_last_error = o_conn.last_error
                self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Last error: " + s_last_error + "\n")

        try:
            self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Closing connection\n")
            o_conn.unbind()
        except:
            self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Problem closing connection" + "\n")

        self.enable_button()

    def create_frame_location(self, o_window, i_width, i_height):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_lbl_location = tk.Label(master=o_frame,
                                  text="Location:",
                                  width=10,
                                  height=1)
        o_lbl_location.place(x=0, y=0)

        o_entry = tk.Entry(master=o_frame, fg="yellow", bg="blue", width=50)
        o_entry.insert(tk.END, "")
        o_entry.place(x=100, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry

    def create_frame_results(self, o_window, i_width, i_height):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_entry = tk.Text(master=o_frame, fg="grey", bg="white", width=75, height=20)
        o_entry.insert(tk.END, "")
        o_entry.place(x=0, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry

    def create_frame_username(self, o_window, i_width, i_height, s_username):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_lbl_location = tk.Label(master=o_frame,
                                  text="Username:",
                                  width=10,
                                  height=1)
        o_lbl_location.place(x=0, y=0)

        o_entry_username = tk.Entry(master=o_frame, fg="yellow", bg="blue", width=50)
        o_entry_username.insert(tk.END, s_username)
        o_entry_username.place(x=100, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry_username

    def create_frame_ldapserver(self, o_window, i_width, i_height, s_server):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_lbl_ldapserver = tk.Label(master=o_frame,
                                    text="LDAP Server:",
                                    width=10,
                                    height=1)
        o_lbl_ldapserver.place(x=0, y=0)
        # We don't need to pack the label, as it is inside a Frame, packet
        # o_lbl_ldapserver.pack()

        o_entry = tk.Entry(master=o_frame, fg="yellow", bg="blue", width=50)
        o_entry.insert(tk.END, s_server)
        o_entry.place(x=100, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry

    def create_frame_connection(self, o_window, i_width, i_height, s_connection):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_lbl_connection = tk.Label(master=o_frame,
                                    text="Connection:",
                                    width=10,
                                    height=1)
        o_lbl_connection.place(x=0, y=0)
        # We don't need to pack the label, as it is inside a Frame, packet
        # o_lbl_ldapserver.pack()

        o_entry_connection = tk.Entry(master=o_frame, fg="yellow", bg="blue", width=50)
        o_entry_connection.insert(tk.END, s_connection)
        o_entry_connection.place(x=100, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry_connection

    def create_frame_query(self, o_window, i_width, i_height, s_query):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_lbl_query = tk.Label(master=o_frame,
                                    text="Connection:",
                                    width=10,
                                    height=1)
        o_lbl_query.place(x=0, y=0)

        o_entry_query = tk.Entry(master=o_frame, fg="yellow", bg="blue", width=50)
        o_entry_query.insert(tk.END, s_query)
        o_entry_query.place(x=100, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry_query

    def create_button(self):
        o_button = tk.Button(
            text="Search",
            width=25,
            height=1,
            bg="blue",
            fg="yellow",
            command=self.ldap_run_query
        )

        o_button.pack()

        return o_button

    def render_screen(self):
        o_window = tk.Tk()
        o_window.title("LDAPGUI by Carles Mateo")
        self.o_window = o_window
        self.o_window.geometry(str(self.i_window_width) + 'x' + str(self.i_window_height))

        o_frame_ldap, o_entry_ldap = self.create_frame_ldapserver(o_window=o_window,
                                                                  i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                                  i_height=self.i_frame_height,
                                                                  s_server=self.s_ldap_server)
        self.o_entry_ldap = o_entry_ldap
        o_frame_connection, o_entry_connection = self.create_frame_connection(o_window=o_window,
                                                                              i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                                              i_height=self.i_frame_height,
                                                                              s_connection=self.s_connection)
        self.o_entry_connection = o_entry_connection

        o_frame_user, o_entry_user = self.create_frame_username(o_window=o_window,
                                                                i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                                i_height=self.i_frame_height,
                                                                s_username=self.s_username)
        self.o_entry_username = o_entry_user

        o_frame_query, o_entry_query = self.create_frame_query(o_window=o_window,
                                                               i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                               i_height=self.i_frame_height,
                                                               s_query=self.s_query)
        self.o_entry_query = o_entry_query


        o_frame_location, o_entry_location = self.create_frame_location(o_window=o_window,
                                                                        i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                                        i_height=self.i_frame_height)

        self.o_entry_location = o_entry_location

        o_button_search = self.create_button()
        self.o_button_search = o_button_search

        o_frame_results, o_entry_results = self.create_frame_results(o_window=o_window,
                                                                     i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                                     i_height=self.i_frame_results_height)
        self.o_entry_results = o_entry_results

        o_window.mainloop()

    def load_config_values(self):
        b_success, d_s_config = self.o_fileutils.read_config_file_values(self.s_config_file)
        if b_success is True:
            if 'server' in d_s_config:
                self.s_ldap_server = d_s_config['server']
            if 'connection' in d_s_config:
                self.s_connection = d_s_config['connection']
            if 'username' in d_s_config:
                self.s_username = d_s_config['username']
            if 'password' in d_s_config:
                self.s_password = d_s_config['password']
            if 'query' in d_s_config:
                self.s_query = d_s_config['query']


def main():
    o_fileutils = FileUtils()

    o_ldapgui = LDAPGUI(o_fileutils=o_fileutils)
    o_ldapgui.load_config_values()

    o_ldapgui.render_screen()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Dockerfile

FROM osixia/openldap

# Note: Docker compose will generate the Docker Image.
# Run:  sudo docker-compose up -d

LABEL maintainer="Carles Mateo"

ENV LDAP_ORGANISATION="Carles Mateo Test Org" \
    LDAP_DOMAIN="carlesmateo.com"

COPY bootstrap.ldif /container/service/slapd/assets/config/bootstrap/ldif/50-bootstrap.ldif

docker-compose.yml

version: '3.3'
services:
  ldap_server:
      build:
        context: .
        dockerfile: Dockerfile
      environment:
        LDAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD: test1234
        LDAP_BASE_DN: dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
      ports:
        - 389:389
      volumes:
        - ldap_data:/var/lib/ldap
        - ldap_config:/etc/ldap/slapd.d
  ldap_server_admin:
      image: osixia/phpldapadmin:0.7.2
      ports:
        - 8090:80
      environment:
        PHPLDAPADMIN_LDAP_HOSTS: ldap_server
        PHPLDAPADMIN_HTTPS: 'false'
volumes:
  ldap_data:
  ldap_config:

config.cfg

# Config File for LDAPGUI by Carles Mateo
# https://blog.carlesmateo.com
#

# Configuration for working with the prepared Docker
server=127.0.0.1:389
connection=cn=%USERNAME%,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
username=admin_gh
password=admin_gh_pass
query=cn=%LOCATION%,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com

# Carles other tests
#server=ldapslave.carlesmateo.com
#connection=uid=%USERNAME%, cn=users, cn=accounts, dc=demo1, dc=carlesmateo, dc=com
#username=carlesmateo
#password=Secret123
#query=location=%LOCATION%,dc=demo1,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com

bootstrap.ldif

In order to bootstrap the Data on the LDAP Server I use a bootstrap.ldif file copied into the Server.

Credits, I learned this trick in this page: https://medium.com/better-programming/ldap-docker-image-with-populated-users-3a5b4d090aa4

dn: cn=developer,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
objectclass: Engineer
cn: developer
givenname: developer
sn: Developer
displayname: Developer User
mail: developer@carlesmateo.com
userpassword: developer_pass

dn: cn=maintainer,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
objectclass: Engineer
cn: maintainer
givenname: maintainer
sn: Maintainer
displayname: Maintainer User
mail: maintainer@carlesmateo.com
userpassword: maintainer_pass

dn: cn=admin,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
objectclass: Engineer
cn: admin
givenname: admin
sn: Admin
displayname: Admin
mail: admin@carlesmateo.com
userpassword: admin_pass

dn: ou=Groups,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
objectclass: organizationalUnit
ou: Groups

dn: ou=Users,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
objectclass: organizationalUnit
ou: Users

dn: cn=Admins,ou=Groups,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
cn: Admins
objectclass: groupOfUniqueNames
uniqueMember: cn=admin,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com

dn: cn=Maintaners,ou=Groups,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
cn: Maintaners
objectclass: groupOfUniqueNames
uniqueMember: cn=maintainer,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
uniqueMember: cn=developer,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com

lib/fileutils.py

You can download this file from the lib folder in my project CTOP.py

A script to backup your partition compressed and a game to learn about dd and pipes

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This article is more an exercise, like a game, so you get to know certain things about Linux, and follow my mental process to uncover this. Is nothing mysterious for the Senior Engineers but Junior Sys Admins may enjoy this reading. :)

Ok, so the first thing is I wrote an script in order to completely backup my NVMe hard drive to a gziped file and then I will use this, as a motivation to go deep into investigations to understand.

Ok, so the first script would be like this:

#!/bin/bash
SOURCE_DRIVE="/dev/nvme0n1"
TARGET_PATH="/media/carles/Seagate\ Backup\ Plus\ Drive/BCK/"
TARGET_FILE="nvme.img"
sudo bash -c "dd if=${SOURCE_DRIVE} | gzip > ${TARGET_PATH}${TARGET_FILE}.gz"

So basically, we are going to restart the computer, boot with Linux Live USB Key, mount the Seagate Hard Drive, and run the script.

We are booting with a Live Linux Cd in order to have our partition unmounted and unmodified while we do the backup. This is in order to avoid corruption or data loss as a live Filesystem is getting modifications as we read it.

The problem with this first script is that it will generate a big gzip file.

By big I mean much more bigger than 2GB. Not all physical supports support files bigger than 2GB or 4GB, but even if they do, it’s a pain to transfer this over the Network, or in USB files, so we are going to do a slight modification.

#!/bin/bash
SOURCE_DRIVE="/dev/nvme0n1"
TARGET_PATH="/media/carles/Seagate\ Backup\ Plus\ Drive/BCK/"
TARGET_FILE="nvme.img"
sudo bash -c "dd if=${SOURCE_DRIVE} | gzip | split -b 1024MiB - ${TARGET_PATH}${TARGET_FILE}-split.gz_"

Ok, so we will use pipes and split in order to generate many files as big as 1GB.

If we ls we will get:

-rwxrwxrwx 1 carles carles 1073741824 May 24 14:57 nvme.img-split.gz_aa
-rwxrwxrwx 1 carles carles 1073741824 May 24 14:58 nvme.img-split.gz_ab
-rwxrwxrwx 1 carles carles 1073741824 May 24 14:59 nvme.img-split.gz_ac

Then one may say, Ok, this is working, but how I know the progress?.

For old versions of dd you can use pv which stands for Pipe Viewer and allows you to know the transference between processes using pipes.

For more recent versions of dd you can use status=progress.

So the script updated with status=progress is:

#!/bin/bash
SOURCE_DRIVE="/dev/nvme0n1"
TARGET_PATH="/media/carles/Seagate\ Backup\ Plus\ Drive/BCK/"
TARGET_FILE="nvme.img"
sudo bash -c "dd if=${SOURCE_DRIVE} status=progress | gzip | split -b 1024MiB - ${TARGET_PATH}${TARGET_FILE}-split.gz_"

You can also download the code from:

https://gitlab.com/carles.mateo/blog.carlesmateo.com-source-code/-/blob/master/backup_partition_in_files.sh

Then one may ask himself, wait, if pipes use STDOUT and STDIN and dd is displaying into the screen, then will our gz file get corrupted?.

I like when people question things, and investigate, so let’s answer this question.

If it was a young member of my Team I would ask:

  • Ok, try,it. Check the output file to see if is corrupted.

So they can do zcat or zless to inspect the file, see if it has errors, and to make sure:

gzip -v -t nvme.img.gz
nvme.img.gz:        OK

Ok, so what happened?, because we were seeing output in the screen.

Assuming the young Engineer does not know the answer I would had told:

  • Ok, so you know that if dd would print to STDOUT, then you won’t see it, cause it would be sent to the pipe, so there is something more you’re missing. Let’s check the source code of dd to see what status=progress does

And then look for “progress”.

Soon you’ll find things like everywhere:

  if (progress_time)
    fputc ('\r', stderr);

Ok, pay attention to where is the data written: stderr. So basically the answer is: dd status=progress does not corrupt STDOUT and prints into the screen because it uses STDERR.

Other funny ways to get the progress would be to use:

watch -n10 "ls -alh /BCK/ | grep nvme | wc --lines"
So you would see in real time what was the advance and finally 512GB where compressed to around 336GB in 336 files of 1 GB each (except the last one)

Another funny way would had been sending USR1 signal to the dd process:

Hope you enjoyed this little exercise about the importance of going deep, to the end, to understand what’s going on on the system. :)

Instead of gzip you can use bzip2 or pixz. pixz is very handy if you want to just compress a file, as it uses multiple processors in parallel for the tasks.

xz or lrzip are other compressors. lrzip aims to compress very large files, specially source code.

Refreshing settings in a Docker immutable image with Python and Flask

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This is a trick to restart a Service that is running on a immutable Docker, with some change, and you need to refresh the values very quickly without having to roll the CI/CD Jenkins Pipeline and uploading a new image.

So why would you need to do that?.

I can think about possible scenarios like:

  • Need to roll out an urgent fix in a time critical manner
  • Jenkins is broken
  • Somebody screw it on the git master branch
  • Docker Hub is down
  • GitHub is down
  • Your artifactory is down
  • The lines between your jumpbox or workstation and the secure Server are down and you have really few bandwidth
  • You have to fix something critical and you only have a phone with you and SSH only
  • Maybe the Dockerfile had latest, and the latest image has changed
FROM os:latest

The ideal is that if you work with immutable images, you roll out a new immutable image and that’s it.

But if for whatever reason you need to update this super fast, this trick may become really handy.

Let’s go for it!.

Normally you’ll start your container with a command similar to this:

docker run -d --rm -p 5000:5000 api_carlesmateo_com:v7 prod

The first thing we have to do is to stop the container.

So:

docker ps

Locate your container across the list of running containers and stop it, and then restart without the –rm:

docker stop container_name
docker run -d -p 5000:5000 api_carlesmateo_com:v7 prod

the –rm makes the container to cleanup. By default a container’s file system persists even after the container exits. So don’t start it with –rm.

Ok, so login to the container:

docker exec -it container_name /bin/sh

Edit the config you require to change, for example config.yml

If what you have to update is a password, and is encoded in base64, encode it:

echo -n "ThePassword" | base64
VGhlUGFzc3dvcmQ=

Stop the container. You can do it by stopping the container with docker stop or from inside the container, killing the listening process, probably a Python Flask.

If your Dockerfile ends with something like:

ENTRYPOINT ["./webservice.py"]

And webservice.py has Python Flask code similar to this:

#!/usr/bin/python3
#
# webservice.py
#
# Author: Carles Mateo
# Creation Date: 2020-05-10 20:50 GMT+1
# Description: A simple Flask Web Application
#              Part of the samples of https://leanpub.com/pythoncombatguide
#              More source code for the book at https://gitlab.com/carles.mateo/python_combat_guide
#


from flask import Flask, request
import logging

# Initialize Flask
app = Flask(__name__)


# Sample route so http://127.0.0.1/carles
@app.route('/carles', methods=['GET'])
def carles():
    logging.critical("A connection was established")
    return "200"

logging.info("Initialized...")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=5000, debug=True)

Then you can kill the process, and so ending the container, from inside the container by doing:

ps -ax | grep webservice
 5750 root     56:31 {webservice.py} /usr/bin/python /opt/webservice/webservice.py
kill -9 5790

This will finish the container the same way as docker stop container_name.

Then start the container (not run)

docker_start container_name

You can now test from outside or from inside the container. If from insise:

/opt/webservice # wget localhost:5000/carles
Connecting to localhost:5000 (127.0.0.1:5000)
carles               100% |**************************************************************************************************************|     3  0:00:00 ETA
/opt/webservice # cat debug.log
2020-05-06 20:46:24,349 Initialized...
2020-05-06 20:46:24,359  * Running on http://0.0.0.0:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
2020-05-06 20:46:24,360  * Restarting with stat
2020-05-06 20:46:24,764 Initialized...
2020-05-06 20:46:24,771  * Debugger is active!
2020-05-06 20:46:24,772  * Debugger PIN: 123-456-789
2020-05-07 13:18:43,890 127.0.0.1 - - [07/May/2020 13:18:43] "GET /carles HTTP/1.1" 200 -

if you don’t use YAML files or what you need is to change the code, all this can be avoided as when you update the Python code, Flash realizes that and reloads. See this line in the logs:

2020-05-07 13:18:40,431  * Detected change in '/opt/webservice/wwebservice.py', reloading

Python Combat Guide published

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After some work reviewing it and ensuring it has the expected quality, I finally published my book Python Combat Guide.

Is an atypical creation. Is more a Master Class to my best friend, it could be a SDM, TL leading a small Software Development department, a Coder or a Scientist wanting to join IT as programmer and to learn a lot of stuff very quickly, than rather a formal Python Book for learning. Absolutely is not for beginners.

If you want to buy it, to explore the TOC, extended description…

https://leanpub.com/pythoncombatguide

Bash Script: Count repeated lines in the logs

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This small script will count repeated patterns in the Logs.

Ideal for checking if there are errors that you’re missing while developing.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# count_repeated_pattern_in_logs.sh
# By Carles Mateo
# Helps to find repeated lines in Logs
LOGFILE_MESSAGES="/var/log/messages"
LOGFILE_SYSLOG="/var/log/syslog"
if [[ -f "${LOGFILE_MESSAGES}" ]]; then
LOGFILE=${LOGFILE_MESSAGES}
else
LOGFILE=${LOGFILE_SYSLOG}
fi
echo "Using Logfile: ${LOGFILE}"
CMD_OUTPUT=`cat ${LOGFILE} | awk '{ $1=$2=$3=$4=""; print $0 }' | sort | uniq --
count | sort --ignore-case --reverse --numeric-sort`
echo -e "$CMD_OUTPUT"

Basically it takes out the non relevant fields that can prevent from detecting repetition, like the time, and prints the rest.
Then you will launch it like this:

count_repeated_pattern_in_logs.sh | head -n20

If you are checking a machine with Ubuntu UFW (Firewall) and want to skip those likes:

./repeated.sh | grep -v "UFW BLOCK" | head -n20

The Ethernet standards group announces a new 800 GbE specification

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Here is the link to the new: https://www.pcgamer.com/amp/the-ethernet-standards-group-developed-a-new-speed-so-fast-it-had-to-change-its-name/

And this makes me think about all the Architects that are using Memcached and Redis in different Servers, in Networks of 1Gbps and makes me want to share with you what a nonsense, is often, that.

So the idea of having Memcache or Redis is just to cache the queries and unload the Database from those queries.

But 1Gbps is equivalent to 125MB (Megabytes) per second.

Local RAM Memory in Servers can perform at 24GB and more (24,000,000 Megabytes) per second, even more.

A PCIE NVMe drive at 3.5GB per second.

A local SSD drive without RAID 550 MB/s.

A SSD in the Cloud, varies a lot on the provider, number of drives, etc… but I’ve seen between 200 MB/s and 2.5GB/s aggregated in RAID.

In fact I have worked with Servers equipped with several IO Controllers, that were delivering 24GB/s of throughput writing or reading to HDD spinning drives.

If you’re in the Cloud. Instead of having 2 Load Balancers, 100 Front Web servers, with a cluster of 5 Redis with huge amount of RAM, and 1 MySQL Master and 1 Slave, all communicating at 1Gbps, probably you’ll get a better performance having the 2 LBs, and 11 Front Web with some more memory and having the Redis instance in the same machine and saving the money of that many small Front and from the 5 huge dedicated Redis.

The same applies if you’re using Docker or K8s.

Even if you just cache the queries to drive, speed will be better than sending everything through 1 Gbps.

This will matter for you if your site is really under heavy load. Most of the sites just query the MySQL Server using 1 Gbps lines, or 2 Gbps in bonding, and that’s enough.

Resources for Microservices and Business Domain Solutions for the Cloud Architect / Microservices Architect

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First you have to understand that Python, Java and PHP are worlds completely different.

In Python you’ll probably use Flask, and listen to the port you want, inside Docker Container.

In PHP you’ll use a Frameworks like Laravel, or Symfony, or Catalonia Framework (my Framework) :) and a repo or many (as the idea is that the change in one microservice cannot break another it is recommended to have one git repo per Service) and split the requests with the API Gateway and Filters (so /billing/ goes to the right path in the right Server, is like rewriting URLs). You’ll rely in Software to split your microservices. Usually you’ll use Docker, but you have to add a Web Server and any other tools, as the source code is not packet with a Web Server and other Dependencies like it is in Java Spring Boot.

In Java you’ll use Spring Cloud and Spring Boot, and every Service will be auto-contained in its own JAR file, that includes Apache Tomcat and all other Dependencies and normally running inside a Docker. Tcp/Ip listening port will be set at start via command line, or through environment. You’ll have many git repositories, one per each Service.

Using many repos, one per Service, also allows to deploy only that repository and to have better security, with independent deployment tokens.

It is not unlikely that you’ll use one language for some of your Services and another for other, as well as a Database or another, as each Service is owner of their data.

In any case, you will be using CI/CD and your pipeline will be something like this:

  1. Pull the latest code for the Service from the git repository
  2. Compile the code (if needed)
  3. Run the Unit and Integration Tests
  4. Compile the service to an executable artifact (f.e. Java JAR with Tomcat server and other dependencies)
  5. Generate a Machine image with your JAR deployed (for Java. Look at Spotify Docker Plugin to Docker build from Maven), or with Apache, PHP, other dependencies, and the code. Normally will be a Docker image. This image will be immutable. You will probably use Dockerhub.
  6. Machine image will be started. Platform test are run.
  7. If platform tests pass, the service is promoted to the next environment (for example Dev -> Test -> PreProd -> Prod), the exact same machine is started in the next environment and platform tests are repeated.
  8. Before deploying to Production the new Service, I recommend running special Application Tests / Behavior-driven. By this I mean, to conduct tests that really test the functionality of everything, using a real browser and emulating the acts of a user (for example with BeHat, Cucumber or with JMeter).
    I recommend this specially because Microservices are end-points, independent of the implementation, but normally they are API that serve to a whole application. In an Application there are several components, often a change in the Front End can break the application. Imagine a change in Javascript Front End, that results in a call a bit different, for example, with an space before a name. Imagine that the Unit Tests for the Service do not test that, and that was not causing a problem in the old version of the Service and so it will crash when the new Service is deployed. Or another example, imagine that our Service for paying with Visa cards generates IDs for the Payment Gateway, and as a result of the new implementation the IDs generated are returned. With the mocked objects everything works, but when we deploy for real is when we are going to use the actual Bank Payment. This is also why is a good idea to have a PreProduction environment, with PreProduction versions of the actual Services we use (all banks or the GDS for flights/hotel reservation like Galileo or Amadeus have a Test, exactly like Production, Gateway)

If you work with Microsoft .NET, you’ll probably use Azure DevOps.

We IT Engineers, CTOs and Architects, serve the Business. We have to develop the most flexible approaches and enabling the business to release as fast as their need.

Take in count that Microservices is a tool, a pattern. We will use it to bring more flexibility and speed developing, resilience of the services, and speed and independence deploying. However this comes at a cost of complexity.

Microservices is more related to giving flexibility to the Business, and developing according to the Business Domains. Normally oriented to suite an API. If you have an API that is consumed by third party you will have things like independence of Services (if one is down the others will still function), gradual degradation, being able to scale the Services that have more load only, being able to deploy a new version of a Service which is independent of the rest of the Services, etc… the complexity in the technical solution comes from all this resilience, and flexibility.

If your Dev Team is up to 10 Developers or you are writing just a CRUD Web Application, a PoC, or you are an Startup with a critical Time to Market you probably you will not want to use Microservices approach. Is like killing flies with laser cannons. You can use typical Web services approach, do everything in one single Https request, have transactions, a single Database, etc…

But if your team is 100 Developer, like a big eCommerce, you’ll have multiple Teams between 5 and 10 Developers per Business Domain, and you need independence of each Service, having less interdependence. Each Service will own their own Data. That is normally around 5 to 7 tables. Each Service will serve a Business Domain. You’ll benefit from having different technologies for the different needs, however be careful to avoid having Teams with different knowledge that can have hardly rotation and difficult to continue projects when the only 2 or 3 Devs that know that technology leave. Typical benefit scenarios can be having MySql for the Billing Services, but having NoSQL Database for the image catalog, or to store logs of account activity. With Microservices, some services will be calling other Services, often asynchronously, using Queues or Streams, you’ll have Callbacks, Databases for reading, you’ll probably want to have gradual and gracefully failure of your applications, client load balancing, caches and read only databases/in-memory databases… This complexity is in order to protect one Service from the failure of others and to bring it the necessary speed under heavy load.

Here you can find a PDF Document of the typical resources I use for Microservice Projects.

Resources for Microservices and Business Domain Solutions – V.1.7 – By Carles MateoDownload

You can also download it from my github repository:

https://github.com/carlesmateo/awesome-microservices

Do you use other solutions that are not listed?. Leave a message. I’ll investigate them and update the Document, to share with the Community.

Update 2020-03-06: I found this very nice article explaining the same. Microservices are not for everybody and not the default option: https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2020/03/04/microservices_last_resort/

Update 2020-03-11: Qcom with 1,600 microservices says that microservices architecture is the las resort: https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2020/03/09/monzo_microservices/

Upgrading my new HP 14-bp060sa

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As the company I was working for, Sanmina, has decided to move all the Software Development to Colorado, US, and closing the offices in Bishopstown, Cork, Ireland I found myself with the need to get a new laptop. At work I was using two Dell laptops, one very powerful and heavy equipped with an Intel Xeon processor and 32 GB of RAM. The other a lightweight one that I updated to 32 GB of RAM.

I had an accident around 8 months ago, that got my spine damaged, and so I cannot carry much weight.

My personal laptops at home, in Ireland are a 15″ with 16 GB of RAM, too heavy, and an Acer 11,6″ with 8GB of RAM and SSD (I upgraded it), but unfortunately the screen crashed. I still use it through the HDMI port. My main computer is a tower with a Core i7, 64GB of RAM and a Samsung NVMe SSD drive. And few Raspberrys Pi 4 and 3 :)

I was thinking about what ultra-lightweight laptop to buy, but I wanted to buy it in Barcelona, as I wanted a Catalan keyboard (the layout with the broken ç and accents). I tried by Amazon.es but I have problems to have shipped the Catalan keyboard layout laptops to my address in Ireland.

I was trying to find the best laptop for me.

While I was investigating I found out that none of the laptops in the market were convincing me.

The ones in around 1Kg, which was my initial target, were too big, and lack a proper full size HDMI port and Gigabit Ethernet. Honestly, some models get the HDMI or the Ethernet from an USB 3.1, through an adapter, or have mini-HDMI, many lack the Gigabit port, which is very annoying. Also most of the models come with 8GB of RAM only and were impossible to upgrade. I enrolled my best friend in my quest, in the research, and had the same conclusions.

I don’t want to have to carry adapters with me to just plug to a monitor or projector. I don’t even want to carry the power charger. I want a laptop that can work with me for a complete day, a full work session, without needing to recharge.

So while this investigation was going on, I decided to buy a cheap laptop with a good trade off of weight and cost, in order to be able to work on the coffee. I needed it for writing documents in Google Docs, creating microservices architectures, programming in Java and PHP, and writing articles in my blog. I also decided that this would be my only laptop with Windows, as honestly I missed playing Star Craft 2, and my attempts with Wine and Linux did not success.

Not also, for playing games :) , there are tools that are only available for Windows or for Mac Os X and Windows, like: POSTMAN, Kitematic for managing dockers visually, vSphere…

(Please note, as I reviewed the article I realized that POSTMAN is available for Linux too)

Please note: although I use mainly Linux everywhere (Ubuntu, CentOS, and RedHat mainly) and I contribute to Open Source projects, I do have Windows machines.

I created my Start up in 2004, and I still have Windows Servers, physical machines in a Data Center in Barcelona, and I still have VMs and Instances in Public Clouds with Windows Servers. Also I programmed some tools using Visual Studio and Visual Basic .NET, ASP.NET and C#, but when I needed to do this I found more convenient spawn an instance in Amazon or Azure and pay for its use.

When I created my Start up I offered my infrastructure as a way to get funding too, and I offered VMs with VMWare. I found that having my Mail Servers in VMs was much more convenient for Backups, cloning, to scale up, to avoid disruption and for Disaster and Recovery.

I wanted a cheap laptop that will not make feel bad if transporting it in a daily basis gets a hit and breaks, or that if it rains (and this happens more than often in Ireland) and it breaks is not super-hurtful, or even if it gets stolen. Yes, I’m from a big city, like is Barcelona, Catalonia, and thieves are a real problem. I travel, so I want a laptop decent enough that I can take to travel, and for going for a coffee, coding anything, and I feel comfortable enough that if something happens to it is not the end of the world.

Cork is not a big city, so the options were reduced. I found a laptop that meets my needs.

I got a HP s14-bp060sa for 439€.

It is equipped with a Intel® Core™ i3-6006U (2 GHz, 3 MB cache, 2 cores) , a 500GB SATA HDD, and 4 GB of DDR4 RAM.

The information on HP webpage is really scarce, but checking other pages I was able to see that the motherboard has 2 memory banks, accepting a max of 16GB of RAM.

I saw that there was an slot, unclear if supporting NVMe SSD drives, but supporting M.2 SSD for sure.

So I bought in Amazon 2x8GB and a M.2 500GB drive.

Since I was 5 years old I’ve been upgrading and assembling by myself all the computers. And this is something that I want to keep doing. It keeps me sharp, knowing the new ports, CPUs, and motherboard architectures, and keeps me in contact with the Hardware. All my life I’ve thought that specializing Software Engineers and Systems Engineers, like if computers were something separate, is a mistake, so I push myself to stay up to date of the news in all the fields.

I removed the spinning 500 GB SATA HDD, cause it’s slow and it consumes a lot of energy. With the M.2 SSD the battery last forever.

The interesting part is how I cloned the drive from the Spinning HDD to the new M.2.

I did:

  • Open the computer (see pics below) and Insert the new drive M.2
  • Boot with an USB Linux Rescue distribution (to do that I had to enable Legacy Boot on BIOS and boot with the USB)
  • Use lsblk command to identify the HDD drive, it was easy as it was the one with partitions
  • dd from if=/dev/sda to of=/dev/sdb with status=progress to see live status and speed (around 70MB/s) and estimated time to complete.
  • Please note that the new drive should be bigger or at least have the same number of bytes to avoid problems with the last partition.
  • I removed the HDD drive, this reduces the weight of my laptop by 100 grams
  • Disable Legacy Boot, and boot the computer. Windows started perfectly :)

I found so few information about this model, that I wanted to share the pictures with the Community. Here are the pictures of the upgrade process.

Here you can see the Crucial M.2 SSD installed and the Spinning HDD removed. Yes, I did in a coffee :)
Final step, installing the 2x8GB RAM memory modules

Creating a VM for compiling ZFS with RHEL6.10

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As you know I created the DRAID project, based in ZFS.

One of our customers wanted a special custom version for their RHEL6.10 installation with a custom Kernel.

This post describes how to compile and install ZFS 7.x for RHEL6.

First create a VM with RHEL6.10. Myself I used Virtual Box on Ubuntu.

If you need to install a Custom Kernel matching the destination Servers, do it.

Download the source code from ZFS for Linux.

install the following packages which are required by zfs compiler:

sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo yum install autoconf automake libtool wget libtirpc-devel rpm-build
sudo yum install zlib-devel libuuid-devel libattr-devel libblkid-devel libselinux-devel libudev-devel
sudo yum install parted lsscsi ksh openssl-devel elfutils-libelf-develsudo yum install kernel-devel-$(uname -r)

steps to compile the code:1- make sure  the zfs file exists under zfs/contrib/initramfs/scripts/local-top/

if not exists, create a file called zfs  under zfs/contrib/initramfs/scripts/local-top/  and add the following to that file:

#!/bin/sh
PREREQ=”mdadm mdrun multipath”

prereqs()
{
       echo “$PREREQ”
}

case $1 in
# get pre-requisites
prereqs)
       prereqs
       exit 0
       ;;
esac


#
# Helper functions
#
message()
{
       if [ -x /bin/plymouth ] && plymouth –ping; then
               plymouth message –text=”$@”
       else
               echo “$@” >&2
       fi
       return 0
}

udev_settle()
{
       # Wait for udev to be ready, see https://launchpad.net/bugs/85640
       if [ -x /sbin/udevadm ]; then
               /sbin/udevadm settle –timeout=30
       elif [ -x /sbin/udevsettle ]; then
               /sbin/udevsettle –timeout=30
       fi
       return 0
}


activate_vg()
{
       # Sanity checks
       if [ ! -x /sbin/lvm ]; then
               [ “$quiet” != “y” ] && message “lvm is not available”
               return 1
       fi

       # Detect and activate available volume groups
       /sbin/lvm vgscan
       /sbin/lvm vgchange -a y –sysinit
       return $?
}

udev_settle
activate_vg

exit 0

make the created zfs file executable:

chmod +x  zfs/contrib/initramfs/scripts/local-top/zfs

2-  inside  draid-zfs-2019-05-09 folder, execute the following commands:execute Auto generate script:

./autogen.sh

execute configuration script:

./configure

Please note we use this specific configuration for bettter results:

./configure –disable-pyzfs –with-spec=redhat

create rpms:

make rpm

remove all test rpms:

rm zfs-test*.rpm

3- install all created rpms

yum install *x86_64* -y

4- verify that zfs is been installed

zfs

this command will display zfs help. 

Another interesting trick I instructed my Team to do is to add a version number to zfs, with a parameter -v or –version.

So if you want to do the same, you have to edit:

zfs/cmd/zfs/zfs_main.c

Under:

cmdname = argv[1];

In my code is line 7926, then add:

/* DRAIDTEAM - added new command to display zfs version*/
if ((strcmp(cmdname, "-v") == 0) || (strcmp(cmdname, "--version") == 0)) {
    (void) fprintf(stdout, "0.7.0_DRAID-1.2.9.08021755\n");
    return (0);
}

You can check the Kernel Module info by using modinfo zfs, but I found it handy to allow to just do:

zfs -v