Automation on Jose Castrillo

DevOps Projects

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Senior DevOps Engineer - Projects & Professional Journey

My Career Journey

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Senior DevOps Engineer - Projects & Professional Journey

Automation a Nextcloud as a Podman Container

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking to upgrade my Nextcloud service also switching to another alternative rather than docker, hence I used podman and buildah in my solution.

From the rockylinux.org I found a nice post where it describes how to build and provisioning by using buildah and podman, it works pretty good and I added a tool in order to run it faster, called taskfile.

Requirements:

Podman
Buildah
Taskfile

Install taskfile
Clone my project
From the project you can see the task defined:

version: "3"

tasks:
  up-db:
    dir: "db/mariadb"
    preconditions:
      - test -f db-init.sh
    cmds:
      - bash db-init.sh

  create-app:
    dir: "app"
    preconditions:
      - test -f run.sh
    cmds:
      - mkdir nc nc/nextcloud nc/apps nc/config nc/data
      - task: up-db
      - bash run.sh

  build_base:
    dir: "db/base"
    preconditions:
      - test -f build.sh
    cmds:
      - bash build.sh

  build_tools:
    dir: "db/db-tools"
    preconditions:
      - test -f build.sh
    cmds:
      - bash build.sh

  build_maria:
    dir: "db/mariadb"
    preconditions:
      - test -f build.sh
    cmds:
      - bash build.sh

  build_db:
    cmds:
      - task: build_base
      - task: build_tools
      - task: build_maria

  up-app:
    cmds:
      - podman container start nextcloud

Main task to build and run nextcloud:

Trigger pipelines by using the API

Sat, 15 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When you join a new project, company, customer, etc. (you’re still in the onboarding phase 😅), meanwhile you may find that you need to make a few changes to get your team’s production pipelines up and running. In this case, you can call an API trigger from one project to another (this is just a example).

I’ve been in the situation described above before, and it was how I discovered this amazing feature in GitLab.

Mastering GitLab CI/CD, Unleashing the Power of Pipelines

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hey everyone! 👋 I hope you’re all having a fantastic summer time! 🌞

I wanted to drop a quick note to let you know that I’m currently working on something special for all my fellow developers/operations and GitLab enthusiasts out there. 🤓✨

In the upcoming posts, I’ll be sharing a treasure trove of valuable tips and tricks related to GitLab pipelines! based in my experiences 🏗️ Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just getting started with GitLab CI/CD, there’s bound to be something for everyone.

Fixing tags on Azure invoices

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Merging two CSV files using Pandas in Python 3 on Linux is a quick and easy process that can save you a lot of time and effort, however in my case I used other script to extract specific tag values from a CSV file, converts them into a JSON object, and writes them to a new CSV file, in that way I provided a workaround for those tags wanted.

Cloining a repo and setting up as artifact

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

On this post I will give you an example of how to clone a repo into your pipeline and use it for other jobs.

As you can read from Gitlab official documentation artifact can output an archive of files/directories. I set the following example:


  artifacts:
    paths:
      - <project_name>
    exclude:
      - <project_name>/.git/**/*
    expire_in: 60 seconds

We need to call the artifacts by using “artifacts” keyboard in the pipeline, in this example paths keyboard which files/directories add into artifacts.

Trigger pipelines in Gitlab

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The following post is example of how to activate and use Trigger pipeline by API the official documentation over here as it mentioned is can be use “to trigger a pipeline for a specific branch or tag”; for our example I use it to activate a pipeline into specific branch.

Steps:

repoA will be the main one where the pipeline trigger it will be activate

From repoA go to Settings-CI/CD-Pipeline triggers
Click on “add trigger” copy your token
From repoB that will be our caller of the repoA pipeline create a variable where you can paste the token.
Finally into your pipeline on repoB you can add something like below:

The best part is that you can reference to specific branch ref="<branch_name>".

setup auto mount smb v1.0

Fri, 27 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In any case you still having a device that works with smb v1.0 you can use the following way in order to mount it on your Fedora host:

Path: /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/smb-setup.sh

#!/bin/sh -e
# Script to dispatch NetworkManager events
# more over: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16848021/linux-networkmanagers-etc-networkmanager-dispatcher-d-test-script-does-not
# Runs ifupdown scripts when NetworkManager fiddles with interfaces.
# See NetworkManager(8) for further documentation of the dispatcher events.

INF="$1" # your current interface name such as eth0, wlp4s0 and so on
STA="$2" # status such as UP or DOWN

# Send message to /var/log/messages
logger -s "$0 called for interface named $INF with $STA ..."

if [ "$INF" == "eno1" ]
then
mount -t cifs -o vers=1.0,username=admin,password=Tr3x_1986,uid=1000,gid=1000,forceuid,forcegid //10.34.1.1/1fea-6abb /home/jose/homedisk
fi

more info:

Ansible missing sudo

Sun, 03 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Ansible FAILED! => {"msg": "Missing sudo password"}

I have a couple of ansible-playbook, from one of my endpoint device started to prompt missing sudo password due there is needed a sudoers access, thus this is one of the solutions.

login by ssh to the device, where ansible can’t login.
go to /etc/sudoers.d/
create a new entry eg: “023_user-nopass”
add the following line “user ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL” into the file “023_user-nopass”
change the permission by using:

sudo chmod 440 023_user-nopass

NOTE: please change value for your normal user access -not the root one-

How setup a Gitlab Runner (CI)

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Part I -

I’m learning Gitlab Runner and how them works on CI implementation.

GitLab Runner is an application that works with GitLab CI to run jobs in a pipeline, they are written in GO

Summary the task I will do:

Install Gitlab-runner as container(podman).
Runner registration.
- Enter the GitLab instance URL
- registration token.
- runner description.
- tags.
- Select an executor.
Create a gitlab-ci.yml

Install runner:

Create the Volume:

podman volume create gitlab-runner-config

Pull and start the container by register command, then we will prompt the data need for register the runner into the project.

Format & Mount an usb drive in GNU/Linux [terminal]

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Format and Mount usb drive in GNU/Linux

Tools/commands:

lsblk
parted
df
fdisk
mkfs
wipefs

check if which blcok devices used by usb (sd) [df -h, lsblk] eg:

$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 7.2 GiB, 7736072192 bytes, 15109516 sectors
Disk model: DataTraveler 3.0
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Serial communication Arduino

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

From my last post (Arduino-oled-display) I added a new function that allows me to send notification/messages from my terminal (linux) to my Arduino and it shows it through the little Oled screen. Here I will share the commands and code lines to get done the serial communication on your project.

void loop() {
  while (Serial.available() > 0)
    {
        char recieved = Serial.read();
        inData += recieved;

        // Process message when new line character is received

        if (recieved == '\n')
        {
            Serial.print("Arduino Received: ");
            Serial.print(inData);
            //digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
            //
            if(inData == "HELLO\n")

            { // DON'T forget to add "\n" at the end of the string.

              Serial.println("HELLO");
              //digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
              display.clearDisplay();
              display.setCursor(0,0);
              display.setTextSize(2);
              display.print("Hi jose!");
              display.display();
              delay(3000);
            }
            inData = ""; // Clear received buffer
        }
    }
}

Nextcloud bot as Notification System

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Following the last post, where I shared how to use Telegram’s bot; on this post I’m going to explain how implement it by Chat Nextcloud API. This post is useful for those have a Nexctcloud deployment running at home/cloud.

Assuming you have already Nextcloud up and running, we can create the new user, that we are gonna use it as “BOT” we will need the chat room token and the “BOT” credentials.

Telegram Bot as Notification System

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

From one older post “Create a job using crontab” I used into my script the service exim4/ssmtp as mail server using gmail, but as we’re trying to walk away of Google’s jaw, I switched my notification engine to Telegram by an API service(bot)… almost it’s a step forward ! :)

Requirement:

Bot (Telegram)
Web Browser
Terminal(script)

I will assume you have already set up your Bot on Telegram with BotFather

When you have already created your Bot you can check by the API through a web browser

Docker Container "before start"

Sun, 26 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Part I

Containers are environments that host individual applications using a framework like Docker.

Docker Editions:

Docker CE ( community edition ) free version
Docker EE ( enterprise edition) Paid

Versions:

Stable, released every 4 months.
Edge (beta) released every month. For testing
EE, support for one year.

Example how to create a container:

$docker container run --publish 80:80 --detach --name webhost nginx

detach: subcommand is to let run the container and keep use the command prompt name: create a container’s name.

How to set you SSH key into Gitlab

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

How to set you SSH key into Gitlab [First you need to had installed Git onto your distro]

Go to your terminal and issue the follow command to generate your key: $ssh-keygen
Copy your public key from the route: /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Then go at your gitlab profile https://gitlab.com/profile/keys/ a paste and save.
From the terminal test the conection by typing: $ssh -T git@gitlab.com and if everything was fine it has to promt –> Welcome to GitLab, @user_account!

Create a .zip using 7z by cmd in Windows

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

After to install the 7z in our windows workstation/server then we need to create our evironment variables to call the function from the cmd [1].

Then the command below will guide you to zip a simple file:

7z a -r [myzip] [example.txt]

[myzip] - the zip name file
[example.txt] file used for the example

To zip a folder

7z a [myzip] [folder]

Docu based thx to the information seen from: [1] GlobalEnviroment

Output IPCONFIG report to HTML by PowerShell

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

$file = "C:\Users\jcr\a.html"
$ipconfig=ipconfig /all |%{"$_<br/>"}

$body=@"
<html>
    <head>
    <title>Network Report</title>
    </head>
<body>
    <h1>IPConfig /All</h1>
    <pre>$ipconfig</pre>
</body>
</html>
"@
$body | Out-File $file
. $file

Create a job using crontab

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

To automate tasks or create some monitoring job we can use the older and efficient tool the “CronJob”.

For our example, I’ve created a simple script to detect the cache memory and clean it if raise to a condition then send a notification by mail.

Library used:

exim4 (mail server) or ssmtp (mail server). Both uses the same “mail” command.

Script:

# grab the buff/cache memory
mem="$(free -m | grep 'Mem:' | awk '{print $6}')"

if  (( $mem > 350 ))
then
echo 'wooo is more than 250M'
echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
echo 'cache dropped'
echo "Memory buff/cache cleaned last value:" $mem | mail -s "cache_memory" target_mail@local.com
else
echo 'be cool man, memory lower'
fi

script path: /user/Documents/script/memory