S5E2: "I Am the Keymaster; Are You the Gatekeeper?"

Posted 2020-03-15 23:59
Modified 2020-03-25 22:53
Comments 0

We talk about how to NOT use turnkey solutions (in other words, how to do things the right way). We also talk about tips to implement telecommuting capabilities to your organization in Jthan’s 15 clams!

• Just the Tip
• Notes
• 15 Clams
• Errata
• Music

Just the Tip

• Paden talks about the or operator in Bash.
  • Not that it’s that special, because every scripting language has a similar operator.

Notes

Starts at 06m45s.

I was drinking some Breckenridge Bourbon. Paden was drinking Diet Dr. Pepper. Jthan was drinking Tension Tamer again.

• Properly planning/deploying a project (as an alternative to turnkey)
  • Implement each of the components yourself because you know your own environment/needs.
  • First determine the problem you want to solve/feature you want to implement
  • Then determine constraints you need to satisfy:
    • Money/fiscal budget
    • Time
    • Manpower
    • Deadline
  • Then determine components that will satisfy each function in project.
  • Then you need to come up with a deployment strategy for each component (and their dependencies).
    • Don’t try to turn them all up at once, because that makes testing more difficult.
  • After a staging/PoC has been designed, then you can plan the deployment to production.
  • Jthan gives Mail-in-a-Box as an example of a turnkey that is a very bad idea.
    • I give an analogy of someone relying on something that should ‘just work’ and …doesn’t.

15 Clams

In this segment, Jthan shares with you a little slice of life. The title is a reference to this video. (2m16s in)

Starts at 40m52s.

This was the first 15 Clams Jthan answered a math question correctly on the first try!

Jthan talks about COVID-19 – specifically what tips/tricks etc. to prepare your company for it (“PlagueOps”?).

• A VPN is the most important tool for remotely working.
  • Remember to use selective routing!
• Comms/communication in general.
  • Skype is alright.
  • Hangouts is suitable as well.
  • I prefer Jitsi Meet as it allows you to turn up your own comms and don’t need to rely on third-party for security (or pricing; it’s open source), allowing you to rely on in-house existing authentication.
  • A/V works great for meetings, but remember to also provide text communication! Email is, of course, a tried-and-true asynchronous communication method. XMPP is a podcast favourite for a chat protocol (we recommend ejabberd).
• Ensure that their work laptop is properly set up to be able to be remotely supported and running cleanly.
• Plan for longer delays in your supply chain.
• Try doing test-runs before it’s a necessity.
  • This will be necessary to gage who will need more “hand-holding” to stay on task opposed to those that excel when telecommuting. Some people really do work better in a shared office environment!

• GitLab has a remote working guide (and a quick bootstrap guide specifically penned in response to COVID-19, which you can find here).
• Hubspot has something more suitable for company policy makers.
• Opensource.com has a couple articles:
  • Like this
  • And this
• Linus Torvalds also offers some tips.
• You may also want to follow Chris Herd on Twitter.

Errata

• The commercial version of 389ds is called Directory Server because of course it is.
• I said “FreeNAS assumes it’s in an AD environment”. I meant FreeIPA.
• I found the current product I helped develop way back in January 2010.

Music

Author r00t^2
Categories Season Five