Using the latest patchset of a gerrit commit in a jenkins build for pipeline builds and for the Jenkinsfile itself.

I want to set up a build/deployment Jenkins for a new docker based storage system in a “XYZ as Code” manner. So the solution should be a (declarative) pipeline script using a Jenkinsfile from the git repo.

The main point i struggled with was that Jenkins always checked out the origin/master branch from the  repo. The reason was that you have to tell Jenkins, he has to use “Additional Behaviours”.

At least for checking out the intended version of the Jenkinsfile it worked.

Nevertheless, the checkout within the pipeline script in the Jenkinsfile still didn’t work as i wanted. The same as above applies here, you have to add the “Additional Behaviour”. This is possible using the “Snipped Generator” available at ${JENKINS-URL}/pipeline-syntax.

Here simply use “Checkout from version control”, add repo credentials and leave Branch Specifier empty. Add the Additional Behavior “Strategy what to build”, choose “Gerrit Trigger” and voila something like the following snippet should be generated:

checkout([$class: 'GitSCM', branches: [[name: '**']], 
         extensions: [[$class: 'BuildChooserSetting', 
         buildChooser: [$class: 'GerritTriggerBuildChooser']]], 
         gitTool: 'Default', 
         userRemoteConfigs: [[credentialsId: 'Some-Hash-Value', 
         url: 'ssh://$Host:$Port/$project']]])

This will checkout the latest patchset from a gerrit commit.

How to show the full log of a systemd service

Let’s assume you’ve created your own systemd service and now want to see it’s log output. For a short check you use:

systemctl status service-name

To see the full log use:

journalctl -u service-name.service

More details can be found here:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/552945

Using ssh over https for bitbucket.org

Recently i tried to access my bitbucket repository from inside a corporate network which blocks all traffic on port 22. After several unsuccessful trials to simply use https, I looked for another possibility. The solution was quite simple: ssh over https

The default clone command of a repository will be something like:

git clone git@bitbucket.org:${YOURUSER}/${YOURPROJECT}.git

Thanks to this site: CraigTP’s Blog i found out that bitbucket provides access to ssh over port 443 with an alternative url: altssh.bitbucket.org

In order to get access using ssh, I did this:

1. Added my company account/email as a user to the according repository(becasue we also use git within the company)
2. Registered with this mail and put my public ssh key to bitbucket
3. Modified the .ssh/config as shown below

# Added content for ~/.ssh/config
Host bitbucket.org
   Hostname altssh.bitbucket.org
   Port 443

This finally gave me access 🙂

 

 

 

 

Easy Conditional formatting based on values of another column in Google Sheets

Before i’ve known the following tip, i used to format my cells in a google sheet based on the current day with indirection functions and such stuff. To check if the column A of the current row contains a date later than today, i used the following expression:

=INDEX(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW();1;4,1)))>TODAY()

After a recent discussion with a colleague it could be made WAY easier. To conditionally format, e.g. the range of D6:N36 based on the date of the column A in the current row simply use instead:

=$A6 > TODAY()

and your’e done!

Sometimes life is way more simple than you think 🙂

Setting personalized ShortKeys in Xfce4 Terminal in LinuxLite (tested with 3.2)

Afaik, in newer versions of XFCE it’s possible to enable Menu Accelerators like in GTK+. LinuxLite 3.2 hasn’t this option enabled by default. For me i wanted that XFCE4 Terminal behaves like the gnome terminal, so i can move tabs using Shift+Ctrl+{PgUp|PgDown}.

The first step doing this is enabling the editable menu accelerators in the Settings:

Menu -> Settings -> SettingsManager -> Appearance -> Settings:
Activate “[] Enable editable accelerators”

see also: http://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-settings/appearance#menu_and_buttons

Afterwards simply open a menu item and press the desired Keyboard Combination to be used as ShortKey. To remove it, use Backspace. I don’t know if you can undo this.

Changing Line Styles of multiple lines in Enterprise Architect at once

1. Open the relationship view: CTRL+SHIFT+2
2. Select all elements on your diagram using the mouse and dragging a selection box around them (Ctrl + A does not work in this tip). Easiest way is to zoom out until the whole diagram is visible.
3. This displays the Relationships dialog where you should see all the relationships for your diagram.
4. Select one or more relationships in this dialog. Here you can use CTRL+A as you like
5. Right-click and select Appearance… to change the width / colour of all selected relationships.
6. Right-click and select Line Style to change the line style of all selected relationships.

Tested using Enterprise Architect 13

The original tip comes from: http://dthomas-software.co.uk/sparx-enterprise-architect-tip-of-the-month/

 

Keeping active edges with synergy

Consider you have two screens right beside each other:

 Curly        Moe
              ----------------
-----------   |XXXXXXXXXXXXXX|
|         |   |              |
|         |   |              |
|         |   |              |
-----------   ----------------

X – marks a region where you want to have a non-switching region, e.g. if you have active edges or different monitor heights.

For this case, synergy supports ranges in the links section. The ranges are given as percentages. For the case above, to exclude a small portion of the screen Moe, use the following setup:

section: links
     Curly:
        # the full right edge of Curly is mapped to 5% - 100% of 
        # the left edge of Moe
        right        = Moe(5,100)
     Moe:
        # same config but for the other side
        left(5,100)  = Curly

Using this feature you can realize partial overlaps on both sides as well. For detailed information look at the full synergy config documentation: Synergy Text_Config

 

 

Installing chrome as non root user

If you want to install google chrome as a non root user in debian (e.g. jessie) you have to simply:

1. Unpack the .deb manually

dpkg -x google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb /local/mysoft/chrome

2. Start chrome with –no-sandbox option

/local/mysoft/chrome/opt/google/chrome/chrome --no-sandbox

Redirecting the output of scp to a log file

Logging the output of scp (and similar commands) doesn’t work the straightforward way of a simple redirection because scp uses direct terminal codes and if it detects a redirection, it doesn’t output anything.

Fortunately there is a command called script which is able to simulate a terminal so the output could be recorded.

To trace the output of

scp $REMOTE_SERVER:~/test/test.file /dev/null

Wrap a script command around

# fetch the file, but don't store it locally
script -q -c "scp $REMOTE_SERVER:~/test/test.file /dev/null" 2>&1 | tee scpLog
# replace carriage return with newline
sed -i -e 's/\r/\n/g' scpLog

And your’e done

Find out which bad guy has fiddled on your workstation

Lastly i sat in a meeting and suddenly my vnc session to my workstation was killed. First, i thought we had some network problems, but i encountered my workstation was rebooted!

But how to figure out, who this was?

Luckily there’s a nice command called: last.

# Show last logged in users
last

This command basically uses the file /var/log/wtmp as it’s source. After a reboot this file seems to be rewritten, unfortunately.

# This file only goes back to the last reboot, so we need 
# to look around to find pevious version
ls /var/log/wtmp*

# => Output (filenames depend on your machine configuration, 
# i have a RHEL 7 box)
wtmp-20160114

# the file itself is not human readable but could be used 
# as input for last
last -f /var/log/wtmp-20160114

Now could clearly see, who was the bad guy …