Category Archives: Uncategorized

Standing by the Sidelines

In personal terms, life has been crappy for a long time, and could be crappy for a lot longer, maybe years at this rate. But Trump and his supporters are so much worse than I could ever have imagined. I can’t stand by the sidelines anymore.
My parents were immigrants from China, the only reason I even exist today (one child policy). Remember the Chinese Exclusion Act? “The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers.”
 
Today I walked through a MLK exhibit at the Atlanta airport. I felt really emotional at what he would think of America today.
 
I’ve been angry for a long time about other causes. But all that pales in comparison to what is going on now. I’m not sure what to do or what my participation will look like. But I’ll figure it out soon, and join you all.

Context:

President Trump’s executive order on immigration indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days and blocked citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, refugees or otherwise, from entering the United States for 90 days: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/us/trump-refugee-ban-muslim-executive-order.html

notes to myself: food

update: well, i failed at activism.

snacks:
baby carrots, cabbage. oranges, apples, pears, bananas. plain yogurt.
things that tend to rot: tomatoes, grapes. strawberries.
things I could learn to like more: celery, cucumber

tater tots.

food that will keep for a week / can be made in bulk
quesadillas
jjajiang noodles (with fermented soy beans)
pasta
burrito mix
egg salad
sandwich? (eggs, cabbage, cheese, pesto, maybe sauteed onions)

things to learn:
peanut sauce noodles / thai (i guess you need coconut milk, but add it at the end so it still tastes cocounty?)
veggie patties
braised cabbage
cheesy potatoes

base groceries for the week/two weeks:

  • cheese
  • eggs
  • canned beans
  • frozen corn
  • onions, garlic
  • potatoes
  • cabbage

and some kind of base:
pasta, tortillas, nachos, rice, bread. bread

drinks that can be made in bulk:
sweet tea
chai

sauces:
hot sauce
dijon mustard
ketchup
mayo

spices:
cumin (celery seed, cardamon, fennel, coriander, mustard seed, nutmeg, basil, rosemary, tumeric)
chili pepper
pepper & salt

todo: learn to use non-canned peas

Gitlab + Mattermost on Ubuntu 16.04

In this post, we

  1. Install gitlab omnibus and enable mattermost
  2. Get mattermost to accept gitlab credentials
  3. Use ports and a second domain name we have full control over to get around not being able to install mattermost in a subdirectory
  4. Solve an annoying “Failed to upgrade websocket connection” error in Mattermost that means it doesn’t have real-time services
  5. Learn how to purge mattermost data

Specifically, we have two domain names.
a) organizational-domain.com (in our case, a .edu domain), which all our files will be created on
and
b) your-domain.com (in our case, a domain we registered separately through godaddy)

To resolve that we a) cannot create subdomains on the organizational domain, and b) must install mattermost on a subdomain, not a subdirectory, we will create subdomains on your-domain.com and point them to ports on the organizational domain

git.your-domain.com –> http://organizational-domain.com:8001
mattermost.your-domain.com –> http://organizational-domain.com:8007

Install Gitlab Omnibus, Community Edition, for the first time
(Note: Omnibus i think just refers to the official latest and greatest gitlab release)
0a. Add gitlab repository as per https://about.gitlab.com/downloads/#ubuntu1604
0b. sudo apt-get install gitlab-ce

If not first time: Uninstall and Purge Gitlab Data
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/blob/6-9-stable/README.md#uninstalling-omnibus-gitlab
1. sudo gitlab-ctl uninstall
Stop gitlab processes
2. sudo gitlab-ctl cleanse
Remove all omnibus-gitlab data
3. sudo apt-get remove gitlab-ce

Reinstall Gitlab
4. sudo apt-get install gitlab-ce
5. sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

Re-configure Gitlab
6. sudo vi /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
6a. external_url “http://organizational-domain.com:8001″
6b. mattermost_external_url ‘http://organizational-domain.com:8007′

(Note: these ports, 8001 and 8007, were arbitrarily chosen and just needs to match Apache’s configuration in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/gitlab.conf & /mattermost.conf)

7. sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

8. Go to http://git.your-domain.com
8a. It will ask you to set a password
8b. Sign in to gitlab, the username is root and you just set the password

Reconfigure Mattermost
9. Get mattermost to accept gitlab’s single-sign-on
9a. On git.your-domain.com, go to Profile Settings > Applications

Add new applications
Name: Mattermost
Redirect URI: 
http://mattermost.your-domain.com/signup/gitlab/complete
http://mattermost.your-domain.com/login/gitlab/complete
Save Application

You will get an Application ID and Secret, which you will use in the next step.

9b. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb, uncomment and fill out
mattermost[‘gitlab_enable’] = true
mattermost[‘gitlab_id’] = “12345656”
mattermost[‘gitlab_secret’] = “123456789”
mattermost[‘gitlab_scope’] = “”
mattermost[‘gitlab_auth_endpoint’] = “http://git.your-domain.com/oauth/authorize”
mattermost[‘gitlab_token_endpoint’] = “http://git.your-domain.com/oauth/token”
mattermost[‘gitlab_user_api_endpoint’] = “http://git.your-domain.com/api/v3/user”

(Note to self: make sure to put “git.your-domain” and not “gitlab.your-domain” to keep everything consistent)

10. sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

Test it!
11. On gitlab, register a non-admin account
Foobar
foobar@mailinator.com
asdf1234

12. On gitlab, sign out as root and signin as foobar

13. Go to mattermost.your-domain.com
13a. Create an account with Gitlab Single Sign-On
13b. Authorize

14. Create a new team
15. Team Settings > Allow any user with an account on this server to join this team: Yes

16. Make sure real-time communications work: open a new tab and make sure you don’t need to refresh to see the chats update

Fin.
===============

Alternative way to purge Mattermost data:

Getting the Mattermost CLI to work in Gitlab Omnibus
The Mattermost CLI is documented here https://docs.mattermost.com/administration/command-line-tools.html
However as we are using Mattermost as part of Gitlab, it is a bit finicky [1] and we must use this shell script:

$ sudo vi mattermost.sh

#!/bin/sh
cd /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/mattermost
sudo -u mattermost /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/mattermost -config=/var/opt/gitlab/mattermost/config.json $@

$ sudo sh mattermost.sh -help
(Just to check that the script is working)

Now, to delete a team:
$ sudo sh mattermost.sh -permanent_delete_team -team_name=”first slack team”
Have you performed a database backup? (YES/NO):
YES
(Otherwise it will abort)

Fin.

[1] Credit to: http://forum.mattermost.org/t/where-to-find-mattermost-after-installing-gitlab-omnibus/175/7

===============
Troubleshooting: Misc
sudo cd` fails; switch to interactive mode using `sudo -i` and then run your commands. (eg `cd`)
sudo service apache2 restart
a2dismod & a2enmod

Troubleshooting: Log Locations
sudo gitlab-ctl tail
sudo tail -f /var/log/gitlab/mattermost/mattermost.log
sudo tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log
sudo tail -f /var/log/gitlab/nginx/gitlab_mattermost_access.log
sudo tail -f /var/log/gitlab/nginx/error.log

Troubleshooting: Firewalls?
$ sudo netstat -plnt | grep :8001
(you should see
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:8001 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 12668/nginx
Else, if the port isn’t in use, you’ll see nothing)

or

$ nc -l 8001
( you should see
nc: Address already in use
Else, you’ll see nothing)

If the port is open and not firewalled, you should be able to talk to yourself
In tab one: $ nc -l 8002
In tab two: $ nc organizational-domain.com 8002
Whatever you type in one tab should show up in the other

Notes: Apache Configuration to avoid Mattermost websocket errors

For proper websocket updating, you must enable
$ sudo a2enmod proxy_wstunnel
(Just in case, though gitlab install should have enabled this:
sudo a2enmod proxy_http)
$ sudo service apache2 restart

/etc/apache2/sites-enabled$ sudo vi mattermost.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName mattermost.your-domain.com
ServerSignature Off
ProxyPreserveHost On

<Location />
Require all granted
ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:8007
ProxyPassReverse http://mattermost.your-domain.com/
</Location>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/api/v3/users/websocket [NC]
RewriteRule /(.*) ws://127.0.0.1:8007/$1 [P,L]
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule .* http://127.0.0.1:8007%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA]

</VirtualHost>

The bolded lines essentially catch requests by Mattermost to the websockets API and makes sure they are redirected to ws://

(Otherwise you will not get real time updates and will get lots of ” Failed to upgrade websocket connection” in the Mattermost log, var/log/gitlab/mattermost/mattermost.log)

Credit to http://serverfault.com/questions/616370/configuring-apache-2-4-mod-proxy-wstunnel-for-socket-io-1-0/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/gitlab.conf is identical, minus the two bolded websocket lines; and with URL and port changed.

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName git.your-domain.com
ServerSignature Off
ProxyPreserveHost On
<Location />
Require all granted
ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:8001
ProxyPassReverse http://git.your-domain.com/
</Location>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule .* http://127.0.0.1:8001%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA]
# needed for downloading attachments
DocumentRoot /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/public
</VirtualHost>

Credit to https://kevingoedecke.me/2015/09/17/setup-gitlab-on-debian-7-with-existing-apache-webserver/ &

Fin.