How to schedule new blog posts

Fairywen — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 13:01:51 +0000

Some of you may be looking for a way to prepare Hugo-blog content, and post it automatically on a specific day without having any further action to do.

Here is a very simple way to handle this, using both Hugo and GitHub Action functionalities.

Step 1 : Hugo side

A Hugo-based blog content is basically a Markdown file, which contains at its beginning a front matter bloc (using yaml or toml syntax).

This front matter let us set several properties.

For example, here is one from a post of mine :

+++
title = "How to plan your blog posts in advance"
date = 2024-06-10
draft = false
tags = ["tuto","blogging"]
categories = ["tech"]
+++

One can notice the presence of a date field, allowing not only to set up post's writing date, but will be used by Hugo while building the site.

Indeed, Hugo default behavior is to not build future contents.

That's exactly what we need here. Just write the desired publish date instead, and then build periodically the site !

Step 2 : GitHub side

GitHub Actions manages build of the site through a .github\workflows\hugo.yml file, created by GitHub while the workflow is configured the first time (note by the way that it looks like a Jenkinsfile a lot).

My first usage was to build on every push on the main branch :

# Sample workflow for building and deploying a Hugo site to GitHub Pages
name: Deploy Hugo site to Pages

on:
  # Runs on pushes targeting the default branch
  push:
    branches: ["main"]

# Deploying actions

So I simply added a scheduled trigger (see documentation here) every friday morning.

Notice that time is UTC-based, and it is not possible for now to use timezone (see this discussion).

Let's add the scheduled trigger in hugo.yml file :

# Sample workflow for building and deploying a Hugo site to GitHub Pages
name: Deploy Hugo site to Pages

on:
  # Runs on pushes targeting the default branch
  push:
    branches: ["main"]

  # Runs every friday at 5 o'clock AM UTC to publish "music friday" posts
  schedule:
    - cron: '00 05 * * 5'

Here we are !

From now on, the site will be also build once a week to generate contents that was in the future.

Configuring check_oracle Nagios plugin

Fairywen — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 10:01:07 +0000

Let's see how to set-up Oracle database monitoring on an eyesofnetwork server, using check_oracle plugin.

Step 1 : Get check_oracle pluging

First, check_oracle plugin can already be available on Nagios server, look for yum package nagios-plugins-oracle.x86_64 : Nagios Plugin - check_oracle.
Install it if it's not.

Step 2 : Install oracle client

The lightest way to get all oracle dependancies we need is to :

install an oracle-instantclient
add tnsping by getting it on another server

Note : We also could have installed "full" oracle client, but I don't think it would have been relevant.

Step 2.1 : Get instant client

So let's get .rpm package on oracle instant client download page.

In this example we pick up version 19.14.0.0.0 in Basic Package (RPM) (wich contains SQL*Plus binary).

Once this package is pushed to targer server, install it :

[root@nagios-server ~]# yum install <path_to>/oracle-instantclient19.14-basic-19.14.0.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm
Modules complémentaires chargés : fastestmirror
Examen de oracle-instantclient19.14-basic-19.14.0.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm : oracle-instantclient19.14-basic-19.14.0.0.0-1.x86_64
Sélection de oracle-instantclient19.14-basic-19.14.0.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm pour installation
Résolution des dépendances
--> Lancement de la transaction de test
---> Le paquet oracle-instantclient19.14-basic.x86_64 0:19.14.0.0.0-1 sera installé
--> Résolution des dépendances terminée

Dépendances résolues

================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
 Package                                                    Architecture                      Version                                    Dépôt                                                                            Taille
================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
Installation :
 oracle-instantclient19.14-basic                            x86_64                            19.14.0.0.0-1                              /oracle-instantclient19.14-basic-19.14.0.0.0-1.x86_64                            226 M

Résumé de la transaction
================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
Installation   1 Paquet

Taille totale  : 226 M
Taille d'installation : 226 M
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
  Installation : oracle-instantclient19.14-basic-19.14.0.0.0-1.x86_64                                                                                                                                                       1/1
  Vérification : oracle-instantclient19.14-basic-19.14.0.0.0-1.x86_64                                                                                                                                                       1/1

Installé :
  oracle-instantclient19.14-basic.x86_64 0:19.14.0.0.0-1

Terminé !

At the end of installation, Oracle client is installed under /usr/lib/oracle/19.14/client64. That will be our ORACLE_HOME directory for next steps.

Step 2.2 Add tnsping

To do so we just have to get $ORACLE_HOME/bin/tnsping and $ORACLE_HOME/network/mesg/tnsus.msb from database server (also running on linux distribution), copy it to Nagios server in equivalent directories and check file permissions.

tnsping

[root@nagios-server ~]# echo $ORACLE_HOME
/usr/lib/oracle/19.14/client64
[root@nagios-server ~]# mv tnsping $ORACLE_HOME/bin/
[root@nagios-server ~]# cd $ORACLE_HOME/bin/
[root@nagios-server bin]# ls -la
total 180
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root    4096 11 mars  10:42 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root   root    4096 11 mars  10:12 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root   root   41504 25 déc.  14:20 adrci
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root   root   59032 25 déc.  14:20 genezi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root   root   24512 25 déc.  14:22 sqlplus
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user   user   42216 11 mars  10:34 tnsping
[root@nagios-server bin]# chmod 755 tnsping
[root@nagios-server bin]# chown root.root tnsping
[root@nagios-server bin]# ls -la
total 180
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 11 mars  10:42 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root  4096 11 mars  10:12 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 41504 25 déc.  14:20 adrci
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 59032 25 déc.  14:20 genezi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 24512 25 déc.  14:22 sqlplus
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 42216 11 mars  10:34 tnsping

tnsus.msb

[root@nagios-server ~]# mkdir $ORACLE_HOME/network/mesg
[root@nagios-server ~]# mv tnsus.msb $ORACLE_HOME/network/mesg/.
[root@nagios-server ~]# cd $ORACLE_HOME/network/mesg
[root@nagios-server mesg]# ls -la
total 60
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root    4096 11 mars  10:51 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root   root    4096 11 mars  10:50 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user   user   50688 11 mars  10:49 tnsus.msb
[root@nagios-server mesg]# chown root.root tnsus.msb
[root@nagios-server mesg]# chmod 644 tnsus.msb
[root@nagios-server mesg]# ls -la
total 60
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 11 mars  10:51 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root  4096 11 mars  10:50 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 50688 11 mars  10:49 tnsus.msb

Step 3 : add `tnsnames` file

By default after installation, network/admin directory is under /usr/lib/oracle/19.14/client64/lib. Usually this would be under $ORACLE_HOME, so let's move it :

[root@nagios-server ~]# cd /usr/lib/oracle/19.14/client64/
[root@nagios-server client64]# mv lib/network .

Then we can create an usual tnsnames.ora under $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/ looking like this :

MY_DB =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS =
      (PROTOCOL = <protocol>)(HOST = <ip>)(PORT = <port>))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SID = ORA_SID)
    )
  )

Step 4 : Configure check command

As explained in this Nagios support topic, Nagios plugins doesn't have access to environment variables when running, thus there is no point to set ORACLE_HOME or update LD_LIBRARY_PATH in linux system.
Instead, we have to set them directly in check command definition in /etc/nagios/objects/commands/commands.cfg, example for a tns check :

define command {
  command_name my_check_oracle_tns
  command_line /usr/bin/env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/oracle/19.14/client64/lib ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/19.14/client64 /srv/eyesofnetwork/nagios/plugins/check_oracle --tns $ARG1$
}

That's all, our Nagios server have now a new command to monitor Oracle database server 😃

DEV Community: Fairywen