DEV Community: Bartlomiej

DevOpsWay Mini #3 - a closer and cyclic look at html

Bartlomiej — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 08:16:52 +0000

First of all - sorry for the long wait!

Next of all - this time another mini side project
Another one that isn't that crazy - a primitive logger.
While most of the projects I have thought about, then seen, are all about checking usage of RAM (free), storage (df, most likely with -h), CPU (ps -ef, or even pipe it with head: ps -ef | head -n X).
Also, it has the added benefit of needing to learn how to parse the .html versus just sending the outputs of the Linux commands

Initially, it had an issue that made it pretty unexciting.
I don't really use the server for that much, so the only way I could get alert is if I deliberately did some shenanigans on the server.

So what could alert me?
Whenever McDonald's promos change
As funny as it sounds - it also seems reasonable... and tasty sometimes 😅😂
I've decided to make alarming via e-mail, and job scheduling via crontab

I'll be honest - while I've sent emails via C#, I've used AI to generate the mailing script - but the most important thing is that you always want to review and edit the changes - under no circumstance blindly use the generated code!

I left myself a possibility to add more recipients if friends of mine would like to be alarmed of promos changing - so I've decided on using file for configuration of sending emails
One thing I know for a fact, I want to make an update in the near future: replacing e-mail configuration file with environment variables.

It has a TREMENDOUS added value: not only do I need to ensure it is structured properly, but I can just take data from the variable names, so I will be sure they won't be tangled.
But that's not even the best part!
It is the fact that I can easily set up the same code, and test different things (for this script - such as sending e-mail only when using the server, and on local tests I can use print instead of spamming my email!)

Speaking about that, I wouldn't need to edit the script every single time to account for the fact I'm using a different OS on the server vs locally!
Pretty powerful, isn't it?

Oh, and I'm dropping the scripts - I'll admit they are not professional, but do they really need to be? Maybe, but software development is an iterative process which I'll come back to and update later 😁
Also, I believe showing the whole iterative process is much more insightful than showing just the highlights!

See you in the next one - whatever that may be 🤔

The Journey #2 - networking

Bartlomiej — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 08:10:24 +0000

Hi again!

This time I'm back with something I have always failed to understand in even one bit, no matter how many times the subject has reappeared in school - networking.
And I haven't learned it during my career, because I didn't have to, so the topic has always been haunting me 😅.

The good news is, I'm starting to feel confident about the basics I had contact with during my Journey.

There is one mindset difference I have acquired lately, definitely a soft skill worth having!
If some atomic concept I'm trying to understand seems too complex (I'm not talking about some complicated equations here!) then most likely I'm overcomplicating things.

You can completely skip this part
And that changed a lot - completely unrelated matter - weight loss - for quite some time I've tried to lose some weight, so as everyone I was looking for some miraculous diets, foods to eat or avoid etc.
In fact, that is an extremely simple thing - supply less energy than I'm using - and it worked big time - I didn't even have to stop eating my favorite foods - just cut back a little 😉

But - and it's a BIG BUT - it also works for more technical things - one more example before we continue with the main topic.
I think everyone who has started learning a programming language with pointers can agree that they had issues with them.
Okay, so first you learn that it's basically a variable that stores location of other variables - manageable, right?
But... then it's also an array?

As long as you KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) it, it doesn't get complicated, we are just using the basic knowledge of pointers and their properties to create more abstract concepts - in its essence it still just points to a single point.

Oh, also I might need a name for that "rule", would be too bad if it already existed somehow 😅

The biggest difference now is that I'm learning not because I have to, but because I want to 😤.

During my school years, I've struggled with even the most basic stuff like private/public IP - I knew the private address classes, but how and why does that work? No idea, just learned it by the heart, and forgot it by the heart.

And guess what, my "rule" here is right again - it's nothing special at all.
Using simple terms, a router just looks at the IP address, checks if it's local or not and decides where to send it.
There is also NAT involved - but it's translating the IP, not really changing the definition of what is an IP address.
Oh, and during writing this text, I've learned the IP Classes are kind of a thing of the past - addresses within the range are just private.
There is also CIDR [Classless Inter-Domain Routing] that defines the size of the subnet - regardless of whether it's private or public

Firewall isn't a level 5 Wizard spell, it's as simple as a rule - is port closed? Then we just don't open the way for packets.

ISO/OSI is a weirder case of mine - as I like to compare it to how a certain cybersecurity stack works.
We use an interface to say we want to communicate something, it gets packed [multiple times, in fact!] along the way, sent.
Someone receives it, unpacks it [also multiple times], and it gets delivered to the application it was supposed to. Magic? No - it works's the same as sending a letter, you take it, pack it into envelope [that's your "layer" you are responsible to], then send it to the next layer - which is post office, and you are free of worries, neither you nor the receiver needs to know what happens when other layers are working.

But there are some more binary concepts such as TCP vs UDP - one is reliable but slower, the other one is unreliable but fast.
Which one is which? I like to think of T like Trusted, U like Unreliable

Subnet masks are also very simple - binary ones show which part is related to the net, zeroes to hosts in the subnet - which in turns are just sliced up parts of the private net.

Some work with Elasticsearch and my own mini web app (nothing too fancy just taking requests and sending some data depending on the path) - made me understand REST API - it's not some dark knowledge, you basically take the path in the app, parse it how you like it, and return data. Like a big switch statement.

This time the journey wasn't about failing, but rather overcoming failures of the past, so it definitely hasn't been the most satisfying read, sorry for that!

See you in the next one!

DevOpsWay Mini #2 - git good

Bartlomiej — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 18:37:15 +0000

I'm back!

Today, definitely on the shorter side.

I've had some thoughts when using git lately.
On my branch, I had a few commits - but I wanted to push them as a single one instead.
My gut instinct was to use squash - but it's kind of a big deal 🤔
You need to enter interactive rebase, and select the commits to be squashed.
I felt like trying something else as my changes weren't complicated and just did soft reset then amended the commit - worked like a charm✨!

And the thoughts? I guess I need to step up my git game - who knows how many things are lurking in the documentation that I'm not aware of due to habits.
What are your go-to tricks to save the day?

See you soon... tomorrow, hopefully!

DevOpsWay Mini #1 - Vagrant

Bartlomiej — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 17:31:40 +0000

While I don't have as many mishaps (yet!) to keep posting longer texts - I'd like to keep my profile alive and still share some experiences.
Even shorter and not as meticulous or informative - so here goes first issue of DevOpsWay Mini 🎉🎊

As for the topic - Vagrant - how to keep learning and not keep installing VMs

For those who don't know, Vagrant is a great tool that helps configure and provision Virtual Machines repeatedly.
Remember clicking through VirtualBox and installing OS? Remember how you wanted to take a break just after setting it up? Yea, me too.

Vagrant takes all of that away with a simple Vagrantfile called Vagrantfile (duh!) and command vagrant up... and command vagrant ssh.
In short, it contains all information needed to run the VM - like Operating System (called a box), specifying how much RAM and CPU cores it will have.
Additionally, we can provide information in provisioning section which amounts to Vagrant doing the job of Ansible and Terraform - but on local VM - or at least that's my understanding as of now.

The biggest takeaway is that you can create R&D labs in a few moments.
This is a great thing that has motivated me to actually try doing some network based stuff as I don't need to push anything to a server, nor pay for it, while still needing some network configuration.
My detour for this one was creating a simple godot "game" with headless server on a vagrant Linux VM connecting from a Windows Client!
(Also big shoutout to shared folders)

Pardon my polish text in the application and errors in the server CLI 😅
See you next time!

The Journey #1 - Loggern't, Archiven't and Cron't

Bartlomiej — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 16:21:40 +0000

Hey there!

Starting The Journey with logger that didn't log and cronjob that didn't cron!

While not the very first thing I have learned during the course it is the very first thing I want to share - Linux: the logger, the archiver and the crontab

The reason I want to start with that is that it proves what I've said on my prior post - That while learning I tend to get sidetracked, but I gain something in return.

I've had some experience with Linux in university, but it being over 7 years ago is bound to create some gaps in the knowledge.
After regaining some knowledge on the basics and hearing about crontab somewhere (I really don't remember now 😅) I have thought to myself: let's write anything and put it in cron!

So my next thing was to put something that would have timestamps so I can actually check if something works periodically - and what wouldn't be better than creating some basic logger?

I need to mention that the version you will see is the product of some iterations so that might not look cohesive 😅.

Lo and behold... [the current version of] logger

I've spent a short while writing a script, nothing too crazy going on.
But then came hooking it up to crontab, which I had no prior knowledge of.
I think you can already guess what happened... yea, didn't quite work

For tests purposes I've already used

chmod 555

So I just knew it had to work...
But I've learned the hard way how time works in cron - if you put 1 in minutes column it doesn't mean - do it every 1 minute but do it when minutes of an hour is equal to 1

So after gaining that knowledge I've waited some more and there it was, my first automated log!
Which would grow endlessly... So let's schedule archiving daily!

The open log file doesn't get reset, the logs aren't getting archived despite the script working when using it manually.
Now guess what issue I could have with that one...
Yea, it seems chmod is a really important thing, and remembering to use it is even more important.
When I think of it im pretty sure cron also has user, so instead of using chmod I could just use chown - so there is another takeway!
And oh look, here it is!

This one would grow a bit over time to provide more sophisticated methods, such as using tar to compress it into a tiny tarball.
And oh boy, look at the size difference 👀!

Did I follow beaten path? No
Did I fall down? Yes
Do I regret that? No
I have learned things I wouldn't just by clicking along with the course.

So what are they?

Always remember about chmod
It's even better to use chown
Cron is extremely powerful tool
tarballing is efficient
top is for humans ps is for scripts

See you in the next one!

The Journey Begins!

Bartlomiej — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 16:17:32 +0000

Hello everyone! 👋

As this is my first post, I'd like to introduce myself and give a small heads-up on what you can expect from my posts.

For almost seven past years, I've been working with embedded systems and C programming language.
Some time ago I thought It'd be fun as well as beneficial to learn something new, so after doing some research I've decided to dive into DevOps!

The world of DevOps seems fascinating - in my opinion, it's basically the quintessence of IT - automating tasks... and automating automation.
Especially when it comes to automating tasks that are already somewhat automated (like using Kubernetes to orchestrate Docker if I understand those correctly, as I've yet to learn those tools).

What's really exciting is that I can apply what I learned to my hobby -game development.
One day, I'll definitely make an online match based game that creates rooms dynamically with containers - that's one of my goals 😤!

I am already on my journey with Imran Teli's Decoding DevOps – From Basics to Advanced Projects with AI course on Udemy and finished Bo Andersen's Complete Guide to Elasticsearch big shoutout to those guys 🙂
After those I'm planning to go along with roadmap - had just a glance but so far looks like an excellent resource, those guys also have more roadmaps than just the DevOps so feel free to take a peek if you think about learning something new.

As for my style of learning, I think a hands-on approach suits me the best.
Sadly it has the downside of not really being the most optimized way if you don't know where to start, so during the courses I tend to get sidetracked a lot, but taking out a bit more in the process - which seems like a fair trade-off in my book 😁.

So join me on my adventure and maybe learn a thing or two along the way!
If you have any tips or resource to share, feel free to drop those too

See you soon 🙂