I’ve heard a lot of stuff about Chef by Opscode some time ago but never actually gave it a try. Chef is a bundle of software that allows you to configure and install your servers by coding, not by entering commands. I fiddled with it one time but it was really hard to set up.

Because we’re launching our new server infrastructure on a new bigger Amazon instance in a fe days, I thought I’d give it a try.

The main reason I was looking for something like Chef was automation. In the past I would install every server manually and I didn’t have some predefined bash scripts for setting up a server, installing the base system and preconfigure Rails, PHP apps and things like backups. Chef allows me to do that now.

Our new server is going to run various apps. Our own website, some WordPress websites and mainly Ruby on Rails apps. Because we run some business-critical apps for our clients the server setup should be clean and certainly not hacked together, and we need external backups to S3 and be able to add another server to the pool when usage gets bigger – which is going to happen.

When you have Chef installed, you probably want to run a Chef Server and a Chef Client. The Chef Server keeps all the state of the server configuration for the configuration and installation scripts. The Chef Client actually reads the configuration and runs the script.

The chef clients runs multiple recipes that configure your server. For example, a recipe downloads apache or nginx via apt-get when you’re on Ubuntu, but could install an RPM if you are on an rpm-based distribution. The recipe is the actual script, but you can also store configuration attributes and download urls with the recipes. These little bundles of recipes and other configuration are called cookbooks.

We currently have the following cookbooks in our Chef repository:

Our Chef repository

Recipes can depend on other recipes from other cookbooks. For instance to install Phusion Passenger and nginx, I want to use the ruby_enterprise cookbook so it will first in stall the Phusion Ruby Enterprise Edition and then installes and configures nginx and passenger for it.

We use Scout App for monitoring the performance and usage of the instance and we use it so we receive warnings if something reaches critical numbers.

For Scout, I did not run the Scout agent as explained on their on website, but I created a recipe for it in the scout cookbook:

gem_package "scout" do
  action :install
end


gem_package "request-log-analyzer" do
  action :install
end

user "scout" do
  comment "Scout Agent User"
  home "/home/scout"
  supports :manage_home => true
end

execute "scout_first_run" do
  user "scout"
  command "scout #{node[:scout][:key]}"
  creates "/home/scout/.scout/client_history.yaml"
  cwd "/home/scout"
  returns 1
  action :run
end

cron "scout_run" do
  minute "*/5"
  command "scout #{node[:scout][:key]}"
end

What this recipe does it that it installs the gem “scout” using the gem_package Chef command. It then goes on to create a new system user for scout, run the scout agent for the first time and actually adds a cronjob to run it every 5 minutes.

You can see the code is quite clean and it doesn’t look like a hacked-together bash script and it doesn’t look as closed down as some kind of configuration database or .ini file. They are nice Ruby recipe’s for configuring stuff on your server.

You can see that I’m using the node[] variable a few times. The node variable is a Ruby hash of the current configuration the server (or node) is in that the client is being run. Using the web interface on the Chef server you can actually configure per-server configuration values. In our case, the Scout key would be different for every server.

You can do a l it more with these recipes like defining templates for files, default attributes, generating passwords but I’ll save that for another post.

The best thing about the recipes is that I can also communicate with the AWS API. The application cookbook you see there actually creates an EBS block storage devices and attaches it to the current node if it is not already created.

Because all state is saved in the Chef Server configuration database you can easily add more block storage devices or other external stuff just by running the Chef Client. The Chef client probes the server for all the current state the client is in and goes on upgrading all the new changes the recipes requested.

The status page in the Chef Server webapp

Hi all,

I had some downtime today so I’m sorry if you could not access this blog to get help on all the topics I right about. Everything should be fixed now. There seemed to be an error with our hosting provider. I’m trying to see if it was something major or if it was just a minor glitch in the power or connectivity or something.

Anyways, back up now so enjoy!

Update: It seemed there was an administrative error with the supplier of my hosting provider. Will not happen again!

This morning I got out of bed, made myself a bowl of cornflakes with milk and headed over to the kitchen table where my dad always puts down the newspaper I’m subscribed to: NRC Next. It’s a Dutch tabloid-format newspaper with daily news and in-depth articles around recent happenings in the world.

I recently resubscribed to it and I love it: I have redacted important news that fit’s to my size of wanting to read a newspaper. I just HATE folding around a large newspaper all the time. I want to have a portable newspaper that I can take with me, easily put in my bag and that falls on my doormat every day. Every night when I read the last less important articles in NRC Next, I’m already waiting for the new issue so I can enjoy another new newspaper-reading day.

So, that’s form and function. Now for the other great thing about NRC next: content.

I really HATE newspaper that just list all the news that happened the day before. They are just paper versions of the RSS feeds and news sites I refresh about 60 times a day. Those newspaper are old news in the morning and waste my time by reading the same content another time.

NRC Next provides in-depth articles and also covers topics that other newspapers do not cover like more Tech, Science and Philosophy. I like those topics in this paper because except from techcrunch.com I don’t really read about them, but they are actually the most important subjects in my life. NRC Next provides the most important “recent news” stories and than gets on to the good stuff.

Now, I think “old newspapers” are dying because of paper, because of the form and size they are printed on but also because they just provide “recent news”. All I see in most conventional newspapers is still the sum of stuff I’ve already read yesterday in my browser. They should cut that crap! Especially young internet-savvy people (25 and younger) already read those breaking news stories on the web. They get it trough sms, e-mail newsletters, blogs, RSS or refreshing newsportals 20 times a day. At least the more interested target group is interested in in-depth articles or articles about a not so well known topics: the niches. Most people tend to find content on niche blogs which are mostly amateur and the good ones are either popular and write about the same stuff from within a single standpoint or are hard to find.

I refresh techcrunch.com about 15 times a day because I won’t find that stuff in any newspaper.

So what would be the (or at least my) ideal newspaper?

My ideal newspaper is a newspaper where both journalists create but also just redact content. Professional journalists should have a moderation role over news and should add their own commentary about what they find. They should put together a newspaper with content from various sources and add their own content to it. Journalists are educated in filtering the crap articles and picking the right ones or the special ones. They can add some “recent news/breaking stories” articles, especially on bigger developing ones but they should but the crap with those small “a cat fell out of the tree and hit a car which caused a major accident”-kind of stuff. I already read that yesterday!

Also, I want to cut the paper out of newspaper. I have too many papers laying around all the time and I want to be able to view movies and stuff and listen to documentaries or audio clips while reading the articles. A device like the iPad would be ideal for this. I want to be able to drag, drop, click, view, interact, bookmark, sync and share the content the editors wrote and moderated for me. And I want to take my newspaper with me all the time and I want to be able to read it anywhere. And no, that doesn’t mean on a smartphone.

Have you seen the sizes of those screens? When reading a paper I scan, I look at the pictures beside it, I switch between articles etc. That’s just nog possible on the screen size of smart phone. A laptop? No. I don’t need a keyboard when reading the newspaper, I don’t want to open/close my lid every time I switch trains when commuting, talk to somebody at the office, go out lunch or just switch channels on my TV. I want it to “feel” like a traditional paper tabloid-size version so I can carry it around everywhere without fuzz.

So the last thing I would like to add that relates to content and realtime and carrying the device. Carrying the device with you DOES NOT mean that I want to update it all the time! When I get a lot of great articles in the morning I don’t want them to be lost in the stream all the news stories in the world. The professionals behind the paper can select and moderate them for me until I get my new newspaper release the next morning and leave out all the unimportant or boring stuff. The state should be maintained in every release. I want to be sure that when I wake up there is a great new digital and interactive release of that days paper and I want to be sure that it’s still there when I get home in the evening or go to lunch so I can read on where I left off.

I want a newspaper where content is moderated and written by professional journalists so I won’t have to do the moderation myself and check 2000 feeds every day. I want it to be interactive, be able to share and bookmark stuff. I want it to portable on a comfortable size. Not a phone size and not something sluggish like a laptop.

Finally I want the content to stay all day. I want to have that traditional newspaper feeling. In the evening, I want to have the traditional newspaper feeling that tomorrow there will be a great new newspaper release waiting for me to be consumed. I want to be sure that I’m never leaving any important piece behind and that the professional journalists will tell me the next day, if I do.

No, mainstream consumers are not ready for this yet, but I think they’re going to become very close in the next 2 – 4 years. I believe that in 6 years, everyone will be reading the news on an iPad-like device while commuting. And I believe this is currently the only way that non-internet-tech-journalist-savvy people can consume news in a better way.

I know how you are, world
I know how you need to be.

That’s why I can’t get mad at you,
When you are sometimes so cruel to me.

I just liked this poem

This is a sneak preview screenshot of Cash Buddy. Cash Buddy is about tracking your personal cashflow. It helps you plan bills and expenses and let’s you keep track of what money is coming in and going out. Just to make you sure you won’t have to worry about your personal finances. What do you think?

Today TPB announced it would sell itself to the Global Gaming Factory X AB. This is great for the future of the open internet and might be a step forwards to open up the conservative big copyright watchers and media companies Here’s why:

• It shows commercial interest in an “illegal” practice started by a wide community of both regular people and people interested in protecting the openness of the internet.
• If I believe TPBs blogpost, the company buying the torrent site is not only interested in earning money, but also in keeping the site running in the philosophy as it started, but also find ways to maybe bring commercial methods of downloading the files linked to as torrents.
• The money will go into a foundation protecting the freedom of speach, freedom of information and openness of the internet.

Here’s a list of practical things I do to keep productive.

• Reset your mind every evening (especially before a work-day): go read a book an hour before you usually go to bed. Read it in your living room or somewhere where you can’t go to bed and can’t get to a computer. I like to do this at 11pm with a nice cup of tea.
• Have a healthy eating rhythm. By this I do not explicitly mean eat healthy food! Just have breakfast, lunch and dinner each day. Snacks are fine too, as long as you keep your 3-meals a day rhythm. I force to have breakfast the last few weeks and I’m feeling better already. If you’re like me and you hate having breakfast try something light like some fruit, cornflakes or yesterdays leftovers.
• Schedule your off-time. Don’t see relaxation as a reward for getting things done. Plan your relaxation so you know you will get things done after relaxing. If you don’t plan time to unstress, you never will. Also, it will make sure you don’t worry about relaxing because you know you can because you scheduled it.
• Don’t worry about finances. Make sure you have a system for keeping track of your finances so you won’t have to worry about them. This doesn’t stop you worrying from not having money to pay your bills but knowing you can’t pay them and finding out when you can pay them relieves stress about finances.
• Keep your inbox clean and actions organized. Just like with finances. You can relieve mental stress if you know what to do and when you’ve answered to all your running projects and tasks. It might be possible you can’t do every task you have but it helps knowing having actions you can’t do, rather than not knowing what to do with them. I just Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done system for this. Read his book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity about this.

Before I kick off with my first Cloud Ideas post (I’m working on several and will just choose one impsulsively when their done) I’d like to share one little train of tought with you. This is for you if you are tech-savvy, are addicted to Twittering and FriendFeeding and using more regular social networks like Facebook or Hyves if you’re in The Netherlands.

If you’re like me,  you Twitter a lot. Especially while on an internet or web conference, building the next cool web application or just discussing trending technology. If you’ve connected Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook, your personal “normal” friends will probably hate you. They’ll have their whole timeline spammed with your  - for them – uninterestingly geeky stuff.

My friends did anyways.

My Twitter usage is more in the discussion, random quotes/thoughts and chatty behaviour with my online and offline Twitter community. My Facebook and Hyves friends aren’t waiting for these incrowd little messages and would rather just know when I’m in the bar or having a shitty day at the office.

It happens to be that I probably share more interesting stuff on FriendFeed then over on Twitter. I mean, I do actually share interesting stuff on Twitter but that’s because FriendFeed puts it up their automatically. This way my FriendFeed timeline stays “clean” of the noise from Twitter and contains just interesting or funny stuff.

Previously, I would have enabled the Twitter <-> FriendFeed connection. That’s no more from this moment. I’ve decided to enable FriendFeed <-> Facebook synchronisation and will put non-noise status updates of how I’m doing on FriendFeed. Most FriendFeed users know how to hide those messages and are more power users anyway so they won’t care. These messages do get posted to Twitter so my Twitter followers will also know what I’m doing and my Facebook friends will get my personal status updates and the interesting stuff on Friendfeed.

Conclusion

Disabling the Twitter <-> FaceBook/your social network connection will reduce the techy and chatty from Twitter for your FaceBook friends. Enabling FaceBook <-> FriendFeed enables you to keep sharing interesting stuff from FriendFeed to Twitter and Facebook. And by adding a few personal status messages to FriendFeed each day. Both your FriendFeed and your Twitter friends will be notified of them.

This blog is about inspiring people of what’s available in the cloud and how they can make use of it.

Today I’m going to start experimenting with the concept of “cloud ideas”.

I have a ton of ideas on new web services, online social games or mobile apps that make use of the web and things in the cloud. Some of these ideas evolve into a personal prototype, some as input for Firmhousr projects but there’s still a large gap to fill because I don’t have infinite time, and some ideas just aren’t interesting for Firmhouse.

I encourage you to take the ideas, build apps or businesses on it, discuss it with personal friends or business partners. Hell, you can start the next Google if you want to. I will license the text of the ideas under a Creative Commons license (note: not the idea itself!) This way I’d like to bring people together, and make cool stuff, socially, businesswise or technical.

After reading a cloud idea and you want to bring it further, feel free to contact me and I’d be happy to discuss it personally, over e-mail, skype or other means. Perhaps I can even connect you to other people.

Moving to an open world where we can inspire each other to create such great stuff