Setting up a private GIT Server

Posted on by lanerjo

Git is a versioning system that is used by millions of users around the world. Developed by Linus Torvalds in April of 2005, Git is used for over 21.8 million repositories.

Why not just use Github? Was the first question I asked when considering why I should write this article. Github along with other hosted repository services usually allow only a few private repositories. This provides a dilemma for the little man, should we pay for more private repos , should we spread our repositories out over multiple services or should we host our own private git server?

There are benefits to hosting your own git server. Unlimited private repos, the possibility to have more control for each user and group privileges, just to name a couple. Now that we have looked at the options available and weighed the pros and cons of each service, maybe you have decided to host your own git server.

First things first, which open source git server should we use? I decided to utilize GitLab, being open source, and readily available it also has a web based GUI.

Before we install GitLab, I recommend installing Postfix and setting up SMTP email server so that GitLab can push emails when needed.

Assuming you have already installed and setup Postfix, Let’s move on to GitLab.

Download the packages using wget. Then install the package:

wget https://downloads-packages.s3.amazonaws.com/ubuntu-14.04/gitlab_7.9.4-omnibus.1-1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i gitlab_7.9.4-omnibus.1-1_amd64.deb

Now we need to configure GitLab:

sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
nano /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb

Edit the ‘external_url’, give the server domain, and save the file.

gitlab-2

In your web browser, open your GitLab site, using ‘root; for the system admin and ‘5iveL!fe’ for the password. Change your password after your first login for obvious security reasons.

Thank you for utilizing this quick and simple installation guide for installing and setting up your own private git server.

Setting up an ELK Stack on AWS

Posted on by lanerjo

ELK Stack – this was a new term to me before I undertook this process, it seems overwhelming the first time you take on a new task.

ELK stands for Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana. Elasticsearch is a NoSQL database that allows NRT (near real time) queries. Kibana offers a nice interactive interface for analyzing data contained in the Elasticsearch data. Logstash is the intermediary between Elasticsearch and Kibana.

ELK has a large open source community, making this set of utilities quite popular. There are plenty of guides out there and the documentation is helpful. This article will not cover using an ELK stack in a production evironment, we will be setting up a test stack and getting familiar with the process. However, to set up an ELK stack for a production environment would not need too much changing of this process.

 

Getting Started:

Every component of our ELK stack requires Java. Let’s get busy and start setting up java on an Ubuntu AWS instance via SSH and shell commands. Make sure you have root access: sudo su

Installing Java:

  1. apt-get update
  2. apt-get upgrade
  3. apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-headless

Installing Elasticsearch:

  1. wget –qO – https://packages.elastic.co/GPG–KEY–elasticsearch | sudo apt–key add –
  2. echo “deb http://packages.elastic.co/elasticsearch/1.7/debian stable main” | sudo tee –a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elasticsearch–1.7.list
  3. apt-get update
  4. apt-get install elasticsearch
  5. service elasticsearch restart

Installing Logstash:

  1. echo “deb http://packages.elasticsearch.org/logstash/1.5/debian stable main” | sudo tee –a /etc/apt/sources.list
  2. apt-get update
  3. apt-get install logstash
  4. service logstash start

Create config file for logstash:

vi /etc/logstash/conf.d/10-syslog.conf

  1. input {
  2. file {
  3. type => “syslog”
  4. path => [ “/var/log/messages”, “/var/log/*.log” ]
  5. }
  6. }
  7. output {
  8. stdout {
  9. codec => rubydebug
  10. }
  11. elasticsearch {
  12. host => “localhost” # Use the internal IP of your Elasticsearch server
  13. # for production
  14. }
  15. }
  16. :wq

service logstash restart

Kibana Installation:

  1. wget https://download.elastic.co/kibana/kibana/kibana–4.1.1–linux–x64.tar.gz
  2. tar -xzf kibana-4.1.1-linux-x64.tar.gz
  3. cd /kibana-4.1.1-linux-x64/
  4. mkdir -p /opt/kibana
  5. mv kibana-4.1.1-linux-x64/* /opt/kibana
  6. cd /etc/init.d && sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/akabdog/scripts/master/kibana4_init –O kibana4
  7. chmod +x /etc/init.d/kabana4
  8. service kibana4 start

Testing our installs:

Point your browser to ‘http://YOUR_ELASTIC_IP:5601’ after Kibana is started