Thoughts, ramblings and rants…
When using Git via SSH with services such as GitHub and Gitorious, it can be useful to use specific / different ssh keys than your default.
This is accomplished with an entry such as the following in your ~/.ssh/config:
Host some-aliasIdentityFile /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa-some-aliasIdentitiesOnly yesHostName git.example.comUser git
You then specify this remote as follows in .git/config:
url = some-alias:project/repository.gitOver on the company blog, we just announced that we committed a complete Asterisk MIB implementation to OSS_SNMP in addition to a proof of concept Asterisk wallboard to NOCtools which includes active channels, uptime, version information and more.
Full details are on the company post but here’s a snippet of how easy it is to query Asterisk over SNMP:
$host = new \OSS_SNMP\SNMP( $asteriskIP, $community );echo "Asterisk version: " . $host->useAsterisk()->version();echo "Active calls: " . $host->useAsterisk()->callsActive();echo "Calls processed: " . $host->useAsterisk()->callsProcessed();
And here’s a screenshot of the proof of concept Asterisk wallboard:
![[NOCtools Asterisk Wallboard]](https://github.com/opensolutions/NOCtools/wiki/images/asterisk-wallboard.png "NOCtools Asterisk Wallboard")
NOCtools is a mixed bag of tools and utilities that are useful for NOC engineers. This project originally started out as a way to highlight and utilise our OSS_SNMP library (a PHP SNMP library for people who hate SNMP).
It since grew into a way to graphically present information on network topology that is normally difficult and cumbersome to do by logging into individual devices. Such information includes a discovered L2 topology by CDP, using this to present rapid-PVST port roles and so forth.
From the company blog:
Today, we are introducing NOCtools which uses this library to provide a number of useful tools including:
- CDP Neighbours:Â for a given CDP enabled device, display its CDP neighbours with information and also a graph showing connected ports.
- CDP L2 Topology:Â graph the layer 2 network topology based on a recursive crawl of CDP neighbours.
- RSTP Topology & Port Roles: similar to CDP L2 Topology above but this takes a specific VLAN and identifies and graphs Per-VLAN Spanning Tree port roles.
- Per-VLAN RSTP Port Roles:Â a tool that will display the per-VLAN Rapid STP port roles for a given VLAN (or for all VLANs) on a device.
- Inter-Device VLAN Comparison:Â a tool that will compare VLANs available (and their respective names) across selected devices allowing you to ensure consistency as well as perform simple security audits.
Follow the links about for screen shots and more details. We are releasing this under a GNU GPL license in the hope that the wider networking community will benefit from them.
I hate SNMP! But I have to use it on a daily basis with my company, Open Solutions.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s an essential tool in the trade of network engineering but it’s also a serious PITA. Finding MIBs, OIBs, making them work, translating them, cross-vendor translations, etc, blah, blah. And then, when you do find what you need, you’ll have forgotten it months later when you need it again.
Anyway, while trying to create some automatic L2 topology graphing tools (via Cisco/Foundry Discovery Protocol for example) and also some per VLAN RSTP tools to show port states, I started writing this library. As I wrote, I realised it was actually very useful and present it here now in the hopes that the wider network engineering community will find it useful and also contribute back MIBs.
An example may best illustrate the library:
First, we need to instantiate an SNMP object with a hostname / IP address and a community string:
$ciscosw = new \OSS\SNMP( $ip, $community ); Assuming the above is a standard Cisco switch, let’s say we want to get an associate array of VLAN names indexed by the VLAN ids:
print_r( $ciscosw->useCisco_VTP()->vlanNames() ); This yields something like the following:
Array (
[1] => default
[2] => mgmt
[100] => cust-widgets
[1002] => fddi-default
...
)
It really is that easy.
See the GitHub project page:Â https://github.com/opensolutions/OSS_SNMP
I was just reviewing an accessibility presentation where the author had an interesting slide on the top 15 UI libraries on GitHub with 1500+ watchers. Here they are with links and descriptions (my own comments in italics):
As an honourable mention, if you use Bootstrap and it’s modal dialog, take a look at Bootbox which provides wrappers for JavaScript alert(), confirm() and other flexible dialogs.
Some thinks that jump out at me from the above is that frameworks are very popular and, similarly, prestation frameworks are also very popular. There must be a deep hatred of PowerPoint and Keynote among web developers! The other take away for me is how a very small project – such as chosen – can become hugely hugely popular.
We’ve just pushed a new release of ViMbAdmin – version 2.1. The main highlights are:
As always, a live demo is available at:Â http://www.opensolutions.ie/vimbadmin/.
I have recently been converted from and SVN user to a Git user. You can read about my road to Damascus moment over in my personal blog.
As such I have converted my co-workers and we have migrated ViMbAdmin to GitHub. We feel that the project is in an early enough stage to not cause too much annoyance with the current user base. We do sincerely apologise for all and any inconvenience caused.
Feel free to svn switch your base from Google Code to the following which tracks our master (i.e. stable / production / release) branch:
http://svn.github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin.git
Just follow the instructions at:
https://github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin/wiki/Install-using-git
and skip the database setup. Just copy over your application/configs/application.ini file to the new Git clone.
No problem – you’ll now find new versions at:
https://github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin/archives/master
…and I’m bloody delighted.Â
The straw finally came when Nick forced my hand for a project we wanted to release through our work in INEX. I was pushing for Google Code but he had his heart set on GitHub. Now, in fairness, GitHub has some SVN bindings but after some research, I decided to dive right in.
Now, there’s both a steep learning curve but also a complete change of mindset required from centralised source code management (SCM) with SVN to the distributed model of Git. In the end, most projects will decide on a canonical Git repository anyway which pushes you slightly back towards centralised but there’s still a world of a difference.
So, what’s so good about Git? Well, lots. But first and foremost is it’s exceptionally powerful yet simple branching and merging that just works. And works fast – remember, with Git everything is local.
One work flow that used to kill me in SVN was that you’d be implementing feature X but someone needed bug Y fixed immediately involving some of the same code. Getting just the fix for Y in was tough and complicated. And branching in SVN isn’t quick or simple. In Git, I branch from the main development branch for every new feature, bug fix, etc and then merge what I need between them and back into develop when they’re ready to be pushed back to the agreed canonical repository.
I’ve been so impressed with Git that I’ve moved an open source project we created in Open Solutions over to Github: ViMbAdmin. I’ve also forced the rest of my team in Open Solutions over to Git and migrated a number of customer projects already. And we’re reaping productivity rewards!
How we work Git for projects was taken from this excellent post which I would fully recommend:Â A successful Git branching model.