Hi everyone! 👋
Welcome to cron.weekly issue #144.
Lots of variety again, covering a list of Wiki-systems, a bit more PostgreSQL guides and the usual batch of interesting projects.
Fill up your ☕️ and happy reading!
News & general 🗞
You don’t need reproducible builds
I’ve been interested in reproducable builds ever since I saw a talk on how the bitcoin build system uses guix.
This post makes some pretty good counter-arguments: how important is a reproducable build where source code A produces binary B?
Physically moved a server today …
… from one building to another… across a parking lot… with 0 downtime.
Moved the server 700 feet on a cart with 2 UPSs and a chain of (3) gigabit switches. Should have been a 5-minute job if done correctly. Owner ended up paying for over 10 hours of work.
I’ve always thought about how I would do a thing like this, but never had a chance to try it out. Sounds like fun! 😅
1Password for Linux development preview
No more use of wine, here comes a native 1Password app for Linux!
Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF)
Owasp, Github, Microsoft, Google, IBM, JP Morgan & Red Hat have teamed together to create an open-source security foundation.
Tools & Projects 🛠
mender
Mender is an open-source over-the-air (OTA) software updater for embedded Linux devices. Mender comprises a client running at the embedded device, as well as a server that manages deployments across many devices.
Barebackups: Super-simple Database Backups
I’m an indie hacker launching Barebackups out of my own need. It is a service to automatically backup your databases on a schedule. You can also bring your own S3 account for unlimited backup storage and fully control your data.
Try it today and save yourself the time and hassle of worrying about backups. Sponsored
glab
GLab is an open-source Gitlab Cli tool written in Go (golang) to help work seamlessly with Gitlab from the command line.
usbkill
usbkill is an anti-forensic kill-switch that waits for a change on your USB ports and then immediately shuts down your computer.
Portmaster - Open-source privacy
With Portmaster, you get full control over your computer’s network connections. Choose to enforce DNS-over-TLS system-wide and block unwanted connections on a per-app basis. Available for Ubuntu, Windows. Mac OSX coming soon.
And the best part? It’s completely open-source! 💪 Sponsored
simdjson
simdjson: parsing gigabytes of JSON per second. Servers spend a lot of time parsing JSON. We need a fresh approach. The simdjson library uses commonly available SIMD instructions and microparallel algorithms to parse JSON 2.5x faster than anything else out there.
Wiki Wiki Wiki 🤓
I asked around on Twitter what wiki system people are using these days and got a ton of good feedback. So here’s a special wiki-list!
(Most are PHP-based, as I was biased in my question.)
- LaRecipe: Laravel-based wiki/documentation
- outline: built in React & Nodejs
- wiki.js: built on nodejs
- XWiki: open-source enterprise wiki sounds a bit scary to me tbh
- tiddlywiki
- gollum: git-powered wiki
- VuePress: Markdown, Vue + webpack based
- MoinMoin
- Zim
- BookStack
- Github wiki
- Gitlab wiki
- gitbook
- dokuwiki
- hackpad: discontinued, but got a lot of love
- MediaWiki (which powers Wikipedia)
Haven’t had a chance to try these out, but I’ve added LaRecipe to my todo-list.
Guides & Tutorials 🎓
Multi-Master Replication Solutions for PostgreSQL
Lots of details in this post, as well as several implementation possibilities, for setting up multi-master PostgreSQL systems. Complex and fascinating!
Learning NFS through server and client configuration
I haven’t (had to) set up an NFS server/client in years, but this is the kind of detailed post I wish I had when I still did. Covers 90% of the pitfalls!
Let’s build a Full-Text Search engine
A step-by-step walkthrough on what goes on when you try to build a full-text search engine, covering tokenization, stemming, indexing, …
PostgreSQL beginner guide
I still feel like a newbie every time I work with PostgreSQL. Guides like these help put me at ease. :-)
Request for Comments 💡
PHP 8 has reached the first beta release and is actively looking for testers and feedback!
🎉 The Elephpant is going on further adventures!
PHP 8 is in feature freeze, and beta1 is released. Get on with yer testing! Bugs to https://bugs.php.net
There are also new security releases stable PHP versions: 7.2.33, 7.3.21 and 7.4.9. Get upgrading!