Prevent the auto-termination of stranded instances in RighScale
When you launch an instance with RightScale Self Service, and the Chef cookbook execution fails, the instance goes into “stranded” mode. By default RightScale Self Service terminates the stranded instances, so there is no way to remote into…
Getting started with InSpec
InSpec is an open-source testing framework to verify your infrastructure satisfies the design requirements. In this article, we will learn to install and use InSpec with Chef. Install InSpec Navigate to https://downloads.chef.io/inspec, and download the…
Undefined method or attribute error in a Chef recipe
There are multiple reasons Chef can display the following error message NoMethodError ------------- Undefined method or attribute `...' on `node' There are many ways to reference an attribute in a Chef recipe: node['ATTRIBUTE_NAME'] (the…
Monitor timeouts in TeamCity
TeamCity is a Continuous Integration (CI) tool that enables software development teams to build and test their software. Sometimes the server is too busy to serve the users and the web user interface does not respond in time. TeamCity logs all actions in…
Native resolution in Remote Desktop client on MacOSX
When you connect to a Windows computer from your Macintosh workstation the best remote desktop client is the Microsoft Remote Desktop app from the Apple Appstore. To configure the remote desktop connection for the best experience Select Native resolution…
How to restore a Microsoft SQL database from backup with the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (MSSMS) user interface
There are multiple reasons to restore a database from backup. One of them can be disaster recovery, the other is to bring the production database to the developer machine. In both cases, the computer already has the old version of the database. In the…
Error waiting for instance (i-…) to become ready: unexpected state ‘terminated’, wanted target ‘running’
When you launch a server instance with Terraform, sometimes the error message does not contain the underlying cause. When the cloud provider cannot complete the request, many times Terraform displays a generic error message: Error waiting for instance…
Upgrade a server on an AWS EC2 instance with minimum risk and downtime
When you need to upgrade an application on an AWS EC2 instance with minimum downtime, there are many options. Upgrade an EC2 instance Stop the application, so users don’t make more changes, Create a backup of the database (snapshot of the RDS…
Test your RightScale script without creating unnecessary revisions
There are certain functions in RightScale scripts (RightScripts) that you cannot test without launching a new instance. To test your script: Edit the Head revision of the RightScale script and save it, Attach the Head revision of the RightScale script to…
Custom Git Status and Git Pull commands to work with all of your repositories
If you work with many Git repositories it is easy to miss a repository when you commit your changes, and very time consuming to pull from all repositories. It is easy to automate both processes. In this example, we will place all files in…