Category: Kev’s Blog

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GitLab CI – allowing later stages to run if manual job in previous stage is not run

By default, later stages will not run if a previous stage in your GitLab pipeline fails. If you have a manual job in a previous stage, not running that job will also block later stages from running automatically.

To allow a later stage to run, mark any optional/manual jobs with ‘allow_failure: true’

For example:

stages:
- build
- setup
- deploy

build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - doTaskA

optional-setup:
  stage: setup
  script:
    - doOptionalSetup
  allow_failure: true
  when: manual

deploy:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - doTaskC
  when: manual

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Configuring nginx virtual hosts with sites-available / sites-enabled

I recently ran into an issue with how /etc/nginx/sites-enabled is used (or not) depending what nginx version you’re running on, or more likely according to this post, whether you’re running nginx on Debian/Ubuntu or the official nginx package.

The difference (which is pretty significant if you’re not expecting it), is that:

  • Debian/Ubuntu versions for nginx have sites-enabled included in nginx.conf by default
  • The official upstream nginx package does not

What this means is on Debian/Ubuntu, in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf you’ll have this include:

include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;

but it’s missing if you run the upstream nginx package, like what seems to be included in the Docker image nginx:latest.

In my case running the Docker image nginx:latest every GET request was getting a 404 and the only clue was in my error.log each request was attempting to serve files from a default /usr/share/nginx/html folder, which is definitely not what was configured as my root in the config in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled:

open() "/usr/share/nginx/html/[url-request-here] HTTP/1.1" failed (2: No such file or directory)

Once I worked out what the issue was I just added the include line for sites-enabled.

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botsin.space Mastodon bot migration update to https://mastodon.kevinhooke.com/

Quick update on my progress so far on migrating my personal Mastodon bot projects from botsin.space:

So far I have updated and moved:

  • kevinhookebot – over the years this evolved into multiple AWS Lambdas that implemented different parts of functionality. The RNN model text generation Lambda is updated and redeployed and now posting updates every 3 hours at https://mastodon.kevinhooke.com/@kevinhookebot
  • The Lambda that listens to mentions ‘@’ the bot is updated and redeployed. to AWS, it checks for mentions every 5 minutes and replies with a random response, or the adventure game replies if you ‘@’ the bot with ‘go north’ or similar command

The other bots that developed over the years (that never got moved to Mastondon with the others) are either still active on X (assuming that Twitter API and credentials are still working) or no longer working, but are on my todo list to update and move soon:

The Zork adventure game bot that was running on botsin.space also needs to be migrated to https://mastodon.kevinhooke.com/home

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MS Flight Simulator 2024: Around the World update 2: Greenland to Newfoundland

After terrible streaming scenery performance in MSFS2024 for the first leg, I was planning to continue in MSFS2020 but had to wait for an update to complete downloading, so continued the next couple of legs in FSX (yes, really). I discovered that Little Nav Map tracks your flights regardless of whether you’re running FSX (with the 32 bit app), or with 2020 or 2024, so despite starting out using a mix of all the above so far, I’m still able to track my progress in a single place:

Left Narsarsuaq (BGBW) in Greenland in snowy conditions in the CJ4 en route to Goose Bay:

Narsarsuaq in MSFS 2020

On approach to Goose Bay was treated so an awesome snowy sunset:

Goose Bay, MSFS 2020

After arriving in Canada I continued in MSFS2024 in the TBM 830 – at least this time the plane itself was streaming in complete and not missing any bodywork like before, but could not say the same for most airports when starting a leg on the runway – trees were rendering as Minecraft trees for some reason:

For the next couple of legs heading south I’ll be continuing in 2024 and the TBM as I head in to the US.

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