Creating simple GitLab CI pipelines

I needed a simple GitLab CI pipeline to run some tests on my project. It’s been a while since I’ve played with GitLab CI. Here’s some previous posts for future reference:

If you search for ‘gitlab’ I have a few more specific posts on GitLab and related topics, mainly from running my own GitLab server on my HomeLab.

To run my tests against a simple node project, I split the pipeline into 2 jobs, one to install my npm dependencies (and could also add other build related tasks here if needed), and then a test job. It’s worth noting that in order for the results of ‘npm install’ to preserve from the build job to the test job you need to preserve the cache and the node_modules dir as an artifact to be picked up by the following job:

build:
stage: build
image: node:22
script:
- npm install
cache:
paths:
- node_modules/
artifacts:
expire_in: 1 days
when: on_success
paths:
- node_modules/
test:
stage: test
image: node:22
script:
- npm test

This is following tips here.

Flight Simulator 2020: UK cities with Photogrammetry

Every time I fly in the UK in FS 2020 I forget which areas have photogrammetry, so here’s a quick list for future reference:

World Update XVII UK and Ireland (released 23 July 2024 added (from release notes here: https://www.flightsimulator.com/world-update-xvii-united-kingdom-ireland/) 16 TIN cities (triangulated irregular network) with surface modelling (higher resolution elevation data):

England:

  • Bristol
  • Brighton
  • Greater London
  • Heathrow
  • Leeds-Bradford
  • Liverpool
  • Newcastle-Sunderland
  • Welling
  • Wembley

Ireland:

  • Cork
  • Dublin
  • Cliffs of Moher / Liscannor

Scotland:

  • Edinburgh
  • Glasgow

Wales

  • Cardiff
  • Gibraltar

5 handcrafted airports:

  • Farnborough Airport (EGLF) and London Stansted Airport (EGSS) in England
  • Cork Airport (EICK) in Ireland
  • Sumburgh Airport (EGPB) in Scotland
  • Cardiff (EGFF) in Wales

World Update III UK (from release notes here: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/release-release-notes-1-13-16-0-world-update-iii-united-kingdom-now-available/365854/1  and here: https://www.polygon.com/2021/2/16/22285851/microsoft-flight-simulator-world-update-3-united-kingdom-england-ireland-scotland-wales)

Added:

  • Birmingham
  • Bristol
  • Cambridge
  • London
  • Oxford

Handcrafted airports:

  • Barra
  • Liverpool
  • Land’s End
  • Manchester-Barton
  • Out Skerries

Summarized list from my previous post here: https://www.kevinhooke.com/2021/05/16/microsoft-flight-simulator-uk-cities-with-photogrammetry/

Original FS 2020 release cities:

  • Portsmouth
  • Southampton

Which my.cnf is mysql using?

mysql searches for your local my.cnf in a number of default places, so finding which is actually in use can be an issue.

To find which search paths are currently being used by your current mysql install (from here), use:

mysql --help | grep my.cnf

And it will show a list of paths like this:

> mysql --help | grep my.cnf
order of preference, my.cnf, $MYSQL_TCP_PORT,
/etc/my.cnf /etc/mysql/my.cnf /opt/homebrew/etc/my.cnf ~/.my.cnf

Note that if you installed mysql via homebrew (on MacOS), this will also show the homebrew path where my.cnf is located.

AWS Lightsail default ssh userid

To ssh into AWS ec2 instances the default user id is usually ‘ec2-user’ (see my ec2 ssh checklist here).

Lightsail vps instances appear to use different default userids, depending on the OS. For example, for an Ubuntu Lightsail instance the default ssh userid is ‘ubuntu’:

ssh -i path-to-your-ssh-pen-file ubuntu@your-instance-ip