1.) First, we’ll add some needed dependencies:

sudo apt-get install curl git-core build-essential libssl-dev libreadline5 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev

2.) Next, let’s install RVM, the Ruby Version Manager. We’ll be using this to install Ruby instead of doing it via apt-get. (Note: You need to execute this, and all of the additional commands below, as your local user and *not* the root user.)

bash -s stable < <(curl -s https://raw.github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer)

echo '[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && . "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"' >> ~/.bashrc

source ~/.bashrc

3.) Install Ruby 1.9.2

rvm pkg install zlib
rvm install 1.9.2
rvm --default use 1.9.2

Now, that we have the needed prerequisites complete, let’s install the HP Cloud CLI itself.

4.) Download, extract, and install the HP Fog gem:

wget http://build.hpcloud.com/sites/default/files/downloads/hpfog.tar
tar xvf hpfog.tar
sudo gem install hpfog-0.0.9.gem

5.) Download, extract, and install the HP Cloud gem:

wget http://build.hpcloud.com/sites/default/files/downloads/hpcloud.tar
tar xvf hpcloud.tar
sudo gem install hpcloud-0.0.9.gem

Once finished, you should be able to type “hpcloud” and see a list of all of the available commands. (Note: At the time of this writing, only the HP Cloud Storage product has CLI integration.)

elitebook:~ Andrei$ hpcloud
Tasks:
  hpcloud account:setup                # set up or modify your credentials
  hpcloud acl <object/container>       # view the ACL for an object or container
  hpcloud acl:set <resource> <acl>     # set a given resource to a canned ACL
  hpcloud containers                   # list available containers
  hpcloud containers:add <name>        # add a container
  hpcloud containers:remove <name>     # remove a container
  hpcloud copy <resource> <resource>   # copy files from one resource to another
  hpcloud get <object>                 # fetch an object to your local directory
  hpcloud help [TASK]                  # Describe available tasks or one spec...
  hpcloud info                         # info about the HP Cloud CLI
  hpcloud list <container>             # list container contents
  hpcloud location <object/container>  # display the URI for a given resource
  hpcloud move <object> <object>       # move objects inside or between...
  hpcloud remove <object/container>    # remove an object or container
elitebook:~ Andrei$

6.) Authenticate to your account and verify:
The last step is to get your account set up via a dot file in your home directory. This will enable you to use the CLI without having to enter in your account credentials each time.

hpcloud account:setup

Enter in your Account ID, Access Key, and Endpoint URL which are all listed in your HP Cloud Services portal under “API Keys” and you should be off and running. To test, type:

hpcloud containers

and you should see a listing of any containers you have provisioned in HP Cloud Storage. Let me know if you have any questions I can answer in regards to this.

Anyway, here is the quick fix. Simply open the VPN configuration script:

nano -w /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/[your_vpn_name]

and change “password-flags=0″ to “password-flags=2″.

That’s it! I googled for several days (literally) until I found this bug report covering the issue. Either I’m a bad Googler (fact), or lots of information isn’t readily available on this topic. I hope this helps someone in need.

OPTIONAL: Before we progress, I strongly encourage you to consider installing Xcode and Homebrew. While both of these are not explicitly needed for getting the CLI up and running, they are extremely helpful in bringing common UNIX tools to your Mac, such as wget, nmap, etc. We’ll be using wget further down in this tutorial.

To install Xcode, we need to download it from the App Store. It’s a 1.8 GB download so it may take a bit of time. Once the download has completed, the installer is placed in your /Applications folder. Before installing, I recommend you copy the installer to an alternate location for future system re-formats.

After installing Xcode, you’ll notice a /Developer folder has been created in your root directory. This folder has around 61,673 files and takes up 3.97 GB of space. If you are only going to use Xcode for Homebrew, lots of this extra stuff is unnecessary. I safely deleted the following folders:

rm -r /Developer/Documentation
rm -r /Developer/Examples
rm -r /Developer/Extras
rm -r /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform
rm -r /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform
rm -r /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk

and have experienced no ill-effects. The purging has taken my overall /Developer folder size down to 20,813 files and 1.52 GB  of total size, a savings of 2.45GB. If anyone has additional suggestions for trimming down the /Developer folder even further, please let me know in the comments section at the bottom of this post.

Now, let’s install Homebrew. Homebrew is the most elegant UNIX package manager for OS X, (in my opinion) and I much prefer it to Macports. Installation is easy, with just one command:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

Finally, we’ll install wget and be on our way:

brew install wget

Now, let’s get to what we’re here to do; get the HP Cloud CLI working.

1.) Download, extract, and install the HP Fog gem:

wget http://build.hpcloud.com/sites/default/files/downloads/hpfog.tar
tar xvf hpfog.tar
sudo gem install hpfog-0.0.9.gem

2.) Download, extract, and install the HP Cloud gem:

wget http://build.hpcloud.com/sites/default/files/downloads/hpcloud.tar
tar xvf hpcloud.tar
sudo gem install hpcloud-0.0.9.gem

Once finished, you should be able to type “hpcloud” and see a list of all of the available commands. (Note: At the time of this writing, only the HP Cloud Storage product has CLI integration.)

macbookair-andrei:~ Andrei$ hpcloud
Tasks:
  hpcloud account:setup                # set up or modify your credentials
  hpcloud acl <object/container>       # view the ACL for an object or container
  hpcloud acl:set <resource> <acl>     # set a given resource to a canned ACL
  hpcloud containers                   # list available containers
  hpcloud containers:add <name>        # add a container
  hpcloud containers:remove <name>     # remove a container
  hpcloud copy <resource> <resource>   # copy files from one resource to another
  hpcloud get <object>                 # fetch an object to your local directory
  hpcloud help [TASK]                  # Describe available tasks or one spec...
  hpcloud info                         # info about the HP Cloud CLI
  hpcloud list <container>             # list container contents
  hpcloud location <object/container>  # display the URI for a given resource
  hpcloud move <object> <object>       # move objects inside or between...
  hpcloud remove <object/container>    # remove an object or container

macbookair-andrei:~ Andrei$

3.) Authenticate to your account and verify:
The last step is to get your account set up via a dot file in your home directory. This will enable you to use the CLI without having to enter in your account credentials each time.

hpcloud account:setup

Enter in your Account ID, Access Key, and Endpoint URL which are all listed in your HP Cloud Services portal under “API Keys” and you should be off and running. To test, type:

hpcloud containers

and you should see a listing of any containers you have provisioned in HP Cloud Storage. Let me know if you have any questions I can answer in regards to this.

In this post, we aim accomplish the following things:

1. Get your system ready with the pre-requisites for the Cloud Foundry CLI
2. Install VMC (the CLI)
3. Create and deploy a simple Ruby app
4. Test and verify

sudo apt-get install gcc curl git-core build-essential libssl-dev libreadline5 libreadline5-dev zlib1g

2.) Next, let’s install RVM, the Ruby Version Manager. We’ll be using this to install Ruby instead of doing it via apt-get

bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)

Close your shell session after this step and start a new one! This is important.

3.) Next, let’s install Ruby 1.9.2

rvm pkg install zlib
rvm install 1.9.2 -C --with-zlib-dir=$rvm_path/usr 
rvm --default use 1.9.2

Note that in the VMWare doc, there are several errors here which you want to note. The first command syntax is “pkg” as noted above, instead of “package” which they have listed. You are also asked to make modifications to your .bashrc according to the prompts from the rvm installation script. No prompts are provided and no modifications to .bashrc are necessary. Finally, we need to include “–default” to the rvm use command. This ensures Ruby 1.9.2 will always be available at every shell login by default.

4.) Next, we should be able to install VMC with one simple command:

gem install vmc

5.) Now, let’s sign into CloudFoundry. I am using it atop of HP Cloud Services, so my target is tailored as such.

vmc target http://api.cloudfoundry.hpcloud.com
vmc login

(Enter your login credentials based on the service you will be using.)

6.) Now, we are ready to create our first Ruby App and push it to Cloud Foundry. Make a directory called “hello” in your home folder, and add a file called hello.rb inside with the contents below:

mkdir /home/[user]/hello
cd /home/[user]/hello

nano -w hello.rb
# Simple Ruby Example App
Bundler.setup
require "sinatra"
get "/" do
  "Hello World!"
end

Now, it is important to note that the VMware document prompts you to deploy the above code without “Bundler.setup”. When you attempt to push the application without bundling, you will get the following error message during the “starting application” phase:

Error 306: Error retrieving file 'logs/startup.log'

You may then think to dig into what the error means by running the following command:

vmc logs hello --all

Good call. This supplies you with the following information:

====> logs/stderr.log <====
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `gem_original_require': no such file to load -- sinatra (LoadError) from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require' from hello.rb:4

But that isn’t really all that helpful, either. It took me hours of googling to understand what it meant and what was wrong so it is my hope for those of you who are also searching for answers, you have found this post and can resolve it with ease.

So how do we fix this? We need to create a Gemfile bundle and its pretty easy to do so.

nano -w Gemfile
source "http://rubygems.org" 
gem 'sinatra'

bundle package
bundle install

Now we are ready to push the app to Cloud Foundry!

7.) Deploying the app and testing

vmc push hello

Selecting the defaults to each question by hitting “enter” is just fine here. Everything should complete successfully and we should now be able to view our app at: http://hello.cloudfoundry.hpcloud.com

Hopefully this post will save you some time. I also hope it has been a good prerequisite how-to for those of you viewing the Cloud Foundry on HP Cloud Services Demo video. Please let me know if you have questions. I’m happy to help however I can!

1.) Unhide the Library folder for your particular user account:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

2.) Easily install Java SE 6:

java -v

3.) Turn off window-restore when quitting and re-opening apps:
Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> General

4.) Turn off iPhone-style spelling autocorrect:
Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Language & Text -> Text

5.) Disable window animations:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool NO

6.) Hide applications in the /Applications folder which create clutter: (ex: Dashbaord.app)

chflags hidden /Applications/[application.app]

7.) Adjust font anti-aliasing:
See previous post as the syntax is still current.

I hope these tips prove helpful. I welcome any feedback on any additional Lion-specific tweaks you like to make so please feel free to leave comments below.

Here is what you’ll need to get started:

• A Rackspace Cloud Account
• A Mac or Linux computer with curl installed
• The Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers API Developer Guide

Let’s jump right in. We are going to interact with the RESTful API via curl and XML.

Authenticating to the API
To start, we need to authenticate against the API. In the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel, go to “Your Account” -> “API Access”, and click on “Show Key”. Copy your API key into a text file.

Next, lets create an authentication file called auth.txt since the information generated inside will be helpful to us. Be sure to specify your API key and account username in the appropriate parts of the command below.

curl -D "auth.txt" -H "X-Auth-Key: [api_key]" -H "X-Auth-User: [username]" https://auth.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0

Next, lets view the contents of auth.txt and see what we have. The output should look similar to this:

cat auth.txt
HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2011 15:32:21 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Server-Management-Url: https://servers.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/16550
X-Storage-Url: https://storage.clouddrive.com/v1/
CloudFS_9c83b-5ed4
X-CDN-Management-Url: https://cdn.clouddrive.com/v1/
CloudFS_9c83b-5ed4
X-Auth-Token: eaaafd18-0fed-4b3a-81b4-663c99ec1cbb
Content-Length: 0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Two things are important to copy here, your Cloud Account Number, which is found at the end of the X-Server-Management-URL (in this case 16550) and your X-Auth-Token. Save these in the same text file as your API key. Note that auth tokens typically last for 24 hours, so as you return to the API to make further changes or additions in the future, you will most likely need to re-authenticate.

Creating a Load Balancer
First we need to create a load balancer definition file which we will refer to as new_lb.xml. In this example, we create an lb named “testing-lb”, tell it to balance port 80 web traffic, and give it the private eth1 IP addresses of our two Cloud Server web nodes (web1 and web2) which we wish to balance.

nano -w new_lb.xml
<loadBalancer xmlns="http://docs.openstack.org/loadbalancers/api/v1.0"
  name="testing-lb"
  port="80"
  protocol="HTTP">
  <virtualIps>
    <virtualIp type="PUBLIC"/>
  </virtualIps>
  <nodes>
    <node address="[private_ip_address]" port="80" condition="ENABLED"/>
    <node address="[private_ip_address]" port="80" condition="ENABLED"/>
  </nodes>
</loadBalancer>

Now, lets use this definition file we created to actually build the Cloud Load Balancer.  Note that this example is for Cloud Servers in the ORD1 Chicago DC.

curl -D "header.txt" -X "POST" -H "X-Auth-Token: [auth_token]" -H "Content-Type: Application/xml" -H "Accept: Application/xml" -k https://ord.loadbalancers.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/[account number]/loadbalancers -d "@new_lb.xml" > new_lb_result.xml

Let’s review the output file and make sure things built correctly.

xmllint --format new_lb_result.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<loadBalancer xmlns="http://docs.openstack.org/loadbalancers/api/v1.0"
  id="4270"
  name="testing-lb"
  algorithm="RANDOM"
  protocol="HTTP"
  port="80"
  status="BUILD">
<virtualIps>
  <virtualIp id="225"
    address="184.106.102.28"
    ipVersion="IPV4"
    type="PUBLIC"/>
</virtualIps>
<nodes>
  <node id="12635"
    address="10.180.52.137"
    port="80"
    condition="ENABLED"
    status="ONLINE"
    weight="1"/>
  <node id="12634"
    address="10.180.43.153"
    port="80"
    condition="ENABLED"
    status="ONLINE"
    weight="1"/>
</nodes>
<cluster name="ztm-n02.lbaas.ord1.rackspace.net"/>
<created time="2011-02-25T01:01:22Z"/>
<updated time="2011-02-25T01:01:22Z"/>
<connectionLogging enabled="false"/>
</loadBalancer>

Everything looks good! You’ll notice that you have now been given a VIP to use in your DNS.

Listing Load Balancers
Let’s now make sure we can see our newly created LB in our LB list.

curl -D "header.txt" -X "GET" -H "X-Auth-Token: [auth_token]" -H "Accept: application/xml" https://ord.loadbalancers.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/[account_number]/loadbalancers > loadbalancers.xml

The results show:

xmllint --format loadbalancers.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<loadBalancers xmlns="http://docs.openstack.org/loadbalancers/api/v1.0">
  <loadBalancer id="4270"
    name="testing-lb"
    algorithm="RANDOM"
    protocol="HTTP"
    port="80"
    status="ACTIVE">
  <virtualIps>
    <virtualIp id="225"
      address="184.106.102.28"
      ipVersion="IPV4"
      type="PUBLIC"/>
   </virtualIps>
  <created time="2011-02-25T01:01:22Z"/>
  <updated time="2011-02-25T02:01:31Z"/>
  </loadBalancer>
</loadBalancers>

Adding Additional Servers to the Pool
As the final part of this exercise, lets add an additional web node to the lb pool. To do so, we first create a new_node.xml file with the following contents. Note that you must put the private ip address of the additional cloud web server (web3) in the code below.

nano -w new_node.xml
<nodes xmlns="http://docs.openstack.org/loadbalancers/api/v1.0">
  <node address="[private_ip_address]" port="80" condition="ENABLED" />
</nodes>

Now, we’ll add the node. Note that we take the load balancer ID from a previous command above and enter it below.

curl -D "header.txt" -X "POST" -H "X-Auth-Token: [auth_token]" -H "Content-Type: Application/xml" -H "Accept: Application/xml" -k https://ord.loadbalancers.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/[account_number]
/loadbalancers/[lb_number]/nodes -d "@new_node.xml" > new_node_result.xml

Verify the Node has Been Added

curl -D "header.txt" -X "GET" -H "X-Auth-Token: [auth_token]" -H "Accept: application/xml" https://ord.loadbalancers.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/394681/loadbalancers/4270 > loadbalancer_detail.xml

xmllint --format loadbalancer_detail.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<loadBalancer xmlns="http://docs.openstack.org/loadbalancers/api/v1.0"
  id="4270"
  name="testing-lb"
  algorithm="RANDOM"
  protocol="HTTP"
  port="80"
  status="ACTIVE">
  <virtualIps>
    <virtualIp id="225"
      address="184.106.102.28"
      ipVersion="IPV4"
      type="PUBLIC"/>
  </virtualIps>
  <nodes>
    <node id="12634"
      address="10.180.44.153"
      port="80"
      condition="ENABLED"
      status="ONLINE"/>
    <node id="12655"
      address="10.180.51.95"
      port="80"
      condition="ENABLED"
      status="ONLINE"/>
    <node id="12635"
      address="10.180.51.137"
      port="80"
      condition="ENABLED"
      status="ONLINE"/>
  </nodes>
  <cluster name="ztm-n02.lbaas.ord1.rackspace.net"/>
  <created time="2011-02-25T01:01:22Z"/>
  <updated time="2011-02-25T02:01:31Z"/>
  <connectionLogging enabled="false"/>
</loadBalancer>

This only scratches the surface of what the very flexible Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers API can do but should be a good starting point to help non-programmers understand basic syntax and XML handling. Please view the Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers Developer Guide for detailed documentation on the complete set of features.

First, you need to have Xcode installed with “Unix Dev Support” which includes gcc and other packages for software compilation.  Xcode is located on your Mac OS X install DVD under the “optional installs” section.  You can also download Xcode from Apple. If you aren’t sure if Xcode is already loaded on your system or not, if you don’t have a “Developer” folder listed in the top level of your HD, then it is not installed.

Ok, let’s proceed with the installation of wget.

1.) Download the latest version from: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-latest.tar.gz to your Downloads folder.

2.) Extract the package:

cd ~/Downloads/
tar xvf wget-latest.tar.gz

3.) Build the package:

cd wget-1.12
./configure
sudo make install

4.) Verify by typing in “wget” in your terminal session.

That’s it! You can now delete all of the files you downloaded and uncompressed in the Downloads folder. Let me know if anyone has any questions.

What we are about to do is configure an incredibly fast and stable router/gateway solution for your home/office in about 15 minutes. (Note: This post assumes you already have your machine loaded up with a fresh copy of Debian 5.0 Lenny and you have the two needed NICs installed.

First, let’s make three initial assumptions:

• eth0 is the public interface (the Cable/DSL modem is attached to this NIC)
• eth1 is the private interface (your switch is connected to this NIC)
• All of the client computers, servers, WAPs, etc. are connected to the switch

Let’s get started with the configuration. Set your timer and type quickly! :)

1.) Configure the network interfaces
Change the “address”, “netmask”, and “broadcast” values to match your internal network preferences.

nano -w /etc/network/interfaces
# The external WAN interface (eth0)
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

# The internal LAN interface (eth1)
allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet static
   address 192.168.0.1
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   network 192.168.0.0
   broadcast 192.168.0.255

2. Install and configure DNSmasq
DNSmasq is DNS forwarder and DHCP server. Change “domain” to the FQDN of your network and “dhcp-range” to the desired range of DHCP addresses you would like your router to serve out to clients.

apt-get install dnsmasq

nano -w /etc/dnsmasq.conf
interface=eth1
listen-address=127.0.0.1
domain=home.andreimatei.com
dhcp-range=192.168.0.100,192.168.0.110,12h

3.) Enable IP Forwarding
Uncomment the following line:

nano -w /etc/sysctl.conf
net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

4.) Configure iptables
We create a file called /etc/iptables.rules and put this rule set inside of it.  As an example, this set includes allowing tcp traffic in from the outside world on port 222 (I run SSH on this alternate port) and also port-forwards tcp port 50,000 to an internal machine with the ip of 192.168.0.3.  Use this as a guide for your own rules.

nano -w /etc/iptables.rules
*nat
-A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 50000 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.3:50000
-A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
COMMIT

*filter
-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 222 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -i eth0 -j DROP
-A FORWARD -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 50000 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT
COMMIT

5.) Activate your iptables rules

iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.rules

6.) Ensure iptables rules start on boot
Insert the following line into your /etc/network/interfaces file right underneath “iface lo inet loopback”

nano -w /etc/network/interfaces
pre-up iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.rules

7.) Reboot and Verify
That’s it! After a reboot, you should now have a very basic Linux Router/Gateway for your network.

This post obviously doesn’t cover some of the incredible additional flexibility which your new machine provides.  I urge you to explore topics on traffic shaping, throughput monitoring, Intrusion Detection, and VPN configuration to learn how to harness the true power of running a dedicated machine as the central traffic cop of your network.

Simply run the following command in your Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1

Now, just restart your iTunes application and you should be all set. A special thank you goes out to Ars Technica’s Review of iTunes 10 for this information.

How does it work?
It’s quite simple, actually.  Without caching configured, each time a PHP-based page is requested by a user, the server gathers all of the needed files and “compiles” them into a result which it can understand and deliver.  This result is known as “opcode”.

The technique of opcode caching preserves this generated code into a cache so compilation only needs to happen once and then can be used over and over again for numerous requests by numerous users.

Why eAccelerator?
Several PHP caching choices exist including APC, Zend, and XCache.  I’ve chosen eAccelerator based on numerous reports such as this one which show its distinct performance advantage and also in large part due to the personal recommendation of seasoned server architects such as RackerHacker.

Installation
Debian Lenny doesn’t include an apt-get package for eAccelerator so we’ll need to compile from source.  Luckily, this isn’t as tricky as it sounds.  Here we go!

Download and extract:

wget http://bart.eaccelerator.net/source/0.9.6.1/eaccelerator-0.9.6.1.tar.bz2
tar xjf eaccelerator-0.9.6.1.tar.bz2

Compile and install:

cd eaccelerator-0.9.6.1
apt-get install php5-dev
phpize
./configure
make
make install
cp eaccelerator.ini /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/eaccelerator.ini

Verify installation:

php -v
PHP 5.2.6-1+lenny8 with Suhosin-Patch 0.9.6.2 (cli) (built: Mar 14 2010 09:07:33)
Copyright (c) 1997-2008 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2008 Zend Technologies
 with eAccelerator v0.9.6.1, Copyright (c) 2004-2010 eAccelerator, by eAccelerator

Finish up:

/etc/init.d/apache2 reload

That’s it!  My load averages have dropped significantly on the load-balanced web servers I manage.  We went from 4-5 with spikes to 25 down to roughly 0.5 with spikes to 2.  As always, reach out to me via email or in the comments section if you have any questions.