Current expectations from all type of systems and services is to be available without any disruption. One of mission critical systems is gateway/firewall. Of course you can use multiple products available on the market. One of them is openSUSE, which is perfect to act as gateway/firewall between Internet and production systems. So, how to provide redundancy for openSUSE and same time be able to keep it up-to-date without any disruption for production systems?

openSUSE 13.2 with keepalived provides all technology required to make your firewall high-available.

Here is diagram of Lab created to configure and test openSUSE with keepalived:

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If you want to send email from PowerShell script via Google Mail:

$SMTPServer = "smtp.gmail.com"
$SMTPPort = "587"
$SMTPUsername = "sender@gmail.com"
$SMTPPassword = "password"

$EmailSenderAddress = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailAddress("sender@gmail.com", "PowerShell Automated Email")

$EmailFrom = $EmailSenderAddress
$EmailTo = "recipient@gmail.com"
$EmailCc = "recipient@hotmail.com"
$EmailAttachment = "C:\Scripts\Attachment.txt"
$EmailSubject = "Automated Email with Report."
$EmailBody = @"
Please find attached report.
"@

$EmailMessage = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage
$EmailMessage.Subject = $EmailSubject
$EmailMessage.Body = $EmailBody
$EmailMessage.To.Add($EmailTo)
$EmailMessage.CC.Add($EmailCc)
$EmailMessage.From = $SMTPUsername
$EmailMessage.Attachments.Add($EmailAttachment)

$SMTPSession = New-Object System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient($SMTPServer, $SMTPPort);
$SMTPSession.EnableSSL = $true
$SMTPSession.Credentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential($SMTPUsername, $SMTPPassword);
$SMTPSession.Send($EmailMessage)
Write-Host "Mail Sent"

Many times there is a need to store password in PowerShell script. Unfortunately to leave password in script is insecure solution and might cause an issue.

So, what to do if there is a need to have password in a script and we don’t want to have it embedded in clear-text in script?

Best way is to encrypt it and store in the file and then re-use it when required.

Create file with encrypted password

$secureString = Read-Host -AsSecureString "Enter a secret password"
$secureString | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Out-File C:\Scripts\storedPassword.txt

Use encrypted password in script

$secureString = Get-Content -Path C:\Scripts\storedPassword.txt | ConvertTo-SecureString

As on Debian 7.0 Node.js is not included in standard repositories, if you want to install it login to server as a root and issue following commands:

apt-get install curl
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup | bash -
apt-get install -y nodejs

Once Parsoid is installed on openSUSE it might be handy to have is started automatically once system is restarted.

First we have to create startup script.

/etc/init.d/parsoid

#!/bin/sh

#
# description: Node.js /srv/parsoid/api/server.js
#

. /etc/rc.status

USER="root"

DAEMON="/usr/bin/node"
ROOT_DIR="/srv/parsoid/api"
LOG_ROOT="/var/log/nodejs"

SERVER="$ROOT_DIR/server.js"
LOG_FILE="$LOG_ROOT/parsoid.log"

LOCK_FILE="/var/lock/subsys/node-server"

WORKERS_NUMBER=8

do_start()
{
if [ ! -f "$LOCK_FILE" ] ; then
echo -n $"Starting $SERVER: "
runuser -l "$USER" -c "$DAEMON $SERVER -n $WORKERS_NUMBER >> $LOG_FILE &" && echo || echo
RETVAL=$?
echo
[ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch $LOCK_FILE
else
echo "$SERVER is locked."
RETVAL=1
fi
}
do_stop()
{
echo -n $"Stopping $SERVER: "
pid=`ps -aefw | grep "$DAEMON $SERVER" | grep -v " grep " | awk '{print $2}'`
kill -9 $pid > /dev/null 2>&1 && echo || echo
RETVAL=$?
echo
[ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f $LOCK_FILE
}

case "$1" in
start)
do_start
;;
stop)
do_stop
;;
restart)
do_stop
do_start
;;
*)
echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
RETVAL=1
esac

exit $RETVAL

Once startup script is in place we have to enable Parsoid to be automatically started:

chkconfig parsoid on

From now on Parsoid will be automatically started after each restart.