Vagrant – What is it?

What is Vagrant?

Vagrant is a Ruby App to help with Virtual Machines (VMs). With it, you can share pre-configured VMs among users, allowing for a unified development environment to be used between them.

Why is this important?

This avoids that each developer installs extra software, library, extensions on their local machines, since the VM has all the software and extras that the project will need. This way we can avoid conflicts with different versions, software, etc.

So Vagrant is a Virtual Machine?

Vagrant is not a Virtual Machine solution, e.g., Virtualbox, VMware. It is a “helper”, a automated solution to interact easily with VirtualBox from Oracle.

Vagrant will setup a new VM based on the pre-configured Box that is specified on the Vagrantfile. The user does not need to open VirtualBox and configure the system, vagrant will deal with it.

 

Installing Vagrant

To use Vagrant, you need Ruby and Virtualbox.

1 – Install Ruby. (If you on Mac OS X, there should be no problem);

2 – Get VirtualBox and the VirtualBox Extension Pack from virtualbox.org;

3 – Get the latest vagrant installation package from vagrantup.com;

 

Your First Box

Following the example from Vagrant:

 $ vagrant box add base http://files.vagrantup.com/lucid32.box
$ vagrant init
$ vagrant up

And there you have it, a Ubuntu Lucid 32 Bits VirtualMachine ready to go.

User & password = “vagrant” .

Now you can SSH to it or open Virtualbox and you will see it there.

For more community created boxes ready to use, check out vagrantbox.es

 

More tips on using vagrant will follow…

2012
04/25
CATEGORY
Developer
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Just4Meeting 2012

Last year Just4Meeting was really cool! I was able to meet some cools guys and listen to some interesting talks. This year, this Security event, in Portugal, is back!

Information Security has been one of the most increasing concerns worldwide. Everyday new attacks and counter attacks emerge, making it impossible for professionals to keep themselves up to date.

From 6th to 8th July 2012

The J4M third edition intends to convene busy IT and Information Security Professionals with very little time to learn new technologies or just deepen their knowledge on IT security tools and techniques. With this in mind we gathered a group of hand picked internationally renowned professionals to share their expertise with all participants through training sessions, lectures and workshops.

Some of this year speakers:

  • Michele Orru´ – Core developers of The BeEF Project
  • Michael Kemp – Security Consultant (Xiphos)
  • Raoul Chiesa – Member of the ENISA

Check out the event’s webpage, maybe we will see each other there ;)

http://www.just4meeting.com

2012
04/13
CATEGORY
Events
security
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Homebrew in Lion (10.7)

I was tryng to install to install Homebrew on OS X Lion (10.7.3) but I was getting errors, related to GCC, autoconf and Cellar… So these are the steps I took to install homebrew.

1. Installing the compilers

Started by installing

- Xcode 4.3;
- Command Line Tools for Xcode (171.70 MB);

But this was not enough for homebrew to install. The solution passed through installing the “OSX GCC Installer”, which allows you to install the essential compilers (GCC, LLVM, etc), without xcode. (if you don’t need Xcode, this is a good solution)

Get the pkg from https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer and install it.

 

2. Install HomeBrew

Due to some bug on homebrew, it is recommend to create the Cellar folder before hand and then run the install_homebrew script.

mkdir -p /usr/local/Cellar

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(/usr/bin/curl -fksSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/master/Library/Contributions/install_homebrew.rb)"

 

*update*

After some more searching around, looks like running the following command helps in step1, since run xcode via the command line, you need to tell xcode4.3 where the Developer folder is:

xcode-select -switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

2012
04/09
CATEGORY
Developer
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Javascript books and codecademy

I have to start learning Javascript (it’s about time also). So, after asking around, @trodrigues and @jneves recommend the following books. I’m going to start reading them, them i’ll give you my feedback.

Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming

“Eloquent JavaScript” is a guide to JavaScript that focuses on good programming techniques rather than offering a mish-mash of cut-and-paste effects. The author teaches users how to leverage JavaScript’s grace and precision to write real browser-based applications.”

You can read it online free at eloquentjavascript.net

bookdepository | Amazon.co.uk

Javascript : The Good Parts

Offers an explanation of the features that make JavaScript an object-oriented programming language, and warns you about the bad parts. This book defines a subset of JavaScript that’s readable and maintainable than the language. It offers ideas that include functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation.

bookdepository | Amazon.co.uk

Codecademy

Another good tool to learn Javascript is codecademy.com, however the firsts lessons are kinda basic if you already have a coding background. Even so, simple and interactive way of learning JS.

Question:

Any other recommendations?

2012
04/07
CATEGORY
books
TAGS

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On the web – JS, HTML5, and something else…

Some cool projects I’ve found recently, :

Sequence.js

Sequence is the jQuery slider plugin with infinite style. Sequence has no in-built theme, leaving you complete creative control to build a unique slider using only CSS3.

Impress,js

It’s a presentation framework based on the power of CSS3 transforms and transitions in modern browsers and inspired by the idea behind prezi.com

timelineJS

Beautifully crafted timelines that are easy, and intuitive to use.

Kickstrap

A full version of Twitter’s Bootstrap with themes, enhancements, and other goodies.

 Animate.css

animate.css is a bunch of cool, fun, and cross-browser animations for you to use in your projects. Great for emphasis, home pages, sliders, and general just-add-water-awesomeness.

 

And for the something else, for those you like to go deeper and are looking to optimize a web server:

10 Million hits a day with WordPress using a $15 server

“…steps to build a new Linux server using Varnish, Nginx, W3 Total Cache, and WordPress, to build a WordPress blog on a Amazon Micro server (or equivalent), all costing under $15 a month,…”

 

Hope you enjoy.

2012
04/04
CATEGORY
Linode
OnTheWeb
Wordpress
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Why should your business exist

“Why should your business exist? That is the core question to answer for any firm. The presentation shows how you find great answers to this question.”

  • http://www.slideshare.net/pstaehler/why-should-your-business-exist-11651414
Why should your business exist
2012
02/21
CATEGORY
startup
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Startups and Books

After Startupcamp Switzerland 2012, these are some book that are in my “To Read” list.

The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

Most new businesses fail. But most of those failures are preventable. This title offers a fresh approach to business that’s being adopted around the world. It describes learning what your customers really want, testing your vision continuously, and adapting and adjusting before it’s too late.

Bookdepository – Amazon.co.uk

 

Technology Ventures: From Idea to Enterprise
- Textbook for the Technology Entrepreneurship course, 2012, from Stanford University.

For business, engineering, and science students and professionals who demand a comprehensive guide to high-growth entrepreneurship, Technology Ventures is the leading resource for analyzing opportunities and building new enterprises.

Bookdepository – Amazon.co.uk

 

Extreme Toyota

Extreme Toyota offers the first real, comprehensive inside look at what makes one of the world?s best companies run. What they uncovered will surprise you and change the way you think about business. Simultaneously rigidly traditional and seriously innovative, it is precisely those internal contradictions that make the company so successful and admired.

Bookdepository - Amazon.co.uk

 

Do you have any other suggestions on what to read?

2012
02/20
CATEGORY
books
startup
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Rails – Nested forms and has_one relationship

I was trying to build a nested form with Rails 3.1, using models that had a “has_one” relationship. The form would show the parents fields but not the nested models field.

So I started by defining the has_one relationship in the models and adding “accepts_nested_attributes_for to the Parent :

class Parent < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :child, :dependent => :destroy
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :child
 end
 
 class Child < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :parent
 end

Just this wasn’t enough. The solution involves initializing the Child by the Parent. This can be done in the Controller or the Model.

In the Model:

class Parent < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :child, :dependent => :destroy
accepts_nested_attributes_for :child
 
after_initialize do
  self.child ||= self.build_child()
end
end

Or in the Controller:

class ParentsController < ApplicationController
def new
  @parent = Parents.new
  @parent.build_child
 end
end

So, a question, where is the best place to initialize the Child? In the Parents Controller or Model?

2012
02/05
CATEGORY
Rails
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Wireless LAN Security and Penetration Testing Megaprimer

Securitytube.net is a project were people can see and share videos related to security topics, e.g., Wireless security, Metasploit, Exploit research. The project already has some years, and it has new videos every day.

Some months ago Vivek did a compilation of his Wireless Security and create a DVD with all videos. It’s about 12 hours of material covering every topic in Wireless Security.

Wireless LAN Security and Penetration Testing Megaprimer

This video series will take you through a journey in wireless LAN (in)security and penetration testing. We will start from the very basics of how WLANs work, graduate to packet sniffing and injection attacks, move on to audit infrastructure vulnerabilities, learn to break into WLAN clients and finally look at advanced hybrid attacks involving wireless and applications.

Example of some topics:

  • Part 9: Hotspot Attacks
  • Part 10: Hacking Isolated Clients
  • Part 11: Alfa Card Kung-Fu
  • Part 12: Man-In-The-Middle Attack
  • Part 13 : SSL Man-In-The-Middle Attacks
  • Part 14: Wep In-Depth
  • Part 15: Wep Cracking

To download this DVD go to http://www.securitytube.net/downloads where you can find HTTP links and Torrents. To make it easyer, here is the torrent file:

Enjoy it, :D

2011
12/17
CATEGORY
security
Wireless
1 comment

The Science of Secrecy Going Public

An Episode Of Simon Singh’s Series On The History of Keeping Secrets follows the development of the Idea of Non Secret Encryption To Finding the Mathematical Padlock And Key To It’s everyday use of Encrypting E-mail and Credit Card Transactions. Broadcasted at 29/10/2000.

Part 1

Part 2

2011
12/12
CATEGORY
security
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