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How do you feel about the use of bash for AWS userdata and the like? You pretty much have to put all the init stuff in a bash script. I can't think of any rea

How do you feel about the use of bash for AWS userdata and the like? You pretty much have to put all the init stuff in a bash script. I can't think of any real-world examples of userdata scripts being less than 10 lines. The alternative of course would be a three line script that downloads a file and executes it. But what language would that file be in? Probably bash. And it would make the infrastructure-as-code tracking and deployment process much more complicated.

pas 9y ago
Not OP, but ... You can use Go/Rust for static linked bootstrap instead of Bash. (See rustup.) I'm thinking about combining GitLab (private token access + repository files: https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/api/repository_files.html#repository-files-api https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/api/repository_files.html#reposit... ) and a bootstrap script in Bash, that then launches something better. Plus self registration back into a GitLab repo (hey, it has the access token already, so it can push). Yes, Ansible/SaltStack/Chef/Puppet reinvented, but you're now not bound to the horrible database, language, bootstrap, speed (slowness) and workflow of any of them. If you want more access control, then creating a HTTP microservice that has the real private token (or proper OAuth2 access) to GitLab plus handles the self-registration and token handout/revocation is easy compared to the other parts. (And it can also store everything in GitLab.)
yeukhon 9y ago
I believe in your userdata script you can write a line to download a Python script from S3, then proceed to execute. Don't quote me on this since I don't use userdata. However, note that userdata will only run once at launch time. If you ever need to re-run userdata, you have to stop the instance, remove the userdata from settings, and then add again. YMMV. I do the Python way when launching a beanstalk instance (basically cloud init).

pas 9y ago

Not OP, but ... You can use Go/Rust for static linked bootstrap instead of Bash. (See rustup.) I'm thinking about combining GitLab (private token access + repository files: https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/api/repository_files.html#repository-files-api https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/api/repository_files.html#reposit... ) and a bootstrap script in Bash, that then launches something better. Plus self registration back into a GitLab repo (hey, it has the access token already, so it can push). Yes, Ansible/SaltStack/Chef/Puppet reinvented, but you're now not bound to the horrible database, language, bootstrap, speed (slowness) and workflow of any of them. If you want more access control, then creating a HTTP microservice that has the real private token (or proper OAuth2 access) to GitLab plus handles the self-registration and token handout/revocation is easy compared to the other parts. (And it can also store everything in GitLab.)

yeukhon 9y ago

I believe in your userdata script you can write a line to download a Python script from S3, then proceed to execute. Don't quote me on this since I don't use userdata. However, note that userdata will only run once at launch time. If you ever need to re-run userdata, you have to stop the instance, remove the userdata from settings, and then add again. YMMV. I do the Python way when launching a beanstalk instance (basically cloud init).