Automated Nomad Docker Image Updates

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For a few years now I've grumbled at updating Docker images in my Nomad homelab. Nomad isn't as popular as Kubernetes or Docker Compose and isn't supported in Dependabot.

Eventually I found this comment

Using a Dockerfile for a Nomad Docker image

I didn't think this was a great solution to my problem as I split up the registry from the repo/image so that I can pull images from my own repository. This solves the problem of Dependabot updating images though!

There was also an annoyance that I still need to copy these images into my Docker Registry. I've been using regclient's regctl image copy command as part of a Nomad job that makes this a bit easier.

Tada

If the Dockerfile now has a FROM [IMAGE] in the service directory the deploy process now looks like:

  • awk the image out awk '/FROM/ {print $2}' Dockerfile
  • Dispatch the regctl job with the IMAGE
  • Deploy the service job passing in the IMAGE as a variable.

Dependabot doesn't seem to do great with monorepos without lots of copying.

Renovate does though!

Finally, a service that can autoupdate!

Merges on Github do not automatically deploy to my homelab so the final deploy takes 2 more commands to deploy (git pull and bash deploy) but this no longer requires any manual commits!

Towards a more useful Matrix Synapse healthcheck

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I've been running Synapse for about a year at this point and it's been fairly consistently the software that gives me the most trouble for my homelab.

A part I've started to address recently is the ineffectiveness of the healthcheck endpoints. It always works! Which is a problem when the service isn't working and the healthcheck says it is. This is commonly when my Postgres server moves for some reason, Synapse never reconnects. It's a known issue.

I've worked around this with a healthcheck script that will probe the Synapse API

curl -fv http://127.0.0.1:{{ PORT }}/_matrix/client/v3/publicRooms -H "Authorization: Bearer {{ TOKEN }}"

The TOKEN needs to be a user token which also gives this a bootstrapping problem where this check can only be in place after the server works. And a user changing their password will invalidate this token and take the server offline...

After a few days though it's solved my problem of Synapse breaking but pretending to be fine.

Send Webmentions with Github Actions

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As I start working with webmentions I needed to find a way to publish webmentions as part of the build/release process for this site. I'm currently using Github Actions to build the site and upload to Netlify.

webmention.app came up frequently when I searched around for how to publish webmentions. It supports RSS/Atom as a feed, although the docs suggest using IFTTT to trigger webhooks. Github Actions can do that though! For whatever reason webmention.app didn't seen to find any links in my feed. As I was trying to figure out why by using the command line I discovered that the CLI version was able to find the links in my feed!

Adding this as a step post-release

- name: Send Webmentions
  run: |
    npm install @remy/webmention
    npx webmention ${{ secrets.WEBMENTION_TARGET_URL }} --limit=0 --send

In my pull-requests I have a variation of this, removing --send and using the temporary Netlify URL for the PR so I can see what webmentions would be sent.

As part of using my atom feed for this I now only include the last 10 posts in my feed to avoid sending lots of old webmentions, most of which didn't seem to work as the links are dead.

Starting Webmentions

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Is anyone using webmentions? I've added Webmention.io for hosting my webmentions at the moment as this is currently a static site. If you're using them please try and mention this page and I can hopefully see in my RSS reader!

Testing things

Webmention test 1

Also trying to send them as part of my site build process. Maybe this will work?

Second part!