Configuring php can be confusing. PHP uses multiple configuration files, but the main ones are both named php.ini. You see with php you can have separate configurations for the app and the command line aka cli.
Why would you do that?
This may sound stupid at first but it is due to the fact that your command line is a different environment from your app environment. In Linux for example each user of the cli has their own environmental variables. These variables get passed to the php cli. This can drive you insane on linux. You think you set the configurations correctly, app works, try command line and BOOM all messed up.
But I set the damn configs WTF?
The two main files are located at
/etc/php/7.4/cli/php.ini
/etc/php/7.4/fpm/php.ini
Yes they have the same exact name. Yes they contain the same thing. However, one is used for the command line (cli) and the other is for apps (fpm). So you must set the settings in both. If you wanted to use 1 file for both you might be able to remove/rename 1 file such as the cli, set the fpm file. Then use a symlink from the fpm file to the cli directory. It would require some testing but it will probably work.
P.S. The php configuration file is the largest you will ever in your life see. I’m guessing a few thousand lines, it feels like that, but there is a ton of commenting and documentation to help you complete with links.
One issue with creating SSH keys is there are so many ways to do it and no one tells you why they do what they do. A quick search will reveal almost everyone has their own way of doing it. If you are new to ssh keys I suggest you read this article really quick.
In the github docs they tell you how to create the ssh keys like this
ed25519 is basically the newest type of key, it is supposed to be the most secure
-C is for adding a comment to the key. This helps you identify it later in places like ~/.ssh/known_hosts, ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and when you use the command ssh-add -L which prints out your public key info
-t specifies the type of key. The above command tells ssh-keygen to create an ed25519 type of key more info
-f /home/akashicseer/tests/ssh/file_name This tells ssh-keygen where to put the file. If you don’t specify the name then it will use a default of something like id_ed25519 for private key and id_ed25519.pub for the public key. The code above will put the files named file_name (private key) and file_name.pub ( public key) in the folder /home/akashicseer/tests/ssh/ If you don’t specify the full path to the exact folder your keys will be put into your users home directory in the default .ssh location. On Ubuntu this is /home/username/.ssh/
NOTE: for ssh deploy keys, don’t specify a passphrase when you create them or you will have to manually enter it later when Packer or whatever you use runs your provisioning code. That means you won’t be able to automate if you enter a passphrase, because it will ask the terminal user to enter the phrase to do a git clone.
There are different types of ssh keys. If you don’t add the ed25519 part then a regular ssh key of type rsa is created, this is the default type of ssh key. Basically Github documentation is showing how to create a secure type of key to use with your code deployments. You will use this key to clone your repository to your server instances.
Creating the key is only half the battle. You must decide how you will create the key, especially if you are automating deployments. When automating deployments the process becomes very complicated.
First either you create the keys you need in the instance you are creating then use the github api to add them to the proper repo. Or you create the keys on a local development computer and use something like Hashicorp Packer to upload the files to the server instance during creation. The latter is the easiest way especially in automation of the infrastructure.
If you are creating your keys locally and using Packer to upload them, you will need to login to Github and go to the deploy keys section of the specific repo to add your public key. The public key is the one that ends in .pub usually. The easiest way to copy the key value is to use xclip which I mention in this article.
If fully automating the process and creating the key on the actual instance, you must remember to eventually remove older keys. Github lets you have like 50 keys per repo max. If your repo needs to be deployed to many instances, such as a microservice structure you can contact them to get added key abilities. You could also reuse the same key, but that would require keeping the private key in a repo as well which probably isn’t a very good idea at all, since ssh keys are the same as passwords basically.
Also remember this. If you are using deploy keys only to deploy by cloning the repo, then deleting the key after the clone is perfectly fine. You only need to use this key one time to clone (aka deploy ) your code, after this it is useless. You can and probably should create new SSH keys for deployment each time and remove them from Github after you deploy, then delete them from the server instance.
Unless you plan on keeping the same instance up and trying to pull from the repo etc. That is messy. Personally I’d prefer to use Packer to create new instances when I need to and redeploy. This has the added benefit that I can upgrade the instance with security etc., test it, add my app code, test it, then swap over after migrating the database and other files. This is like creating a clean slate every time.
You will also need to know how to add the keys to ssh-agent and use them, which I cover in this article.
SSL is a very important subject. All websites/apps should be using it. However the docs will leave you scratching your head saying WTF? So I am creating this long list of resources for anyone else who ever has to learn how to use it.
Articles
First here is a link to the docs – this will cause confusion as nothing tells you how to use the pieces together. So it is like looking into a box of legos and knowing it builds something but you don’t even have a picture as a hint. The best you can do is use the pieces to build something that doesn’t even resemble the original creation.
I came across this issue when automating infrastructure provisioning. I needed a way to pull the repository code for my app in the provisioning scripts. I didn’t want to use the ssh keys I have setup for the entire Github account due to security. I discovered that github has the ability for you to add per repository SSH keys, called Deploy keys. The docs totally left me in the dark. I had no idea how to do any of this so I had to spend days researching. I decided to write this article to save everyone else hours of time scouring the internet trying to figure out how the hell to do this.
Why use Deploy keys?
Why would you want to use Deploy keys? When automating infrastructure provisioning you don’t want to expose your personal SSH keys. These deploy keys are going to be used only for cloning a repo, you may be able to use them for other things I didn’t research that not my problem. LOL.
SSH keys when setup correctly, allow a higher level of security than user name and password. Many people are automating by scripting a user name and password, that is BAD. Also if you don’t set a passphrase for the SSH key it won’t prompt for it in the shell terminal. Normally you want your ssh key secured with a pass phrase, but for infrastructure automation we need no pass.
I won’t cover how to automate the infrastructure that would be a series of articles. What I want to cover is how in specific to use multiple SSH keys.
The syntax is wacky as it gets. First off when you are using GIT to pull/push/clone etc. from Github, git is using SSH underneath. So in order to use multiple SSH keys you actually configure SSH not GIT, but git reads the command you type and interacts with SSH on your behalf. Totally confusing. My first few hours were filled with a lot of WTF?
Wait. WTF?
First off the SSH config is stored in your users .ssh directory. On most Linux distributions that is in the user you are logged in as home directory. Basically /home/username/.ssh/ this directory will hold your SSH certs, known_hosts file, config file and others. The ssh config file is always named config and goes in the .ssh directory. If you are logged in as root it will be /root/.ssh/config. Many times when provisioning a server automatically the only user you have at first is root.
Example ssh config file should look like this
Host hostAlias
User git
Hostname github.com
IdentityFile=/root/.ssh/id_rsa
Yes it goes in a file exactly like that, no equals, no semicolons no quotes, just 1980’s YAML LOLOL. The most confusing setting above, which gets more confusing if you read the docs, is Host. Just think of it as Alias. I have no idea why it is even called Host instead of Alias. That threw me and so many others off. I kept putting the same value I had for Hostname. Hostname is the exact name of the host where your repo is, github.com for this example. Identity file is the private key file location.
Another thing to look at is git for the User. You might be able to use other names, but next I’ll show how the name part ties in.
To use the above setting to clone a repo for example you would type the following at the command line.
See the User git and the Host hostAlias. This looks so similar to the regular clone command. For example here is another one of my Github repositories a public one so you can play with this.
git@github.com:AkashicSeer/phphtml.git
This is the default to clone a repo. This has a default name for User of git and a default value for Host of github.com. I haven’t experimented enough yet but I am guessing you can change the name in the configs to anything you want such as Billy and use a command like : billy@github.com:AkashicSeer/phphtml.git
So back to the question how do you use multiple SSH/Deploy keys with Git and Github?
Like this
Host hostAlias
User git
Hostname github.com
IdentityFile=/root/.ssh/id_rsa
Host otherAlias
User git
Hostname github.com
IdentityFile=/root/.ssh/id_rsa_2
Host billy
User git
Hostname github.com
IdentityFile=/root/.ssh/id_rsa_3
Each IdentityFile must be a unique ssh or deploy key, they are the same thing, both are ssh keys.
Then to clone from each for example you would use the following for example.
The format is User@Host:repo-owner-name/actual-repo.git
The dot . I am putting at the end of the clone IS AWESOME. It tells Git to clone into the current directory and don’t use the name of the repo as the directory name. Basically just clone the damn repo into this damn folder. Without the dot it includes the repo name too. I often just want /opt/app-directory < code in that folder.
AND DON’T FORGET THE SECRET SAUCE
Don’t forget the secret sauce
Now that you have multiple SSH keys you must do some special magic to let SSH know about the keys. For each key you have to tell the ssh-agent it’s name. Basically when SSH does it’s thing your SSH client has to give a list of keys to the SSH agent on the server you are contacting. GIT uses SSH so you must tell SSH where the keys are for your github accounts.
To do this on linux you start the ssh-agent then you add the keys. It is a bit of a pain. First you must start the agent, then you add the key.
#start the agent on linux like so
eval `ssh-agent`
ssh-add /path/to/your/private/key
The value you give to ssh-add command should be the ones you used for your IdentityFile definitions. You will need to add each private key to the agent before it will work.
To test that your setup is working you can do the following and read the output. If there was a problem it will tell you, like it couldn’t find the key.
Running those commands will let you know if everything is configured properly.
BUT IT GETS FUNNER GUYS
The fun is just beginning
All of the 999 things above are still not enough if you want to automate this process. If you do all of the above and try automating the process, github will prompt you for a passphrase for an ssh key. It won’t be the deploy key either, NO why do that, that would be logical and make sense. What it wants is the passhprhase to the entire account, not the deploy key.
How to fix this?
And there is still, still more, you must chmod the .ssh directory to 600 such as
chmod -R 600 /home/user/.ssh
or where ever your ssh files are stored.
You may also need to do the following.
Create a dummy instance. On this instance issue the git clone command. When it asks for the passphrase enter the passphrase for the account that OWNS THE REPO, not the deploy key passphrase which should be empty.
This will add github to known_hosts file. Now use cat to output that info and copy it. You can’t use xclip like I mention in another article, no that’s not allowed for some no brain reason. Once you copy the code from known_hosts create another file on your system called known_hosts. You will need to upload this file along with the ssh deploy keys so that you are not prompted during automated clones.
If there is some sort of openssh setting or a way to do this automatically, I haven’t found it yet.
If you would like more information on how to create the ssh deploy keys themselves, read this article I wrote.
If you want more information about ssh checkout my list of resources here
I am writing this so when other people google how to do it, they have something to find to save them time.
For days I tried to figure out how to make sure a command finished before another was run. I couldn’t find any information anywhere. If you are like me you may be thinking ( or wondering if ) that the shell just zooms through the commands you put in a script file without waiting for each to finish. It seems like this because everything is rushing by so quickly you can’t read it.
For days I was running scripts to install and configure my servers and it kept hanging so bad I couldn’t even ping the server.
I was running the following for example
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo apt-get reboot
And since my server instances were hard freezing right up, I figured it must be zooming right on through causing an error.
Well come to find out after much research and someone on twitter finally confirmed to me that the shell automatically waits for each command to finish before executing the next. The shell doesn’t automatically run all commands encountered at the same time.
Now I must figure out what is actually locking my server instances up.
I had a nice article but somehow it got screwed to hell and back. I have no idea what I did. I will not rewrite it. This is now purely a list of resources. I really hate tinymce for this. You can’t just past text from the internet because it auto adds H4’s for some no brain reason. So you have to switch to text view to paste text, then you can switch back and add the link. So helpful.
Articles
SSH keys – basically documentation on the subject by arch linux.
Understanding the SSH Encryption and Connection Process – a really decent article going into the details of how SSH actually works underneath for anyone interested. I highly suggest reading this as it eliminates some of the questions you may have.
I saw something similar to this in some code in one of my books var=$[ $var1 - $var2 ]
I wanted to know what it did and why it was used. I’m a perfectionist with OCD.
Turns out it is deprecated from the BASH language.
Originally $[] was used to do math in Bash scripts to do Math known as arithmetic expansion.
So the new way in BASH is to use the following syntax.
var=$(( $var1 - $var2))
Basically what this syntax does is it allows you to do math more easily. Without the above syntax you have to escape certain characters like >< With the above syntax you can basically do math without escaping plus youcan use post-increment $var++, post-decrement $var– , logical and &&, logical or || bitwise math etc. It really helps you out.
Another good source of info about the (()) syntax as used in if and while statements is found in the book Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible. starting on page 325 If you don’t own the book I highly suggest it. I’ve found one errata so far and that is what this post is about.
Linux has this syntax that looks like so: $(command)
This is called command substitution. This allows you to get information about the execution of the command instead of having it it directed to STDOUT aka the terminal screen as usual.
That is very useful actually because you can run a command and store the output in a variable and use it anywhere you want later.
A simple example you can easily play with:
DIR_LISTINGS=$(ls -al)
echo $DIR_LISTINGS
This is so simple you don’t even have to add it to a script you can run it straight in your terminal in any directory you user owns.
The xclip command makes it easy to capture output to the clipboard so you can paste it to another location like into a browser or word file etc.
The github docs above have you use it to copy your RSA key and save it for pushing your repository so you don’t have to supply a user name and password.
It tells Git to clone into the current directory and don’t use the name of the repo as the directory name. Basically just clone the damn repo into this damn folder. Without the dot it includes the repo name too. I often just want /opt/app-directory < code in that folder.
