How FreeNAS and WP-CLI Grew My Interest in Linux and Automation

Last year, I built a FreeNAS server. Initially, it was only meant as a means to store my computer backups and house my music and videos.

However, to do it right, meant I needed to perform commands in the shell, mostly to test the hard drives before I began to store files on them. I found an excellent resource, but I didn’t know what any of commands meant. I executed them and waited until they were done.

The same was for Bash scripts to automate system configuration backups, reports, and notifications.

It was when I stumbled across a some YouTube videos on how to run an Ubuntu Server to host your own websites did I finally test the Virtual Machine waters FreeNAS offered. I installed  Ubuntu 18.04 Server LTS on a VM, and learned a little at a time. The idea that I could learn a new operating system without buying another computer floored me.

Setting Goals

With VMs, CLI, and some basic web server understanding under my belt, I was ready to take a leap and move aaronweiss.me to a Digital Ocean server, but with the following goals:

1. Separate WordPress Environments:
   • Development (DEV): Any new plugins, theme enhancements, or other changes that would affect the WordPress installation or how the software worked would be developed and tested on WordPress installation.  Plugin, theme, and core updates would also be completed and tested on this server.
   • Quality Assurance (QA): This environment was meant to test any changes made in the DEV environment as if it were a functional website. No changes would be made to this environment except common WordPress functions such as adding and managing posts and pages.
   • Production (PROD): This would the live website visible to the public. Like QA, major changes would not be made on this environment.
2. Automated Deployment Scripts: Deploy changes from DEV to QA and then QA to PROD
3. Maintenance Scripts: Create a script to check for security vulnerabilities, cleanup temporary files, backup site, optimize database, and compress images on all three environments.

The above goals meant I could successfully, host, develop, and maintain my website using a secure approach with lots of ways to quickly get up to speed if something were to happen.

Additional Achievements Unlocked

Once I achieved these goals, I was hooked on what else I could do. My next set of goals were:

• Create an automated Digital Ocean snapshot script. Digital Ocean has a backup options, but only does so once per week. That didn’t fly with me, so I wrote DOCTL Remote Snapshots as a way to have some control of how often and how many snapshots would be created.
• Learn GIT – I’ve had some Git knowledge through Microsoft Team Foundation Server at work. However, it was time to really learn Git. I combined this with my DOCTL Remote Snapshot script and now have a published repository.

Next Up:

• Create a website monitoring script. I don’t need server up time, I need to know website up time. I want to know that my website can fully load and perform its basic tasks throughout the day.
• Build a Raspberry Pi and install:
  • PiHole. PiHole is an free, open source ad blocker.
  • NUT (Network UPS Tool). The goal of this is a script to monitor two computers from Raspberry Pi and shut them down gracefully using one Uninterruptible Power Supply. I currently have two UPSs, one for my primary computer and one for my FreeNAS. The primary one can handle up to 850 watts which is enough to cover all my devices, but only has one UPS port to monitor the primary device. Ideally, NUT will allow monitoring over Ethernet and can handle the shutdown of both machines.
  • Additionally, these two programs also feed my yearning to want to build and learn Raspberry Pi.

These are some short-term goals that I think are obtainable for the future.