Author: Leonid Mamchenkov

Send additional HTTP headers to Nginx’s FastCGI

It’s not that often that I come across a useful, but undocumented feature in a major software application.  It happened recently, so I’ll document it here just for the future self.

For a particular setup, I had to send additional HTTP headers (let’s use X-GEOIP for this example) to the PHP-FPM, which was configured as a FastCGI backend in Nginx web server.  This StackOverflow thread suggested several solutions, but this one was the easiest and worked like a charm: use Nginx’s fastcgi_param directive AND prefix your variables with HTTP_.  For example:

location ~ \.php$ {
  fastcgi_param HTTP_X_GEOIP $geoip;
  ... other settings
}

 

macOS in the cloud

With the constant expansion of cloud providers and services, one would think everything is possible and easy these days.  Well, at work, we came across an interesting project which shed some light on the lesser discussed areas of cloud providers and services – macOS.

Both Linux and Windows are well suited for the cloud, and are widely covered.  macOS though not so much.  Why?  Well, there are many reasons, but one of them might be that short, but annoying paragraph in the software license agreement (this one is for Catalina, but you can easily check the others here):

J. Other Use Restrictions. The grants set forth in this License do not permit you to, and you agree not to, install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so.You agree not to remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary notices (including trademark and copyright notices) that may be affixed to or contained within the Apple Software. Except as otherwise permitted by the terms of this License or otherwise licensed by Apple: (i) only one user may use the Apple Software at a time, and (ii) you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be run or used by multiple computers at the same time. You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, redistribute or sublicense the Apple Software.

Yup.  You have to run Apple software on the Apple hardware.  This alone is a huge showstopper for the cloud.  And only user may use it at a time too.

There are still some cloud providers who offer specifically macOS based products and services (and yes, they run them on the Apple hardware).  Here are a few examples, thanks to this thread:

It’s good to have options here, even if the prices are much higher than what you’d expect.

Toptal: The Suddenly Remote Playbook

Toptal is one of the great companies that I have my eyes on.  If you haven’t heard of them, here’s a brief intro:

Toptal is an exclusive network of the top freelance software developers, esigners, finance experts, product managers, and project managers in the world. Top companies hire Toptal freelancers for their most important projects.

I’ve had some interactions with the company in the past, and I’ve heard plenty of stories from other people.  These guys definitely know what they are doing.

And if you don’t believe me, here’s some proof for you.  The COVID-19 pandemic forced a lot of companies, teams, and people to work remotely.  Some were ready for this, but most had to make major adjustment.  Many are still struggling.  Toptal though is not one of them.  They’ve been doing remote work for a long time now.  Lucky for the rest of us, they’ve shared a lot of that in a rather concise, to the point, easy to read document, titled “The Suddenly Remote Playbook“. It is a playbook for sustaining an enterprise-grade remote work environment, from the world’s largest fully remote company.

It doesn’t matter whether you are just starting with the remote work, or have been doing it for a long time, I promise you, you’ll find plenty of useful information in there.

From the simple and direct quotes like:

People are the most important element of any company, remote or not.

To an impressive list of tools like:

  • Slack
  • Grammarly
  • Zoom
  • Krisp.ai
  • Google G Suite
  • Miro
  • Collabshot
  • Loom
  • Trello
  • Asana
  • Confluence
  • Zapier
  • … and more.

Strongly recommended for reading, studying, and implementation!