Infrastructure As Code Might Be Literally Impossible
summary
Claim: representing infrastructure as code often fails because foundational tools break in subtle, unfixable ways. Examples: the Ruby VM and GC cause segfaults and dropped objects; a CPU bug breaks atomic instructions but MySQL survives; puppet run slowed >20x by a sigprocmask/threading issue; package tooling misuses GPG so repo GPG check often disabled and Debian/RPM signing is inconsistent; repo metadata generators produce wrong versions (about 30 packages found), mirrors can be added without verification, and SSL CA bundles once revoked AWS, breaking images.
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chapters (27)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:25What is code?
- 2:51Hardware bugs and defensive code
- 5:21High-level languages are impossible
- 6:23Ruby VM implementation flaws
- 9:11Infrastructure code basics
- 10:17MRI bug crippled Puppet
- 12:44Puppet rebuilding in C++
- 13:47Chef crashes on Solaris
- 15:13Impossible to install securely
- 15:53Yum and GPG failures
- 16:57Repo GPG check issues
- 18:02RPM V3 vs V4 signatures
- 19:07Yum SSL verification disabled
- 19:49Debian GPG signing problems
- 21:57CA bundle revoked AWS root
- 24:24Cognitive load in computing
- 26:08DoS via apt and yum metadata
- 27:10Fake mirrors in open source
- 29:17Incorrect yum metadata
- 31:44Infrastructure as code today
- 32:30Reproducible infrastructure needs
- 33:12Abstraction complexity
- 34:14Honest technology choices
- 34:55Open source underfunding
- 37:22Future of infrastructure code
- 38:54Q&A
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