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Manually Downloading Container Images (Docker, Github Packages)

This article will describe how to download an image from a (docker) container registry.

Intro

Remember the good ‘ol days when you could just download software by visiting a website and click “download”?

Even apt and yum repositories were just simple HTTP servers that you could just curl (or wget) from. Using the package manager was, of course, more secure and convenient — but you could always just download packages manually, if you wanted.

But have you ever tried to curl an image from a container registry, such as docker? Well friends, I have tried. And I have the scars to prove it.

It was a remarkably complex process that took me weeks to figure-out. Lucky you, this article will break it down.

Examples

Specifically, we’ll look at how to download files from two OCI registries.

Docker Hub GitHub Packages Terms

First, here’s some terminology used by OCI

OCI – Open Container Initiative blob – A “blob” in the OCI spec just means a file manifest – A “manifest” in the OCI spec means a list of files Prerequisites

This guide was written in 2024, and it uses the following software and versions:

debian 12 (bookworm) curl 7.88.1 OCI
. . . → Read More: Manually Downloading Container Images (Docker, Github Packages)

Continuous Documentation: Hosting Read the Docs on GitHub Pages (2/2)

Continuous Documentation with Read the Docs (2/2)

This post will describe how add translations (i18n), pdf/epub builds, and branch-specific versioned documentation to a Read-the-Docs-themed sphinx site hosted with GitHub Pages and built with GitHub’s free CI/CD tools.

This is part two of a two-part series. Before reading this, you should already be familiar with Continuous Documentation: Hosting Read the Docs on GitHub Pages (1/2).

ⓘ Note: If you don’t care about how this works and you just want to make a functional repo, you can just fork my ‘rtd-github-pages’ GitHub repo.

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael


. . . → Read More: Continuous Documentation: Hosting Read the Docs on GitHub Pages (2/2)

Continuous Documentation: Hosting Read the Docs on GitHub Pages (1/2)

Continuous Documentation with Read the Docs (1/2)

This post will describe how to host a sphinx-powered site (using the Read the Docs theme) on your own GitHub Pages site, built with GitHub’s free CI/CD tools.

ⓘ Note: If you don’t care about how this works and you just want to make a functional repo, you can just fork my ‘rtd-github-pages’ GitHub repo.

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael


. . . → Read More: Continuous Documentation: Hosting Read the Docs on GitHub Pages (1/2)

Custom Synapse Shortcuts

I’ve been using Synapse for a few months now. This software is invaluable to my experience on my PC because: # I can *quickly* do what I want to do without fighting with a big, hierarchaial menu # It doesn’t require any huge dependencies (I use XFCE, so I don’t want something that requires Gnome or KDE libraries)

Unfortunately, the documentation is non-existant. So when I wanted to be able to configure Synapse to execute a custom command when I typed a custom keyword, it took me a while to figure it out.

This post explains how to define custom commands in Synapse to execute custom commands in your terminal. For example, I’ll show how to make “Google Drive” open a firefox window to https://drive.google.com

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael


. . . → Read More: Custom Synapse Shortcuts

Github

With each passing day, it’s becoming more and more obvious that Internet users are transitioning to cloud-based storage. Between (1) My home workstation running Arch Linux, (2) my laptop dual-booting in Ubuntu Linux and Windows 7, (3) my netbook running eeebuntu, and (4), public-access PCs at my University, I need a way to open the latest version of our files from any geographic location on any OS.

A few years ago I built a multi-TB storage solution which hosted my personal, online Subversion repository. But power is expensive, so this box ended up getting turned off. In response, I fell into the bad habit of storing my source code merely as files on the cloud without version control.

Several years ago (assuming your file was small enough) this meant emailing an attachment. Or, more recently, uploading it to Google Docs. Then people started using DropBox. Finally, if you cared about the privacy of your data, you moved to Wuala.

But Wuala tends to corrupt my files as I’m editing them in gvim, so I started storing my files locally again–which rocked the boat and convinced me to finally get around to learning git. Git has always been on my to-try
. . . → Read More: Github