Hugo Rodger-Brown's questions

I am using Packer to build a VirtualBox image for Ubuntu 14.04. I have a Packer script here, which used to work, but then for some reason (and several VirtualBox updates later) started failing. The install keeps getting stuck on the "Select and install software" step:

If I run the script using the -debug option, I don't get any useful information out from Packer itself:

~/Projects/src/github.com/yunojuno/trifecta/packer(master)$ SSH_USERNAME=vagrant SSH_PASSWORD=vagrant packer build -debug template.json
Debug mode enabled. Builds will not be parallelized.
virtualbox-iso output will be in this color.

==> virtualbox-iso: Downloading or copying Guest additions
    virtualbox-iso: Downloading or copying: file:///Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepDownloadGuestAdditions'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Downloading or copying ISO
    virtualbox-iso: Downloading or copying: http://releases.ubuntu.com/14.04/ubuntu-14.04.3-server-amd64.iso
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepDownload'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepOutputDir'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepCreateFloppy'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Starting HTTP server on port 8532
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepHTTPServer'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepSuppressMessages'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Creating virtual machine...
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'stepCreateVM'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Creating hard drive...
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'stepCreateDisk'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'stepAttachISO'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepAttachGuestAdditions'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepAttachFloppy'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Creating forwarded port mapping for SSH (host port 4141)
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepForwardSSH'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Executing custom VBoxManage commands...
    virtualbox-iso: Executing: modifyvm ubuntu1404 --memory 4096
    virtualbox-iso: Executing: modifyvm ubuntu1404 --cpus 1
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepVBoxManage'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Starting the virtual machine...
==> virtualbox-iso: Waiting 10s for boot...
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepRun'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Typing the boot command...
==> virtualbox-iso: Pausing after run of step 'StepTypeBootCommand'. Press enter to continue.
==> virtualbox-iso: Waiting for SSH to become available...

The script just hangs at that point - as the unattended install has failed (see screenshot above).

The boot command is:

"boot_command": [
    "<esc><esc><enter><wait>",
    "/install/vmlinuz ",
    "noapic ",
    "preseed/url=http://{{ .HTTPIP }}:{{ .HTTPPort }}/preseed.cfg auto ",
    "locale=en_US ",
    "kbd-chooser/method=us ",
    "keyboard-configuration/modelcode=pc105 ",
    "keyboard-configuration/layout=US ",
    "keyboard-configuration/variant=US ",
    "hostname={{ .Name }} ",
    "fb=false ",
    "debconf/frontend=noninteractive ",
    "console-setup/ask_detect=false ",
    "initrd=/install/initrd.gz -- ",
    "<enter>"
],

I don't know enough about Linux installs to debug this - how do I know what is really failing, and fix it?

I have a docker container running Nginx, that links to another docker container. The host name and IP address of the second container is loaded into the Nginx container as environment variables on startup, but is not know before then (it's dynamic). I want my nginx.conf to use these values - e.g.

upstream gunicorn {
    server $APP_HOST_NAME:$APP_HOST_PORT;
}

How can I get environment variables into the Nginx configuration on startup?

EDIT 1

This is the entire file, after the suggested answer below:

env APP_WEB_1_PORT_5000_TCP_ADDR;
# Nginx host configuration for django_app

# Django app is served by Gunicorn, running under port 5000 (via Foreman)
upstream gunicorn {
    server $ENV{"APP_WEB_1_PORT_5000_TCP_ADDR"}:5000;
}

server {
    listen 80;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

    location /static/ {
        alias /app/static/;
    }
    location /media/ {
        alias /app/media/;
    }
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://gunicorn;
    }
}

Reloading nginx then errors:

$ nginx -s reload
nginx: [emerg] unknown directive "env" in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:1

EDIT 2: more details

Current environment variables

root@87ede56e0b11:/# env | grep APP_WEB_1
APP_WEB_1_NAME=/furious_turing/app_web_1
APP_WEB_1_PORT=tcp://172.17.0.63:5000
APP_WEB_1_PORT_5000_TCP=tcp://172.17.0.63:5000
APP_WEB_1_PORT_5000_TCP_PROTO=tcp
APP_WEB_1_PORT_5000_TCP_PORT=5000
APP_WEB_1_PORT_5000_TCP_ADDR=172.17.0.63

Root nginx.conf:

root@87ede56e0b11:/# head /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
user www-data;
worker_processes 4;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
env APP_WEB_1_PORT_5000_TCP_ADDR;

Site nginx configuration:

root@87ede56e0b11:/# head /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
# Django app is served by Gunicorn, running under port 5000 (via Foreman)
upstream gunicorn {
    server $ENV{"APP_WEB_1_PORT_5000_TCP_ADDR"}:5000;
}

server {
    listen 80;

Reload nginx configuration:

root@87ede56e0b11:/# nginx -s reload
nginx: [emerg] directive "server" is not terminated by ";" in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:3

A SQL developer on a project I am working on has asked whether it would be possible to enable xp_cmdshell on the production database as it is easier to export CSV files using xp_cmdshell than to write an SSIS package to do the same.

Enabling xp_cmdshell sounds like a security nightmare, and something that should definitely not be done.

What are the recommendations / best practices around this?

I have a .NET (MVC2) website that is in development. I have deployed it to some production infrastructure, and tested it over the internet with anonymous access (as it will be once it is live) and it works fine. Between now and the go-live date I would like to restrict access to a small test group.

However, when I turn off anonymous access (I'm using IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 64-bit) and enable Basic Authentication, two things go wrong: first, it interferes with the site authentication, and redirects to the configured site login page, and second, for some reason the stylesheets stop 'working'. i.e. the site appears as if it has no stylesheets, even though they are being downloaded correctly (as viewed in Fiddler / Firebug.)

What I want is to secure access to the server - I don't want to use Basic Authentication as the authentication mechanism for the MVC website - that is handled by standard forms authentication. I simply want to stop people snooping the site before it goes live.

I've had this before, and always struggled with the lack of an easy / obvious "protect this server with a password" functionality.

There must be a simple answer. (I'm thinking of a functional equivalent to a .htaccess file, but for IIS)?

[UPDATE] Following on from my near-miss (see answer below), what I want is Windows authentication to control access to the site, and ASP.NET authentication to control a user's interaction with the website (their identity, whether the appear logged in / out, etc.)