Most people will say that 2016 was a terrible year and can’t wait for 2017. I agree that 2016 was not perfect for many people but it was a great year for linux-toys. I made this blog with the goal to influence people and drive that creative spark that we all have inside. In this blog post I will go over the website statistics and discuss a few of the blog entries that I thought were most influential for the year.
My previous post was about using Cloud Explorer with the Scality S3 server. After I published that post, I thought it would be informative to go one step further and explain how I use the S3 server in homeduction (applications run at home in production). My homeduction environment consists of four Raspberry Pi’s running Docker that power this WordPress blog and many other applications . My goal is to add an S3 server to store the images for this blog and anything else that I can come up with.
Continue reading Using the Scality S3 Server in Homeduction
I spent a few weeks searching for an open-source S3 server that I can run at home to test . I first came across Minio which is an open-source S3 server but I could not get it to work with Cloud Explorer because it had issues resolving bucket names via DNS which is a requirement using the AWS SDK. I then read an article about Scality releasing an open-source S3 that you can run inside a Docker image. I was able to get Scality up and running quickly with little effort. In this post, I will explain how I got the Scality S3 server setup and how to use it with Cloud Explorer.
Continue reading How to use Cloud Explorer with Scality S3 server
I recently started to check out Kubernetes and wanted to share with everyone how I got WordPress running on it as a three-tier application. I made the decision to learn Kubernetes because Docker Swarm was not working well for me. To start, I downloaded and installed MiniKube on my laptop.
I then created three Docker images and pushed them to my Docker Hub registry:
Continue reading Running WordPress on Kubernetes
Introducing Cloud Explorer 7.2!
Cloud Explorer is a open-source Amazon S3 client that works on any operating system. The program features a graphical or command line interface. Today I just released version 7.2 and hope that you give it a test drive. Feedback and uses cases are always encouraged.
What’s new in this release?
To start, this release of Cloud Explorer was compiled with Java 1.8.0_72 and version 1.10.56 of the Amazon S3 Java Development Kit ( JDK). The major improvements in this release regard file synchronization. Basically, it was mostly rewritten. By putting forth the effort, it helped reduce technical debt and consistency between the command line and graphical version of Cloud Explorer.
How do I get it?
Cloud Explorer v7.2 is available under the “Downloads” section of the on GitHub. Simply click on “cloudExplorer-7.2.zip” and the download will begin. When the download is finished, extract the zip file and double click on “CloudExplorer.jar”.
Where do we go from here?
I know it has been a while since Cloud Explorer has been touched. It is hard to handle a project all by yourself and keep innovating. I feel that with this release, Cloud Explorer reached a stable point. I am always looking for new ideas and help from the community. If you are interested in contributing, please contact me or open an issue on the
I have been working hard on new features and GUI enhancements for Cloud Explorer 6.0. I think it is important for an application to improve over time and this project has seen it’s share of visual evolutions. If you look back at the 1.0 release, the changes are night and day. I enjoy the challenge of making this program look pretty for each major release and hope that the users find it to be good. This release uses many free-licenses images and GPL images found in the KDE Desktop Environment.
If you like to test this early release, please create an issue on and I will provide a release candidate. I can always can use help in testing. You can also build the latest version of CloudExplorer . The expected release date for 6.0 is July 22, 2015.
6.0 Changes:
Bug Fixes:
1. Fixed a bug when switching accounts.
2. If no region is specified, it will default to “defaultAWS” to
avoid a null pointer exception. To resolve the issue, delete and
add your account back.
3. If no image is selected when the image button is pressed, nothing
happens.
4. If no music is selected when the play button is pressed, nothing
happens.
5. Support for line spaces in s3.config
6. Versioning display fix.
Improvements:
1. Snapshots and Migration are now located under the new menu
“Snapshots and Migration”.
2. New Icons for GUI.
3. Maximize Window.
4. For improved GUI responsiveness, many actions now avoid
reloading buckets.
New Features:
1. Create Bucket snapshots.
2. Restore Bucket snapshots.
Introduction
I am pleased to announce v5.6 of Cloud Explorer. The biggest new feature for this release allows users to record audio messages that will be saved into their selected bucket. Cloud Explorer provides a great way to share audio messages because the S3 API allows users to share files via a public URL. Syncing is now more stable intelligent. When syncing to or from a bucket, sync compares the last modified time and if the destination has a newer version, the file will not be copied. The text editor now has a folder list box so users can save notes into a specific folder. This is an excellent way to stay organized and use Cloud Explorer for note taking.
Getting Cloud Explorer
Cloud Explorer is available for download from. After downloading, please upgrade to 5.6 if you are running an earlier release.
Upgrading to 5.6
Starting with Cloud Explorer 5.0 or later, you can upgrade by clicking on Help -> Check for updates. After the update is complete, restart Cloud Explorer.
Here is a complete list of changes in v5.6:
Bug Fixes:
1. Syncing GUI and CLI: Prevent duplicated transfers of synced files in folders and items go in the correct folder when syncing to the local machine,
2. Syncing from CLI: Syncing from S3 saves to appropriate directory level.
Improvements:
1. Music Player: Plays WAV files, stop button renamed to “Stop /Close” for clarity, and no longer case sensitive for MP3 file extensions.
2. Syncing GUI and CLI: Overwrite button removed.
New Features:
1. Audio recorder.
2. Sync GUI and CLI: Timestamps are compared and the outdated files are overwritten.
3. Folder support for saving files in the Text Editor.
What is Cloud Explorer?
Cloud Explorer is a open-source S3 client. It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. It has a graphical and command line interface for each supported operating system.
Features:
What is new in 5.2?
The main new feature in 5.2 is the ability to graph a CSV file from a bucket.
Graph a CSV file.
The text editor has the ability to substitute and replace text.
There is also a few minor bug fixes. Please see the for more information.
Getting Cloud Explorer
Cloud Explorer is available for download from. After downloading, please upgrade to 5.2.
Upgrading to 5.2
Starting with Cloud Explorer 5.0 or later, you can upgrade by clicking on Help -> Check for updates. After the update is complete, restart Cloud Explorer.