Tag Archives: debian

Migrate Linux Subsystem from one PC to another

Are you enjoying your favorite Linux distro running within the Windows 10 Linux Subsystem?

Have you configured all nicely?

What happened if you get a new pc and you’d like to migrate your VM across?

This is what happened to me. And looking around, I found this post that gave me this kinda-dirty way, but did work!

After that, I decided to review the steps, and I’ve added these directories in the exclude’s list, to make clearer the process of export/import:

Of course, if you have important data in these folders and you want to move across too, just update the one-liner below accordingly. 😉

On your OLD PC

  • Open your Linux VM
  • Get inside your Downloads directory (replace <user> with your username): cd /mnt/c/Users/<user>/Dowloads
  • Make sure to be root (sudo su -)
  • Run:
    tar -cvpzf backup.tar.gz --exclude=/backup.tar.gz --exclude=/dev --exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys --exclude=/run --exclude=/tmp --exclude=/media --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/var/cache --exclude=/var/run --one-file-system /
    NOTE: you could achieve the same using the option --exclude-from=file.txt, and having the list of exclusions in this file. I used a one-liner as it’s quicker to copy and paste.
  • Once done, close your Linux VM
  • Verify that you have a new file called backup.tar.bz in Dowloads

On your NEW PC

  • Install from Microsoft Store the same Linux VM (or reinstall in the same way you have done originally on your old pc)
  • Copy across your backup.tar.bz within your new Downloads folder
  • Open the VM that you’ve just installed (minimal setup – this will be completely overwritten, so don’t be bothered too much)
  • Once you’re inside and your backup.tar.bz is in Download, run the following (replace <user> with your username):
    sudo tar -xpzf /mnt/c/Users/<user>/Dowloads/backup.tar.gz -C / --numeric-owner
  • Ignore the errors
  • Close and re-open the VM: DONE! 🙂

Happy migration! 😉

Auto mount an encrypted IMG file stored on NFS share

Yes, here we are again.
Now that I have a NAS at home, it’s about time to get rid of all these single USB disks connected to my Raspberry PIs.

I have a share called nfsshare available from my NAS (IP: 192.168.1.10). The full share path is 192.168.1.10:/volume1/nfsshare. My NAS handles NFS version 4.

So, here what I’ve done, to setup my Banana Pro Pi with Armbian based on Debian 10 (buster).

Configure NFS client

First of all, we need to create the mount point where we’re going to access the nfs share (let’s use /nfs) and install the packages for NFS.

Once done, a minimal tuning of idmapd.conf, if you have defined a domain/workgroup within your network. In this example I’m using mydomain.loc.

Update our /etc/fstab file, to make sure it mounts at boot, and test if all works as expected:

I have used _netdev to make sure that the system understands that this needs the network up before trying to mount, and, if something goes wrong, the boot continues (nofail). This is very handy on systems without a proper monitor where you rely on ssh connections.

Now, with a simple mount /nfs command, you should be able to get the share mounted. df -Th or mount commands are what I would you to verify.

Cool, we have now the share mounted. Issue a quick shutdown -r now to see if all works as expected. Once your device is back online, ssh into it and check with df -Th or mount commands again. Hopefully, you can see your nfs share mounted to /nfs.

Create and configure your Encrypted “space”

I have already discussed something about encrypted devices in another post. This will be a revised version of the previous post, without custom scripts, but simply using what Debian offers out of the box.

Create an empty IMG file to host our encrypted space

I have decided to create 500GB of encrypted space to store my data. To do so, I did the following:

  • install the required software for encryption
  • create a sparsefile (on my /nfs share)
  • encrypt it
  • format it (ext4)
  • setup the auto mount

During the above steps, you will be asked to set a passphrase, and use it to open the IMG file. Pretty straight forward, isn’t it?

Cool. Now we have 500GB sparsefile called file_container.img store on our share /nfs ready to be mounted somewhere and utilised.

To make sure we can mount at boot, we need a secret key that we are going to use to decrypt the IMG file without typing any passphrase.

Let’s create this key stored under /root (in this example). You can store wherever you want, as long as it’s accessible before the decryption start. Another good place is /boot.

Now we need to add this key within the IMG file

Next step, is to instruct /etc/crypttab, with the details about our encrypted file and its key.
Just add the following line at the end of /etc/crypttab file.

Now, there is a problem. Your OS needs to know that the IMG file isn’t stored locally and has a dependency on the NFS share. In fact, if the OS tries to decrypt the IMG file before mounting the NFS share, it will fail, and you might get stuck in a no-end booting, forcing sometimes to get your mini monitor for troubleshooting, a spare keyboard and anti-human positions to reach your small Pi etc etc… basically, a nightmare!

So, here a trick that seems working.
In Debian, there is a file called /etc/default/cryptdisks
Within this file, we are going to make sure that CRYPTDISKS_ENABLE is set to yes and CRYPTDISKS_MOUNT is set to our NFS mount (/nfs). In this way, the service that handles the encryption/decription will wait for /nfs mounted before starting.
IMPORTANT: this must be a mountpoint within /etc/fstab

Here the content of my /etc/default/cryptdisks file

Amazing! Now, just the last bit: update /etc/fstab with the reference of our device. Because now we have setup all the necessary to open the encrypted IMG file and associate it to a mountable device. But we haven’t mounted it yet!

Create the mount point:

Update /etc/fstab, appending this line:

Again, the nofail, as for the NFS share, to avoid the boot process to get stuck in case of errors, and allow you to ssh into the device and troubleshoot.

Now we’re ready to try a mount /cryptoarchive, a df -Th and mount checks, and also a shutdown -r now, to verify that the NFS share gets mounted and the IMG encrypted disk mounted and available too.

Happy playing! 😉

Fail2ban Debian 9

Scratch pad with conf files to configure Fail2ban on Debian 9

This setup will configure Fail2ban to monitor SSH and keep track of the bad guys. Every time an IP gets banned, it will be stored in /etc/fail2ban/ip.blacklist .
This files gets processed every time Fail2ban restarts.
A cron will sanitise the file daily.

HOW TO

1) Create a custom action file: /etc/fail2ban/action.d/iptables-allports-CUSTOM.conf

2) Create /etc/fail2ban/jail.local

3) Remove the default debian jail configuration (is integrated in the above custom jail.local file):

4) Set this cron:

5) Run the cron manually once, just to be sure all works AND to have an empty file

6) Restart Fail2ban … and good luck 😉

 

 

Automatic Updates on Raspberry Pi

How to configure automatic updates on your raspberry pi and make sure it reboots in the night (if required)

Check the next day the log /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades.log to see if it worked 🙂

 

Source: here

Improve/Ubuntu-like Font Rendering in Debian using Infinality Font

Source: http://linuxpanda.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/improve-ubuntu-like-font-rendering-in-debian-using-infinality-font/

Dynamic MOTD on Debian

Here a simple script that setup a dynamic MOTD message ‘ubuntu-like’ on Debian servers:

 

If you are running CentOS7, here the how to for that OS.

Banana Pi Pro – WLAN configuration

Add ‘ap6210‘ to /etc/modules to enable WiFi, and use modprobe ap6210 to force load the module.

Check dmesg to see if all has been loaded correctly. If not, reboot and check again.

Install the required packages:

Modify /etc/network/interfaces

Bring the interface up:

Source: http://oyox.de/882-wlan-auf-bananian-banana-pi-einrichten/

Nagios3 and Lighttpd

This guide will explain how to install Nagios3 on a machine with Debian and Lighttpd webserver.

If you haven’t installed Lighttpd yet, please follow this tutorial.

Install Nagios server

Now, let’s install Nagios.

This will automatically install all the required dependencies.

Enable check_external_commands in /etc/nagios3/nagios.cfg

Add www-data in nagios’ group:

And fix some permission issues to avoid some errors like “error: Could not stat() command file”

Let’s configure a bit Lighttpd.
Make sure cgi and php modules are enabled.

Then, create a new conf file and enable it:

Let’s apply the changes:

We need to setup the “nagiosadmin” password:

Now, open your browser and digit http://yourserver/nagios3
Insert username: nagiosadmin and the password you’ve just chosen… and voila`… 🙂

And now we have installed our nagios server. As you can see, it’s currently monitoring itself.

But what about the other hosts in the network?

Adding hosts

Host configuration

To let our Nagios server to monitor other hosts, we need to follow these steps on any client we want to add:

Once completed, we need to add the IP of our monitoring host in /etc/nagios/nrpe.cfg under allowed_hosts=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.

Also, add this line in /etc/nagios/nrpe_local.cfg:

This will be used from our monitor server to query nrpe and provide info about ALL the disks.
You can use also -I flag to exclude a specific path. For example on my Time Capsule Pi, I’ve used the following line, to exclude the mount point “TimeMachine” from the checks:

Monitoring configuration for new host

Now back to our Nagios monitoring machine
In /etc/nagios3/conf.d create a file called for example host1_nagios2.cfg and add the following basic services (add/remove/modify based on your local configuration):

Also, you can add the new host host1 to be part of any related groups, modifying /etc/nagios3/conf.d/hostgroups_nagios2.cfg

For example, we can add it to debian-servers and ssh-servers groups. This will automatically get some checks like SSH.

Sources:
http://zeldor.biz/2010/11/nagios3-with-lighttpd/comment-page-1/
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-install-nagios-on-ubuntu-12-10
http://cloud101.eu/blog/2012/03/01/setting-up-nagios-on-debian-or-ubuntu/
http://technosophos.com/2010/01/13/nagios-fixing-error-could-not-stat-command-file-debian.html

Lighttpd and virtualhosts

Here a quick how to, about how to configure Lighttpd to run with Virtualhosts.
This has been installed and tested on a Raspberry Pi.

Enable modules:

Content of /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

To easily manage virtual hosts, edit /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/10-simple-vhost.conf

This configuration above will allow you to manage your virutalhosts simply storing them in a folder under /var/www/vhost
No extra configuration is needed from the server side.
Simply go into /var/www/vhost and create a folder named as the virtualhost you would like to manage.
In this particular case, please make sure to have a folder called error.default.loc with a page inside which will be displayed in case of ANY error.
For example, if you want to manage mysite.example.com, simply do the following:

…and put the html/php files inside that new folder! 🙂

To test if our webserver works, you can always use curl command as explained here.