Posts Tagged ‘download’

DNS Monitoring: Check and Alert if DNS nameserver resolver of Linux machine is not properly resolving shell script. Monitor if /etc/resolv.conf DNS runs Okay

Thursday, March 14th, 2024

linux-monitor-check-dns-is-resolving-fine

If you happen to have issues occasionally with DNS resolvers and you want to keep up an eye on it and alert if DNS is not properly resolving Domains, because sometimes you seem to have issues due to network disconnects, disturbances (modifications), whatever and you want to have another mean to see whether a DNS was reachable or unreachable for a time, here is a little bash shell script that does the "trick".

Script work mechacnism is pretty straight forward as you can see we check what are the configured nameservers if they properly resolve and if they're properly resolving we write to log everything is okay, otherwise we write to the log DNS is not properly resolvable and send an ALERT email to preconfigured Email address.

Below is the check_dns_resolver.sh script:

 

#!/bin/bash
# Simple script to Monitor DNS set resolvers hosts for availability and trigger alarm  via preset email if any of the nameservers on the host cannot resolve
# Use a configured RESOLVE_HOST to try to resolve it via available configured nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf
# if machines are not reachable send notification email to a preconfigured email
# script returns OK 1 if working correctly or 0 if there is issue with resolving $RESOLVE_HOST on $SELF_HOSTNAME and mail on $ALERT_EMAIL
# output of script is to be kept inside DNS_status.log

ALERT_EMAIL='your.email.address@email-fqdn.com';
log=/var/log/dns_status.log;
TIMEOUT=3; DNS=($(grep -R nameserver /etc/resolv.conf | cut -d ' ' -f2));  

SELF_HOSTNAME=$(hostname –fqdn);
RESOLVE_HOST=$(hostname –fqdn);

for i in ${DNS[@]}; do dns_status=$(timeout $TIMEOUT nslookup $RESOLVE_HOST  $i); 

if [[ “$?” == ‘0’ ]]; then echo "$(date "+%y.%m.%d %T") $RESOLVE_HOST $i on host $SELF_HOST OK 1" | tee -a $log; 
else 
echo "$(date "+%y.%m.%d %T")$RESOLVE_HOST $i on host $SELF_HOST NOT_OK 0" | tee -a $log; 

echo "$(date "+%y.%m.%d %T") $RESOLVE_HOST $i DNS on host $SELF_HOST resolve ERROR" | mail -s "$RESOLVE_HOST /etc/resolv.conf $i DNS on host $SELF_HOST resolve ERROR";

fi

 done

Download check_dns_resolver.sh here set the script to run via a cron job every lets say 5 minutes, for example you can set a cronjob like this:
 

# crontab -u root -e
*/5 * * * *  check_dns_resolver.sh 2>&1 >/dev/null

 

Then Voila, check the log /var/log/dns_status.log if you happen to run inside a service downtime and check its output with the rest of infrastructure componets, network switch equipment, other connected services etc, that should keep you in-line to proof during eventual RCA (Root Cause Analysis) if complete high availability system gets down to proof your managed Linux servers was not the reason for the occuring service unavailability.

A simplified variant of the check_dns_resolver.sh can be easily integrated to do Monitoring with Zabbix userparameter script and DNS Check Template containing few Triggers, Items and Action if I have time some time in the future perhaps, I'll blog a short article on how to configure such DNS zabbix monitoring, the script zabbix variant of the DNS monitor script is like this:

[root@linux-server bin]# cat check_dns_resolver.sh 
#!/bin/bash
TIMEOUT=3; DNS=($(grep -R nameserver /etc/resolv.conf | cut -d ' ' -f2));  for i in ${DNS[@]}; do dns_status=$(timeout $TIMEOUT nslookup $(hostname –fqdn) $i); if [[ “$?” == ‘0’ ]]; then echo "$i OK 1"; else echo "$i NOT OK 0"; fi; done

[root@linux-server bin]#


Hope this article, will help someone to improve his Unix server Infrastucture monitoring.

Enjoy and Cheers !

Install Zabbix Proxy configure and connect to Zabbix server on CentOS Linux

Thursday, May 4th, 2023

Install Zabbix Proxy configure and connect to Zabbix server on CentOS Linux

1. Why use Zabbix-Proxy hidden advantages of using Zabbix-Proxy ?
 

Proxy can be used for many purposes and can provide many hidden benefits, just to name few of them:

  • Offload Zabbix Server when monitoring thousands of devices
  • Monitor remote locations
  • Monitor locations having unreliable communications
  • Simplify maintenance of distributed monitoring
  • Improved Security (Zabbix server can be restricted to be connectable only by the set of connected Zabbix Proxy / Proxies


advantages-of-using-zabbix-proxy-instead-of-direct-connect-monitored-hosts-to-zabbix-server-diagram

 

A Zabbix proxy is the ideal solution if you have numerous hosts with multiple slow items that are affecting the performance of the server simply because processes are spending most of the time simply waiting for a response. A proxy can collect information from all hosts using its internal processes and then send raw historical data to the server. The time needed to connect and receive the host response will be on the proxy site, and the server performance will not be affected at all. A proxy just sends raw values to the server, and the server itself does not have to connect to the host to get the data.
 

2. Install zabbix-proxy-sqlite3 rpm package from Zabbix Official Repositories download page

Zabbix repository provides choice of 3 packages named as follows:

zabbix-proxy-mysql
zabbix-proxy-pgsql
zabbix-proxy-sqlite3

where the last value of the name (after zabbix-proxy) represents database type of the package — MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite respectively.

To not bother installing MySQL / PostgreSQL separate database servers, a lightweight choice is to use the sqlite3 db version. 
As I prefer zabbix-proxy data to be stored inside a flat database, thus I choose to use zabbix-proxy-sqlite3.

[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# yum info zabbix-proxy-sqlite3-5.0.31-1.el7.x86_64
Заредени плъгини: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: mirrors.netix.net
 * epel: fedora.ipacct.com
 * extras: mirrors.netix.net
 * remi: remi.mirror.karneval.cz
 * remi-php74: remi.mirror.karneval.cz
 * remi-safe: remi.mirror.karneval.cz
 * updates: mirrors.netix.net
Инсталирани пакети
Име         : zabbix-proxy-sqlite3
Архитект.   : x86_64
Версия      : 5.0.31
Издание     : 1.el7
Обем        : 4.4 M
Хранилище   : installed
Обобщение   : Zabbix proxy for SQLite3 database
URL         : http://www.zabbix.com/
Лиценз      : GPLv2+
Описание    : Zabbix proxy with SQLite3 database support.

My experience to try to install thethe default CentOS RPM package for zabbix-proxy-sqlite3 provided by default
RPM package that came with CentOS did not work as expected and trying to install / configure and use it via

[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# yum install zabbix-proxy-sqlite3.x86_64 -y

[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# vi /etc/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.conf


Led me to a nasty errors seen in /var/log/zabbixsrv/zabbix_proxy.log like:

May 1st 2023, 08:42:45.020 zabbix_server cannot set list of PSK ciphersuites: file ssl_lib.c line 1314: error:1410D0B9:SSL routines:SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list:no cipher match
May 1st 2023, 08:42:45.018 zabbix_server cannot set list of PSK ciphersuites: file ssl_lib.c line 1314: error:1410D0B9:SSL routines:SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list:no cipher match
May 1st 2023, 08:42:45.013 zabbix_server cannot set list of PSK ciphersuites: file ssl_lib.c line 1314: error:1410D0B9:SSL routines:SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list:no cipher match
May 1st 2023, 08:42:45.013 zabbix_server cannot set list of PSK ciphersuites: file ssl_lib.c line 1314: error:1410D0B9:SSL routines:SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list:no cipher match
May 1st 2023, 08:42:45.011 zabbix_server cannot set list of PSK ciphersuites: file ssl_lib.c line 1314: error:1410D0B9:SSL routines:SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list:no cipher match


After some googling and reading some threads came upon this one https://support.zabbix.com/browse/ZBXNEXT-3604, there is exmplaed errors preventing the configured zabbix-proxy
to start are caused by the zabbix-proxy-sqlite3 package provided by Redhat (due to openssl incompitability bug or something ).

As one of people in the discussion pointed out the quickest workaround suggested is simply to use the official Zabbix Repository packages for zabbix-proxy-sqlite3, in order to not waste anymore time on this
trivial stuff to install it, simply run:

[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# rpm -Uvh \
https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.0/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-proxy-sqlite3-5.0.31-1.el7.x86_64.rpm

Alternative way if you seem to not have the machine connected to the internet is simply download the package with wget / lynx / curl / w3m from another machine 
that can reach the Internet upload the package via the local LAN or VPN and install it:

# wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.0/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-proxy-sqlite3-5.0.31-1.el7.x86_64.rpm

[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# rpm -ivh zabbix-proxy-sqlite3-5.0.31-1.el7.x86_64.rpm

NOTE ! Before you install proxy, keep in mind that your proxy version must match the Zabbix server version !

3. Generate a PSK random secret key and set proper permissions for zabbix-proxy directories


[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# cd /etc/zabbix/
    
[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# openssl rand -hex 32 >> /etc/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.psk     
[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# chown root:zabbix zabbix_proxy.psk [root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# vi /etc/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.conf [root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# mkdir -p /var/lib/zabbix-proxy/sqlite3db
[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# chown -R zabbix:zabbix /var/lib/zabbix-proxy
[root@sysadminshelp:/var/lib/zabbixsrv/sqlite3db]# sqlite3 zabbix_proxy
SQLite version 3.7.17 2013-05-20 00:56:22
Enter ".help" for instructions
Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"
sqlite> .databases
seq  name             file
—  —————  ———————————————————-
0    main             /var/lib/zabbixsrv/sqlite3db/zabbix_proxy
sqlite>
[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]# vi /etc/zabbix_proxy.conf
#DBName=zabbix_proxy
DBName=/var/lib/zabbixsrv/sqlite3db/zabbix_proxy

4. Configure zabbix proxy to be able to connect to Zabbix Server

[root@sysadminshelp:/root ]#  vi /etc/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.conf     ############ GENERAL PARAMETERS #################
    ProxyMode=0
    Server=192.168.1.28
    ServerPort=10051
    Hostname=zabbix-proxy
    ListenPort=10051
    SourceIP=10.168.1.55
    LogFile=/var/log/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.log
    LogFileSize=1
    DebugLevel=2
    PidFile=/var/run/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.pid
    DBName=/var/lib/zabbix-proxy/sqlite3db/zabbix_proxy.db
    DBUser=zabbix
    
    ######### PROXY SPECIFIC PARAMETERS #############
    ProxyOfflineBuffer=24
    HeartbeatFrequency=60
    ConfigFrequency=120
    
    ############ ADVANCED PARAMETERS ################
    StartPollersUnreachable=3
    StartHTTPPollers=3
    JavaGateway=127.0.0.1
    JavaGatewayPort=10052
    StartJavaPollers=5
    SNMPTrapperFile=/var/log/snmptrap/snmptrap.log
    StartSNMPTrapper=1
    CacheSize=32M
    Timeout=4
    ExternalScripts=/usr/lib/zabbix/externalscripts
    LogSlowQueries=3000
    
    ####### TLS-RELATED PARAMETERS #######
    TLSConnect=psk
    TLSAccept=psk
    TLSPSKIdentity=PSK zabbix-proxy-fqdn-hostname
    TLSPSKFile=/etc/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.psk

5. Check and make sure the installed zabbix proxy as well as the zabbix_proxy server zabbix_agentd client and zabbix_server are at the same major version release

a) Check zabbix proxy version

[root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]# zabbix_proxy -V
zabbix_proxy (Zabbix) 5.0.31
Revision f64a07aefca 30 January 2023, compilation time: Jan 30 2023 09:55:10

Copyright (C) 2023 Zabbix SIA
License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it according to
the license. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project
for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org/).

Compiled with OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013
Running with OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013

[root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]#

b) check zabbix_agentd version

[root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]# zabbix_agentd -V
zabbix_agentd (daemon) (Zabbix) 5.0.30
Revision 2c96c38fb4b 28 November 2022, compilation time: Nov 28 2022 11:27:43

Copyright (C) 2022 Zabbix SIA
License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it according to
the license. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project
for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org/).

Compiled with OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013
Running with OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013

c) Check zabbix server version

[root@zabbix:~]# zabbix_server -V
zabbix_server (Zabbix) 5.0.30
Revision 2c96c38fb4b 28 November 2022, compilation time: Nov 28 2022 09:19:03

Copyright (C) 2022 Zabbix SIA
License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it according to
the license. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project
for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org/).

Compiled with OpenSSL 1.1.1d  10 Sep 2019
Running with OpenSSL 1.1.1n  15 Mar 2022

6. Starting the zabbix-proxy for a first time

Before beginning with installation make sure selinux is disabled, as it might cause some issues with Zabbix

[root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]# sestatus
SELinux status:                 disabled

If you need to have the selinux enabled you will have to allow the zabbix-proxy into selinux as well:

cd /tmp
# grep zabbix_proxy /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep denied | audit2allow -m zabbix_proxy > zabbix_proxy.te
grep zabbix_proxy /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep denied | audit2allow -M zabbix_proxy
semodule -i zabbix_proxy.pp


[root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]# systemctl start zabbix-proxy

Also lets enable zabbix-proxy to automatically start it on next server reboot / boot.

root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]# systemctl enable zabbix-proxy

Normally running zabbix-proxy should provide a status messages like:

[root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]# systemctl status zabbix-proxy
● zabbix-proxy.service – Zabbix Proxy
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/zabbix-proxy.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since чт 2023-05-04 14:58:36 CEST; 2h 59min ago
  Process: 8500 ExecStop=/bin/kill -SIGTERM $MAINPID (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 8504 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy -c $CONFFILE (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 8506 (zabbix_proxy)
   CGroup: /system.slice/zabbix-proxy.service
           ├─8506 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy -c /etc/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.conf
           ├─8507 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: configuration syncer [synced config 40521 bytes in 0.0…
           ├─8508 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: trapper #1 [processed data in 0.000808 sec, waiting fo…
           ├─8509 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: trapper #2 [processed data in 0.005028 sec, waiting fo…
           ├─8510 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: trapper #3 [processed data in 0.001240 sec, waiting fo…
           ├─8511 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: trapper #4 [processed data in 0.004378 sec, waiting fo…
           ├─8512 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: trapper #5 [processed data in 0.004991 sec, waiting fo…
           ├─8513 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: preprocessing manager #1 [queued 0, processed 3 values…
           ├─8514 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: preprocessing worker #1 started
           ├─8515 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: preprocessing worker #2 started
           ├─8516 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: preprocessing worker #3 started
           ├─8517 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: heartbeat sender [sending heartbeat message success in…
           ├─8518 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: data sender [sent 0 values in 0.005241 sec, idle 1 sec…
           ├─8519 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: housekeeper [deleted 4501 records in 0.011462 sec, idl…
           ├─8520 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: http poller #1 [got 0 values in 0.000248 sec, idle 5 s…
           ├─8521 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: http poller #2 [got 0 values in 0.000239 sec, idle 5 s…
           ├─8522 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: http poller #3 [got 0 values in 0.000328 sec, idle 5 s…
           ├─8523 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: discoverer #1 [processed 0 rules in 0.000261 sec, idle…
           ├─8524 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: history syncer #1 [processed 0 values in 0.000009 sec,…
           ├─8525 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: history syncer #2 [processed 0 values in 0.000007 sec,…
           ├─8526 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: history syncer #3 [processed 0 values in 0.000014 sec,…
           ├─8527 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: history syncer #4 [processed 0 values in 0.000021 sec,…
           ├─8528 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: java poller #1 [got 0 values in 0.000017 sec, idle 5 s…
           ├─8529 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: java poller #2 [got 0 values in 0.000019 sec, idle 5 s…
           ├─8530 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: java poller #3 [got 0 values in 0.000019 sec, idle 5 s…
           ├─8531 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: java poller #4 [got 0 values in 0.000018 sec, idle 5 s…
           ├─8532 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: java poller #5 [got 0 values in 0.000013 sec, idle 5 s…
           ├─8533 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: snmp trapper [processed data in 0.000026 sec, idle 1 s…
           ├─8534 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: self-monitoring [processed data in 0.000034 sec, idle …
           ├─8535 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: task manager [processed 0 task(s) in 0.000169 sec, idl…
           ├─8536 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: poller #1 [got 0 values in 0.000012 sec, idle 5 sec]
           ├─8537 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: poller #2 [got 0 values in 0.000021 sec, idle 5 sec]
           ├─8538 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: poller #3 [got 0 values in 0.000039 sec, idle 5 sec]
           ├─8539 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: poller #4 [got 0 values in 0.000024 sec, idle 5 sec]
           ├─8540 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: poller #5 [got 0 values in 0.000019 sec, idle 5 sec]
           ├─8541 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: unreachable poller #1 [got 0 values in 0.000011 sec, i…
           ├─8542 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: unreachable poller #2 [got 0 values in 0.000018 sec, i…
           ├─8543 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: unreachable poller #3 [got 0 values in 0.000041 sec, i…
           └─8544 /usr/sbin/zabbix_proxy: icmp pinger #1 [got 0 values in 0.000022 sec, idle 5 s…

май 04 14:58:36 sysadminshelp systemd[1]: Stopped Zabbix Proxy.
май 04 14:58:36 sysadminshelp systemd[1]: Starting Zabbix Proxy…
май 04 14:58:36 sysadminshelp systemd[1]: Started Zabbix Proxy.

zabbix-server-zabbix-proxy-and-zabbix-clients-overview-diagram

7. Configure zabbix-agentd to use your just new brand new zabbix-proxy

Here is my sample configuration file:

[root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]# grep -v \# /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf | sed '/^$/d'
PidFile=/var/run/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.pid
LogFile=/var/log/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.log
LogFileSize=0
Server=zabbix-proxy
ServerActive=zabbix-proxy:10051
ListenIP
Hostname=sysadminshelp
BufferSend=30
BufferSize=100
Include=/etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.d/*.conf


Note that the ServerActive given "zabbix-proxy" should be resolvable from the host, or even better you might want to put the IP of the Proxy if
you don't have at least a pseudo Hostname already configured inside /etc/hosts or actual DNS 'A' Active record configured inside a properly resolving
DNS server configured on the host via /etc/resolv.conf.


8. Create and Configure new proxy into the Zabbix-server host
 

Go to the zabbix server web interface URL into menus:

zabbix-administration-proxy-config
 

Administration -> Proxies (Proxy) 


Click on ;

Create Proxy button (uppper right corner)

*Proxy name: usually-your-host-pingable-fqdn
Proxy mode: Active
Proxy address: 192.168.1.50
Description: pcfreak zabbix proxy


Administration -> Proxies -> Encryption


From "Connection to proxy"

Untick "No encryption"

and

Tick "PSK"


zabbix-administration-proxy-config-encryption

*PSK Identity: PSK proxy
*PSK: Put the key here (copy from /etc/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.psk generated steps earlier with openssl)

[root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]# cat zabbix_proxy.psk
faddbd96be00ac42c892fda5201634df25d51f3ndbbbf6cee9d354b2817092a28

Press the "Update" Button

zabbix-administration-proxy-config-encryption1

and go again to Proxies and check the zabbix-proxy is connected to the server and hosts configured to use the zabbix proxy reporting frequently.

To make sure that the configured new hosts to use the Zabbix Proxy instead of direct connection to Zabbix Server, go to Latest Data and check whether the configured Hostnames to connect to the Zabbix-Proxy continues to sent Data still.

9. Debugging problems with zabix-proxy and zabbix-agentd connectivity to proxy

In case of troubles check out what is going on inside the Zabbix Proxy / Agent and Server log files
 

[root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]# tail -n 50 /var/log/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.log

 6832:20230504:134032.281 Starting Zabbix Proxy (active) [zabbix-proxy]. Zabbix 5.0.31 (revision f
64a07aefca).
  6832:20230504:134032.281 **** Enabled features ****
  6832:20230504:134032.281 SNMP monitoring:       YES
  6832:20230504:134032.281 IPMI monitoring:       YES
  6832:20230504:134032.281 Web monitoring:        YES
  6832:20230504:134032.281 VMware monitoring:     YES
  6832:20230504:134032.281 ODBC:                  YES
  6832:20230504:134032.281 SSH support:           YES
  6832:20230504:134032.281 IPv6 support:          YES
  6832:20230504:134032.281 TLS support:           YES
  6832:20230504:134032.281 **************************
  6832:20230504:134032.281 using configuration file: /etc/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.conf
  6832:20230504:134032.291 current database version (mandatory/optional): 05000000/05000005
  6832:20230504:134032.291 required mandatory version: 05000000
  6832:20230504:134032.292 proxy #0 started [main process]
  6833:20230504:134032.292 proxy #1 started [configuration syncer #1]
  6833:20230504:134032.329 received configuration data from server at "192.168.1.28", datalen 40521
  6834:20230504:134032.392 proxy #2 started [trapper #1]
  6835:20230504:134032.401 proxy #3 started [trapper #2]
  6836:20230504:134032.402 proxy #4 started [trapper #3]
  6838:20230504:134032.405 proxy #6 started [trapper #5]
  6837:20230504:134032.409 proxy #5 started [trapper #4]
  6843:20230504:134032.409 proxy #11 started [heartbeat sender #1]
  6845:20230504:134032.412 proxy #13 started [housekeeper #1]
  6847:20230504:134032.412 proxy #15 started [discoverer #1]
  8526:20230504:145836.512 proxy #20 started [history syncer #3]
  8517:20230504:145836.512 proxy #11 started [heartbeat sender #1]
  8530:20230504:145836.515 proxy #24 started [java poller #3]
  8531:20230504:145836.517 proxy #25 started [java poller #4]
  8532:20230504:145836.520 proxy #26 started [java poller #5]
  8536:20230504:145836.522 proxy #30 started [poller #1]
  8527:20230504:145836.525 proxy #21 started [history syncer #4]
  8535:20230504:145836.525 proxy #29 started [task manager #1]
  8533:20230504:145836.528 proxy #27 started [snmp trapper #1]
  8539:20230504:145836.528 proxy #33 started [poller #4]
  8538:20230504:145836.529 proxy #32 started [poller #3]
  8534:20230504:145836.532 proxy #28 started [self-monitoring #1]
  8544:20230504:145836.532 proxy #38 started [icmp pinger #1]
  8543:20230504:145836.532 proxy #37 started [unreachable poller #3]
  8542:20230504:145836.535 proxy #36 started [unreachable poller #2]
  8541:20230504:145836.537 proxy #35 started [unreachable poller #1]
  8540:20230504:145836.540 proxy #34 started [poller #5]
  8507:20230504:150036.453 received configuration data from server at "192.168.1.28", datalen 40521
  8507:20230504:150236.503 received configuration data from server at "192.168.1.28", datalen 40521
  8507:20230504:150436.556 received configuration data from server at "192.168.1.28", datalen 40521
  8507:20230504:150636.608 received configuration data from server at "192.168.1.28", datalen 40521
  8507:20230504:150836.662 received configuration data from server at "192.168.1.28", datalen 40521

 

[root@sysadminshelp:/etc/zabbix]# tail -n 10  /var/log/zabbix-agent/zabbix_agentd.log
3096166:20230504:182840.461 agent #1 started [collector]
3096167:20230504:182840.462 agent #2 started [listener #1]
3096168:20230504:182840.463 agent #3 started [listener #2]
3096169:20230504:182840.464 agent #4 started [listener #3]
3096170:20230504:182840.464 agent #5 started [active checks #1]

If necessery to Debug further and track some strange errors, you might want to increase the DebugLevel to lets say DebugLevel=5

5 – extended debugging (produces even more information)

If checking both zabbix_agentd.log and zabbix_proxy.log cannot give you enough of a hint on what might be the issues you face with your userparameter scripts or missing Monitored data etc. and hopefully you have access to the zabbix-server machine, check out the zabbix server log as well

[root@zabbix:~]# tail -n 100 /var/log/zabbix/zabbix_server.log

3145027:20230504:182641.556 sending configuration data to proxy "zabbix-proxy" at "192.168.1.50", datalen 40521, bytes 6120 with compression ratio 6.6
3145029:20230504:182716.529 cannot send list of active checks to "192.168.1.30": host [pcfrxenweb] not found
3145028:20230504:182731.959 cannot send list of active checks to "192.168.1.30": host [pcfrxenweb] not found
3145029:20230504:182756.634 cannot send list of active checks to "192.168.1.30": host [pcfrxenweb] not found

Wrapping it up

In this article, we have learned how to install and configure a zabbix-proxy server and prepare a PSK encryption secret key for it.
We learned also  how to connect this server to the central zabbix monitoring host machine in Active mode, so both Zabbix proxy and server can communicate in a secure crypted form,
as well as how to set zabbix_agentd clients to connect to the zabbix proxy
which will from itself send its data to the Central Zabbix server host as well as how to Debug and hopefully solve issues with communication between Zabbix client -> Zabbix Proxy -> Zabbix server.

I know this article, does not say anything revolutionary and there is plenty of posts online talking about how to run yourself a zabbix proxy and make in your home or corporate network,
but I thought to write it down as by writting it and reading a bit more on the topic of Zabbix Server / Proxy / Agent, that give myself a better overview on how this technologies work and such an article will give myself an easier step by step guide to follow,
in future when I have to configure Zabbix Environments for personal hobby or professionally for customers.
Hope you enjoyed. Cheers ! 🙂

Improve MobaXterm Best Windows terminal client with some additional settings tune ups / Install extra Linux Cygwin tools on MobaXterm and various post install configuration goodies

Friday, January 20th, 2023

mobaxterm-logo_400x400-terminal-client-tune-up-howto-for-a-new-install

Earlier I've written a an article MobaXTerm: A good gnome-terminal like tabbed SSH client for Windows / Windows Putty Tabs Alternative in which I've introduced the best in my opinion SSH / Telnet / VNC / RDP / Xserver in one Terminal client emulator for Windows operating systems.

The client has been around for quite some time and it has been improving rapidly over the last 10 years, where it now more looks like a separate Operating System than a single terminal client. It's size is quite compact as well and my opinion and every self respectiving developer, system administrator, IT geek or a hacker would definitely
use the mobaxterm at home or at work place on a daily. I guess some of my readers, who have already migrated SuperPutty / SecureCRT or Putty / XMing or whatever kind of exotic Remote SSH Console terminal is used could validate this 🙂

Therefore as I've set up Mobaxterm on a multiple computers all around, I've found it useful to write a small article with some post-install hints (tune ups) one can do immediately once he has installed the Desktop or Portable Apps version of mobaxterm on desktop PC / notebook.
 

1. Set up your bashrc server / command aliases

Lets say you need to setup some rules for connectivity via a socks proxy to dig holes over a harsh company firewalls or add
custom options to every ssh client attempt to remote server, or simply alias some of your servers with custom connectivity options
and so on simply open vi / vim text editor from mobaxterm local terminal and place inside your rules, for example that could be anything like:

 

alias ssh='ssh -o stricthostkeychecking=no -o passwordauthentication=yes -o PreferredAuthentications=password  -v'
alias sftp='sftp -o stricthostkeychecking=no -o passwordauthentication=yes -o PreferredAuthentications=password'

alias work-server='ssh UserName@work-server -v -o passwordauthentication=yes -o PreferredAuthentications=password'

alias proxy='ssh -D 3128 UserName@proxyIP-host1 -o ConnectTimeout=80'
alias proxy1='ssh -D 3128 UserName@proxy-host2 -p 443 -o ConnectTimeout=60'
alias proxy3='ssh -D 3128 Username@proxy-host3 -p 443 -o ConnectTimeout=60'

Simply open the terminal and setup whatever you require
export ftp_proxy="http://proxy-host:8080"
export https_proxy="https://proxy-host:8080"
export http_proxy="http://proxy-host:8080"
export HTTP_PROXY="http://proxy-host:8080"
export HTTPS_PROXY="http://proxy-host:8080"

 

2. Set mobaxterm presistent directory / persistent root directory and default text editor

Make sure you have properly defined at least Persistent directory / Persistent directory if you want to keep the files under your /home/mobaxterm and root directory be able to save your data from local mobaxterm terminal work you have done.

To do so o to Configuration -> General

MobaXterm-persistent-home-directory
 

3. Change default settings for Opening / Closing Terminal tabs just like in gnome-terminal

MobaXterm is really awesome as the developer, followed pretty much the logic of some common GNU / Linux Terminal clients like Gnome-Terminal and KDE's default Konsole terminal.

One of the first things to do once Mobaxterm is installed on the PC is to set up nice key binds as default onces might be heard to learn at the beginning or you might have already the habit to use the certain set of key combinations on your Linux desktop:

Common once are:

1. Open tab / Close tab common once I bind to are (CTRL + T / CTRL + W)
2. Previous tab move / Next tab move keys common one I use are (ALT + LEFT / ALT + RIGHT)
3. Find in terminal (CTRL + F)

rebind-mobaxterm-standard-keys
 

4. Make MobaXterm to automatically open a terminal to not Start local terminal every time

By default mobaxterm it is really annoying cause every time you run it after system reboot you have to select
Start local terminal
Once you run the terminal you get this prompt and you have to press on Start local terminal

mobaxterm-start-local-terminal


How to make Mobaxterm automatically open local Terminal Tab on every boot?
 

To fix this so every time a local terminal is spawn on MobaXterm you have get to:
 

Settings -> Configuration -> Misc


Open the Following tab at startup by default it will be

<Home (Pinned)>

Change it to:

<Terminal>

mobaxterm-open-the-followintab-tab-in-startup

That's it on next login your Local Terminal with /bin/bash.exe will auto load !
 

[hipo.WINDOWS-PC] ➤ env|grep -i SHELL
SHELL=/bin/bash.exe
PATH=/bin:/drives/c/Users/hipo/DOCUME~1
/MobaXterm/slash/bin:/drives/c/Windows:/drives/c/Windows/system32:/drives/c/Windows/system32:/drives/c/Windows:/drives/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:
/drives/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0:/drives/c/Windows/sysnative
PSModulePath=C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\
CMDPATH=C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Windows\sysnative\;
C:\Users\hipo\DOCUME~1\MobaXterm\slash\bin
WINPATH=C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Windows\sysnative\


5. Make menu buttons to appear smaller


Go to menu and select
View -> (Small Buttons)

mobaxterm-select-small-buttons-screenshot

6. Disable auto start of XServer to prevent a port listener on the machine on TCP port

By default mobaxterm opens XServer listener, so you can immediately connect from a remote SSH servers missing Xserver and install software requiring an XServer, for example software such as Oracle Database or some MiddleWare WebLogig or IBM's Web Sphere. This is useful but if you want to have a good security only allow this server on a purpose. Otherwise the XServer will run in parallel with rest of your Moba and just load up your PC and eat up some RAM memory. To disable it go to:

mobaxterm-x11-automatically-start-X-server-disable-stop-at-startup

7. Change the mobaxterm Default theme to Dark

This is optional I like to set the Theme to Dark, also as a Theme for Windows as well as for MobaxTerm, the aim of that is simply to not put extra stress on my eye sight. Being on the PC around 8 to 10 hours and spending some 6 to 8 hours on console work is enough. If you want to do as well.

mobaxterm-change-default-theme-to-dark-theme

8. Install additional set of common Linux tools to mobaxterm to use on Windows
 

Tools such as:

1. Midnight Commander (mc)
2. Wget
3. Curl
4. Vim
5. Screen
6. Rsync
7. Perl
8. W3m
9. dosunix
10. unix2dos
11. gnupg
12. diffutils
13. mysql
14. mpg123
15. whois


If you want to have a set of packages pre-installed that are including above as well as the rest of mine, here is a dump of my installed mobapt manager packages:

For more simply use the experimental Mobaxterm  Graphical Package installer
 

[hipo.WINDOWS-PC] ➤  for i in $(cat Downloads/installed-packages-mobaxterm.txt ); do apt-cyg install $i; done
 

Found package GeoIP-database

Installing GeoIP-database
Downloading GeoIP-database-20180505-1.tar.xz…
Unpacking GeoIP-database-20180505-1.tar.xz…


Running postinstall scripts
Package GeoIP-database installed.

Rebasing new libraries

Found package adwaita-icon-theme

Installing adwaita-icon-theme
Downloading adwaita-icon-theme-3.26.1-1.tar.xz…


You will be prompted for a single Yes for the respository

MobApt Packages Manager

mobapt-pkg-manager-install-git-from-gui-mobaxterm-package-installer

Though it is said it is experimental, I have to say the MobApt Apt Manager works quite good, I never had any issues with it so far.

9. Mobaxterm.ini the settings storage file that can help you move your configurations

If you have to prepeare new MobaXterm on multiple PCs frequently perhaps it is best to just copy the Mobaxterm.ini file. 
Here is an example of my mobaxterm.ini for download.
 

10. Change terminal colors and curor type and enable blinking (customizations)


Settings -> Configuration -> Terminal -> (Default Terminal Color Settings)
 


mobaxterm-change-terminal-colors-and-blinking-cursor-setting-screenshot

11. Use very useful moba Tools
 

mobaxterm-terminal-great-useful-tools-screenshot
For sysadmins Moba has plenty of other jems such as:

  • Network Port scanner such as Nmap with GUI

  • list open network ports (GUI interface to netmap)

  • SSH tunnel tool

  • Moba Diff

  • Wake on Lan

  • Network Packet capturer (such as tcpdump)

  • List running processes (such as taskmgr in simple form)

  • List machine hardware devices (such as Windows Device manager)

 
12. Remote monitoring of opened ssh session


To enable remote monitoring for a Saved session simply use the "Remote monitoring" button on the down left corner of the terminal.

mobaxterm-remote-monitoring-of-remote-ssh-server-screenshot-button

Or to enable it for a new host, open:

1. "Saved sessions"
2. Click over "User sessions"
3. New Session -> (SSH)
4. Basic SSH Settings (Remote host) -> OK
5. Click over the new created session
6. Click on Remote monitoring for the opened session

remote-monitoring-from-mobaxterm-screenshot

13. Play some mobaxterm console games

As you might have pissed off of configuring go on and enjoy some of the great console games, some of which are also present on a normal Linux new distribution installation. 🙂

mobaxterm-list-of-games-screenshot

List of Moba Games

teamwalk-mobaxterm-console-connect-network-routers-game
TeamWalk (Use your mouse or keyboard to connect every server to the central router)

ctris-console-text-game-mobaxterm

Ctris Console tetris from Mobaxterm

solitaire-text-console-game-played-on-mobaxterm-screenshot

Text console Solitaire from Moba
 

Ninvaders-console-game-mobaxterm

Here is NinVaders (Text Version of Space Invaders Arcade Classic)
 

Enjoy ! 🙂

Linux: Howto Fix “N: Repository ‘http://deb.debian.org/debian buster InRelease’ changed its ‘Version’ value from ‘10.9’ to ‘10.10’” error to resolve apt-get release update issue

Friday, August 13th, 2021

Linux's surprises and disorganization is continuously growing day by day and I start to realize it is becoming mostly impossible to support easily this piece of hackware bundled together.
Usually so far during the last 5 – 7 years, I rarely had any general issues with using:

 apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade 

to raise a server's working stable Debian Linux version packages e.g. version X.Y to verzion X.Z (for example up the release from Debian Jessie from 8.1 to 8.2). 

Today I just tried to follow this well known and established procedure that, of course nowdays is better to be done with the newer "apt" command instead with the legacy "apt-get"
And the set of 

 

# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade

 

has triggered below shitty error:
 

root@zabbix:~# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
Get:1 http://security.debian.org buster/updates InRelease [65.4 kB]
Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster InRelease [122 kB]
Get:3 http://security.debian.org buster/updates/non-free Sources [688 B]
Get:4 http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.0/debian buster InRelease [7096 B]
Get:5 http://security.debian.org buster/updates/main Sources [198 kB]
Get:6 http://security.debian.org buster/updates/main amd64 Packages [300 kB]
Get:7 http://security.debian.org buster/updates/main Translation-en [157 kB]
Get:8 http://security.debian.org buster/updates/non-free amd64 Packages [556 B]
Get:9 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/main Sources [7836 kB]
Get:10 http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.0/debian buster/main Sources [1192 B]
Get:11 http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.0/debian buster/main amd64 Packages [4785 B]
Get:12 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/non-free Sources [85.7 kB]
Get:13 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/contrib Sources [42.5 kB]
Get:14 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/main amd64 Packages [7907 kB]
Get:15 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/main Translation-en [5968 kB]
Get:16 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/main amd64 Contents (deb) [37.3 MB]
Get:17 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/contrib amd64 Packages [50.1 kB]
Get:18 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/non-free amd64 Packages [87.7 kB]
Get:19 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/non-free Translation-en [88.9 kB]
Get:20 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/non-free amd64 Contents (deb) [861 kB]
Fetched 61.1 MB in 22s (2774 kB/s)
Reading package lists… Done
N: Repository 'http://deb.debian.org/debian buster InRelease' changed its 'Version' value from '10.9' to '10.10'


As I used to realize nowdays, as Linux started originally as 'Hackers' operating system, its legacy is just one big hack and everything from simple maintenance up to the higher and more sophisticated things requires a workaround 'hack''.

 

This time the hack to resolve error:
 

N: Repository 'http://deb.debian.org/debian buster InRelease' changed its 'Version' value from '10.9' to '10.10'


is up to running cmd:
 

debian-server:~# apt-get update –allow-releaseinfo-change
Поп:1 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian buster-backports InRelease
Поп:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian stable InRelease
Поп:3 http://security.debian.org stable/updates InRelease
Изт:5 https://packages.sury.org/php buster InRelease [6837 B]
Изт:6 https://download.docker.com/linux/debian stretch InRelease [44,8 kB]
Изт:7 https://packages.sury.org/php buster/main amd64 Packages [317 kB]
Игн:4 https://attic.owncloud.org/download/repositories/production/Debian_10  InRelease
Изт:8 https://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/production/Debian_10  Release [964 B]
Изт:9 https://packages.sury.org/php buster/main i386 Packages [314 kB]
Изт:10 https://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/production/Debian_10  Release.gpg [481 B]
Грш:10 https://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/production/Debian_10  Release.gpg
  Следните подписи са невалидни: DDA2C105C4B73A6649AD2BBD47AE7F72479BC94B
Грш:11 https://ookla.bintray.com/debian generic InRelease
  403  Forbidden [IP: 52.39.193.126 443]
Четене на списъците с пакети… Готово
N: Repository 'https://packages.sury.org/php buster InRelease' changed its 'Suite' value from '' to 'buster'
W: An error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: https://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/production/Debian_10  Release: 

apt-get-update-allow-releaseinfo-change-debian-linux-screenshot

Onwards to upgrade the system up to the latest .deb packages, as usual run:

# apt-get -y update && apt-get upgrade -y

 

and updates should be applied as usual with some prompts on whether you prefer to keep or replace existing service configuration and some information on some general changes that might affect your installed services. In a few minutes and few prompts hopefully your Debian OS should be up to the latest stable.

How to install and use memcached on Debian GNU / Linux to share php sessions between DNS round robined Apache webservers

Monday, November 9th, 2020

apache-load-balancing-keep-persistent-php-sessions-memcached-logo

Recently I had to come up with a solution to make A bunch of websites hosted on a machine to be high available. For the task haproxy is one of logical options to use. However as I didn't wanted to set new IP addresses and play around to build a cluster. I decided the much more simplistic approach to use 2 separate Machines each running Up-to-date same version of Apache Webserver as front end and using a shared data running on Master-to-Master MySQL replication database as a backend. For the load balancing itself I've used a simple 2 multiple DNS 'A' Active records, configured via the Bind DNS name server an Round Robin DNS load balancing for each of the domains, to make them point to the the 2 Internet IP addresses (XXX.XXX.XXX.4 and YYY.YYY.YYY.5) each configured on the 2 Linux servers eth0.

So far so good, this setup worked but immediately, I've run another issue as I found out the WordPress and Joomla based websites's PHP sessions are lost, as the connectivity by the remote client browser reaches one time on XXX…4 and one time on YYY…4 configured listerner on TCP port 80 and TCP p. 443. In other words if request comes up to Front end Apache worker webserver 1 with opened channel data is sent back to Client Browser and the next request is sent due to the other IP resolved by the DNS server to come to Apache worker webserver 2 of course webserver 2 has no idea about this previous session data and it gets confused and returns soemething like a 404 or 500 or any other error … not exciting really huh …

I've thought about work around and as I didn't wanted to involve thirty party stuff as Privoxy / Squid  / Varnish / Polipo etc. just as that would add extra complexity as if I choose to use haproxy from the beginning, after short investigation came to a reason to use memcached as a central PHP sessions storage.

php-memcached-apache-workers-webbrowser-keep-sessions-diagram
 

Why I choose memcached ?


Well it is relatively easy to configure, it doesn't come with mambo-jambo unreadable over-complicated configuration and the time to configure everything is really little as well as the configuration is much straight forward, plus I don't need to occupy more IP addresses and I don't need to do any changes to the already running 2 WebServers on 2 separate Linux hosts configured to be reachable from the Internet.
Of course using memcached is not a rock solid and not the best solution out there, as there is risk that if a memcached dies out for some reason all sessions stored in are lost as they're stored only in volatile memory, as well as there is a drawback that if a communication was done via one of the 2 webservers and one of them goes down sessions that were known by one of Apache's workers disappears.

So let me proceed and explain you the steps to take to configure memcached as a central session storage system.
 

1. Install memcached and php-memcached packages


To enable support for memcached besides installing memcached daemon, you need to have the php-memcached which will provide the memcached.so used by Apache loaded php script interpretter module.

On a Debian / Ubuntu and other deb based GNU / Linux it should be:

webserver1:~# apt-get install memcached php-memcached

TO use php-memcached I assume Apache and its support for PHP is already installed with lets say:
 

webserver1:~# apt-get install php libapache2-mod-php php-mcrypt


On CentOS / RHEL / Fedora Linux it is a little bit more complicated as you'll need to install php-pear and compile the module with pecl

 

[root@centos ~]# yum install php-pear

[root@centos ~]# yum install php-pecl-memcache


Compile memcache

[root@centos ~]# pecl install memcache

 

2. Test if memcached is properly loaded in PHP


Once installed lets check if memcached service is running and memcached support is loaded as module into PHP core.

 

webserver1:~# ps -efa  | egrep memcached
nobody   14443     1  0 Oct23 ?        00:04:34 /usr/bin/memcached -v -m 64 -p 11211 -u nobody -l 127.0.0.1 -l 192.168.0.1

root@webserver1:/# php -m | egrep memcache
memcached


To get a bit more verbose information on memcache version and few of memcached variable settings:

root@webserver1:/# php -i |grep -i memcache
/etc/php/7.4/cli/conf.d/25-memcached.ini
memcached
memcached support => enabled
libmemcached version => 1.0.18
memcached.compression_factor => 1.3 => 1.3
memcached.compression_threshold => 2000 => 2000
memcached.compression_type => fastlz => fastlz
memcached.default_binary_protocol => Off => Off
memcached.default_connect_timeout => 0 => 0
memcached.default_consistent_hash => Off => Off
memcached.serializer => php => php
memcached.sess_binary_protocol => On => On
memcached.sess_connect_timeout => 0 => 0
memcached.sess_consistent_hash => On => On
memcached.sess_consistent_hash_type => ketama => ketama
memcached.sess_lock_expire => 0 => 0
memcached.sess_lock_max_wait => not set => not set
memcached.sess_lock_retries => 5 => 5
memcached.sess_lock_wait => not set => not set
memcached.sess_lock_wait_max => 150 => 150
memcached.sess_lock_wait_min => 150 => 150
memcached.sess_locking => On => On
memcached.sess_number_of_replicas => 0 => 0
memcached.sess_persistent => Off => Off
memcached.sess_prefix => memc.sess.key. => memc.sess.key.
memcached.sess_randomize_replica_read => Off => Off
memcached.sess_remove_failed_servers => Off => Off
memcached.sess_sasl_password => no value => no value
memcached.sess_sasl_username => no value => no value
memcached.sess_server_failure_limit => 0 => 0
memcached.store_retry_count => 2 => 2
Registered save handlers => files user memcached


Make sure /etc/default/memcached (on Debian is enabled) on CentOS / RHELs this should be /etc/sysconfig/memcached

webserver1:~# cat default/memcached 
# Set this to no to disable memcached.
ENABLE_MEMCACHED=yes

As assured on server1 memcached + php is ready to be used, next login to Linux server 2 and repeat the same steps install memcached and the module and check it is showing as loaded.

Next place under some of your webservers hosted websites under check_memcached.php below PHP code
 

<?php
if (class_exists('Memcache')) {
    $server = 'localhost';
    if (!empty($_REQUEST[‘server’])) {
        $server = $_REQUEST[‘server’];
    }
    $memcache = new Memcache;
    $isMemcacheAvailable = @$memcache->connect($server);

    if ($isMemcacheAvailable) {
        $aData = $memcache->get('data');
        echo '<pre>';
        if ($aData) {
            echo '<h2>Data from Cache:</h2>';
            print_r($aData);
        } else {
            $aData = array(
                'me' => 'you',
                'us' => 'them',
            );
            echo '<h2>Fresh Data:</h2>';
            print_r($aData);
            $memcache->set('data', $aData, 0, 300);
        }
        $aData = $memcache->get('data');
        if ($aData) {
            echo '<h3>Memcache seem to be working fine!</h3>';
        } else {
            echo '<h3>Memcache DOES NOT seem to be working!</h3>';
        }
        echo '</pre>';
    }
}

if (!$isMemcacheAvailable) {
    echo 'Memcache not available';
}

?>


Launch in a browser https://your-dns-round-robined-domain.com/check_memcached.php, the browser output should be as on below screenshot:

check_memcached-php-script-website-screenshot

3. Configure memcached daemons on both nodes

All we need to set up is the listen IPv4 addresses

On Host Webserver1
You should have in /etc/memcached.conf

-l 127.0.0.1
-l 192.168.0.1

webserver1:~# grep -Ei '\-l' /etc/memcached.conf 
-l 127.0.0.1
-l 192.168.0.1


On Host Webserver2

-l 127.0.0.1
-l 192.168.0.200

 

webserver2:~# grep -Ei '\-l' /etc/memcached.conf
-l 127.0.0.1
-l 192.168.0.200

 

4. Configure memcached in php.ini

Edit config /etc/php.ini (on CentOS / RHEL) or on Debians / Ubuntus etc. modify /etc/php/*/apache2/php.ini (where depending on the PHP version you're using your php location could be different lets say /etc/php/5.6/apache2/php.ini):

If you wonder where is the php.ini config in your case you can usually get it from the php cli:

webserver1:~# php -i | grep "php.ini"
Configuration File (php.ini) Path => /etc/php/7.4/cli
Loaded Configuration File => /etc/php/7.4/cli/php.ini

 

! Note: That on on PHP-FPM installations (where FastCGI Process Manager) is handling PHP requests,path would be rather something like:
 

/etc/php5/fpm/php.ini

in php.ini you need to change as minimum below 2 variables
 

session.save_handler =
session.save_path =


By default session.save_path would be set to lets say session.save_path = "

/var/lib/php7/sessions"


To make php use a 2 central configured memcached servers on webserver1 and webserver2 or even more memcached configured machines set it to look as so:

session.save_path="192.168.0.200:11211, 192.168.0.1:11211"


Also modify set

session.save_handler = memcache


Overall changed php.ini configuration on Linux machine 1 ( webserver1 ) and Linux machine 2 ( webserver2 ) should be:

session.save_handler = memcache
session.save_path="192.168.0.200:11211, 192.168.0.1:11211"

 

Below is approximately how it should look on both :

webserver1: ~# grep -Ei 'session.save_handler|session.save_path' /etc/php.ini
;; session.save_handler = files
session.save_handler = memcache
;     session.save_path = "N;/path"
;     session.save_path = "N;MODE;/path"
;session.save_path = "/var/lib/php7/sessions"
session.save_path="192.168.0.200:11211, 192.168.0.1:11211"
;       (see session.save_path above), then garbage collection does *not*
 

 

webserver2: ~# grep -Ei 'session.save_handler|session.save_path' /etc/php.ini
;; session.save_handler = files
session.save_handler = memcache
;     session.save_path = "N;/path"
;     session.save_path = "N;MODE;/path"
;session.save_path = "/var/lib/php7/sessions"
session.save_path="192.168.0.200:11211, 192.168.0.1:11211"
;       (see session.save_path above), then garbage collection does *not*


As you can see I have configured memcached on webserver1 to listen on internal local LAN IP 192.168.0.200 and on Local LAN eth iface 192.168.0.1 on TCP port 11211 (this is the default memcached connections listen port), for security or obscurity reasons you might choose another empty one. Make sure to also set the proper firewalling to that port, the best is to enable connections only between 192.168.0.200 and 192.168.0.1 on each of machine 1 and machine 2.

loadbalancing2-php-sessions-scheme-explained
 

5. Enable Memcached for session redundancy


Next step is to configure memcached to allow failover (e.g. use both memcached on 2 linux hosts) and configure session redundancy.
Configure /etc/php/7.3/mods-available/memcache.ini or /etc/php5/mods-available/memcache.ini or respectively to the right location depending on the PHP installed and used webservers version.
 

webserver1 :~#  vim /etc/php/7.3/mods-available/memcache.ini

; configuration for php memcached module
; priority=20
; settings to write sessions to both servers and have fail over
memcache.hash_strategy=consistent
memcache.allow_failover=1
memcache.session_redundancy=3
extension=memcached.so

 

webserver2 :~# vim /etc/php/7.3/mods-available/memcache.ini

; configuration for php memcached module
; priority=20
; settings to write sessions to both servers and have fail over
memcache.hash_strategy=consistent
memcache.allow_failover=1
memcache.session_redundancy=3
extension=memcached.so

 

memcache.session_redundancy directive must be equal to the number of memcached servers + 1 for the session information to be replicated to all the servers. This is due to a bug in PHP.
I have only 2 memcached configured that's why I set it to 3.
 

6. Restart Apache Webservers

Restart on both machines webserver1 and webserver2 Apache to make php load memcached.so
 

webserver1:~# systemctl restart httpd

webserver2:~# systemctl restart httpd

 

7. Restart memcached on machine 1 and 2

 

webserver1 :~# systemctl restart memcached

webserver2 :~# systemctl restart memcached

 

8. Test php sessions are working as expected with a php script

Copy to both website locations to accessible URL a file test_sessions.php:
 

<?php  
session_start();

if(isset($_SESSION[‘georgi’]))
{
echo "Sessions is ".$_SESSION[‘georgi’]."!\n";
}
else
{
echo "Session ID: ".session_id()."\n";
echo "Session Name: ".session_name()."\n";
echo "Setting 'georgi' to 'cool'\n";
$_SESSION[‘georgi’]='cool';
}
?>

 

Now run the test to see PHP sessions are kept persistently:
 

hipo@jeremiah:~/Desktop $ curl -vL -s https://www.pc-freak.net/session.php 2>&1 | grep 'Set-Cookie:'
< Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=micir464cplbdfpo36n3qi9hd3; expires=Tue, 10-Nov-2020 12:14:32 GMT; Max-Age=86400; path=/

hipo@jeremiah:~/Desktop $ curl -L –cookie "PHPSESSID=micir464cplbdfpo36n3qi9hd3" http://83.228.93.76/session.php http://213.91.190.233/session.php
Session is cool!
Session is cool!

 

Copy to the locations that is resolving to both DNS servers some sample php script such as sessions_test.php  with below content:

<?php
    header('Content-Type: text/plain');
    session_start();
    if(!isset($_SESSION[‘visit’]))
    {
        echo "This is the first time you're visiting this server\n";
        $_SESSION[‘visit’] = 0;
    }
    else
            echo "Your number of visits: ".$_SESSION[‘visit’] . "\n";

    $_SESSION[‘visit’]++;

    echo "Server IP: ".$_SERVER[‘SERVER_ADDR’] . "\n";
    echo "Client IP: ".$_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’] . "\n";
    print_r($_COOKIE);
?>

Test in a Web Opera / Firefox / Chrome browser.

You should get an output in the browser similar to:
 

Your number of visits: 15
Server IP: 83.228.93.76
Client IP: 91.92.15.51
Array
(
    [_ga] => GA1.2.651288003.1538922937
    [__utma] => 238407297.651288003.1538922937.1601730730.1601759984.45
    [__utmz] => 238407297.1571087583.28.4.utmcsr=google|utmccn=(organic)|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=(not provided)
    [shellInABox] => 467306938:1110101010
    [fpestid] => EzkIzv_9OWmR9PxhUM8HEKoV3fbOri1iAiHesU7T4Pso4Mbi7Gtt9L1vlChtkli5GVDKtg
    [__gads] => ID=8a1e445d88889784-22302f2c01b9005b:T=1603219663:RT=1603219663:S=ALNI_MZ6L4IIaIBcwaeCk_KNwmL3df3Z2g
    [PHPSESSID] => mgpk1ivhvfc2d0daq08e0p0ec5
)

If you want to test php sessions are working with text browser or from another external script for automation use something as below PHP code:
 

<?php
// save as "session_test.php" inside your webspace  
ini_set('display_errors', 'On');
error_reporting(6143);

session_start();

$sessionSavePath = ini_get('session.save_path');

echo '<br><div style="background:#def;padding:6px">'
   , 'If a session could be started successfully <b>you should'
   , ' not see any Warning(s)</b>, otherwise check the path/folder'
   , ' mentioned in the warning(s) for proper access rights.<hr>';
echo "WebServer IP:" . $_SERVER[‘SERVER_ADDR’] . "\n<br />";
if (empty($sessionSavePath)) {
    echo 'A "<b>session.save_path</b>" is currently',
         ' <b>not</b> set.<br>Normally "<b>';
    if (isset($_ENV[‘TMP’])) {
        echo  $_ENV[‘TMP’], ‘” ($_ENV[“TMP”]) ';
    } else {
        echo '/tmp</b>" or "<b>C:\tmp</b>" (or whatever',
             ' the OS default "TMP" folder is set to)';
    }    
    echo ' is used in this case.';
} else {
    echo 'The current "session.save_path" is "<b>',
         $sessionSavePath, '</b>".';
}

echo '<br>Session file name: "<b>sess_', session_id()
   , '</b>".</div><br>';
?>

You can download the test_php_sessions.php script here.

To test with lynx:

hipo@jeremiah:~/Desktop $ lynx -source 'https://www.pc-freak.net/test_php_sessions.php'
<br><div style="background:#def;padding:6px">If a session could be started successfully <b>you should not see any Warning(s)</b>, otherwise check the path/folder mentioned in the warning(s) for proper access rights.<hr>WebServer IP:83.228.93.76
<br />The current "session.save_path" is "<b>tcp://192.168.0.200:11211, tcp://192.168.0.1:11211</b>".<br>Session file name: "<b>sess_5h18f809b88isf8vileudgrl40</b>".</div><br>

Check server Internet connectivity Speedtest from Linux terminal CLI

Friday, August 7th, 2020

check-server-console-speedtest

If you are a system administrator of a dedicated server and you have no access to Xserver Graphical GNOME / KDE etc. environment and you wonder how you can track the bandwidth connectivity speed of remote system to the internet and you happen to have a modern Linux distribution, here is few ways to do a speedtest.
 

1. Use speedtest-cli command line tool to test connectivity

 


speedtest-cli is a tiny tool written in python, to use it hence you need to have python installed on the server.
It is available both for Redhat Linux distros and Debians / Ubuntus etc. in the list of standard installable packages.

a) Install speedtest-cli on Fedora / CentOS / RHEL
 

On CentOS / RHEL / Scientific Linux lower than ver 8:

 

 

$ sudo yum install python

On CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 user type the following command to install Python 3 or 2:

 

 

$sudo yum install python3
$ sudo yum install python2

 

 

 


On Fedora Linux version 22+

 

 

$ sudo dnf install python
$ sudo dnf install pytho3

 


Once python is at place download speedtest.py or in case if link is not reachable download mirrored version of speedtest.py on www.pc-freak.net here
 

 

 

$ wget -O speedtest-cli https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py
$ chmod +x speedtest-cli

 


Then it is time to run script speedtest-screenshot-linux-terminal-console-cli-cmd
To test enabled Bandwidth on the server

 

 

$ python speedtest-cli


b) Install speedtest-cli on Debian

On Latest Debian 10 Buster speedtest is available out of the box in regular .deb repositories, so fetch it with apt
 

 

# apt install –yes speedtest-cli

 


You can give now speedtest-cli a try with –bytes arguments to get speed values in bytes instead of bits or if you want to generate an image with test results in picture just like it will appear if you use speedtest.net inside a gui browser, use the –share option

speedtest-screenshot-linux-terminal-console-cli-cmd-options

 

 

 

2. Getting connectivity results of all defined speedtest test City Locations


Speedtest has a list of servers through which a Upload and Download speed is tested, to run speedtest-cli to test with each and every server and get a better picture on what kind of connectivity to expect from your server towards the closest region capital cities, fetch speedtest-servers.php list and use a small shell loop below is how:

 

 

 

 

 

root@pcfreak:~#  wget http://www.speedtest.net/speedtest-servers.php
–2020-08-07 16:31:34–  http://www.speedtest.net/speedtest-servers.php
Преобразувам www.speedtest.net (www.speedtest.net)… 151.101.2.219, 151.101.66.219, 151.101.130.219, …
Connecting to www.speedtest.net (www.speedtest.net)|151.101.2.219|:80… успешно свързване.
HTTP изпратено искане, чакам отговор… 301 Moved Permanently
Адрес: https://www.speedtest.net/speedtest-servers.php [следва]
–2020-08-07 16:31:34–  https://www.speedtest.net/speedtest-servers.php
Connecting to www.speedtest.net (www.speedtest.net)|151.101.2.219|:443… успешно свързване.
HTTP изпратено искане, чакам отговор… 307 Temporary Redirect
Адрес: https://c.speedtest.net/speedtest-servers-static.php [следва]
–2020-08-07 16:31:35–  https://c.speedtest.net/speedtest-servers-static.php
Преобразувам c.speedtest.net (c.speedtest.net)… 151.101.242.219
Connecting to c.speedtest.net (c.speedtest.net)|151.101.242.219|:443… успешно свързване.
HTTP изпратено искане, чакам отговор… 200 OK
Дължина: 211695 (207K) [text/xml]
Saving to: ‘speedtest-servers.php’
speedtest-servers.php                  100%[==========================================================================>] 206,73K  –.-KB/s    in 0,1s
2020-08-07 16:31:35 (1,75 MB/s) – ‘speedtest-servers.php’ saved [211695/211695]

Once file is there with below loop we extract all file defined servers id="" 's 
 

root@pcfreak:~# for i in $(cat speedtest-servers.php | egrep -Eo 'id="[0-9]{4}"' |sed -e 's#id="##' -e 's#"##g'); do speedtest-cli  –server $i; done
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration…
Testing from Vivacom (83.228.93.76)…
Retrieving speedtest.net server list…
Retrieving information for the selected server…
Hosted by Telecoms Ltd. (Varna) [38.88 km]: 25.947 ms
Testing download speed……………………………………………………………………..
Download: 57.71 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed…………………………………………………………………………………………
Upload: 93.85 Mbit/s
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration…
Testing from Vivacom (83.228.93.76)…
Retrieving speedtest.net server list…
Retrieving information for the selected server…
Hosted by GMB Computers (Constanta) [94.03 km]: 80.247 ms
Testing download speed……………………………………………………………………..
Download: 35.86 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed…………………………………………………………………………………………
Upload: 80.15 Mbit/s
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration…
Testing from Vivacom (83.228.93.76)…

…..

 


etc.

For better readability you might want to add the ouput to a file or even put it to run periodically on a cron if you have some suspcion that your server Internet dedicated lines dies out to some general locations sometimes.
 

3. Testing UPlink speed with Download some big file from source location


In the past a classical way to test the bandwidth connectivity of your Internet Service Provider was to fetch some big file, Linux guys should remember it was almost a standard to roll a download of Linux kernel source .tar file with some test browser as elinks / lynx / w3c.
speedtest-screenshot-kernel-org-shot1 speedtest-screenshot-kernel-org-shot2
or if those are not at hand test connectivity on remote free shell servers whatever file downloader as wget or curl was used.
Analogical method is still possible, for example to use wget to get an idea about bandwidtch connectivity, let it roll below 500 mb from speedtest.wdc01.softlayer.com to /dev/null few times:

 

$ wget –output-document=/dev/null http://speedtest.wdc01.softlayer.com/downloads/test500.zip

$ wget –output-document=/dev/null http://speedtest.wdc01.softlayer.com/downloads/test500.zip

$ wget –output-document=/dev/null http://speedtest.wdc01.softlayer.com/downloads/test500.zip

 

# wget -O /dev/null –progress=dot:mega http://cachefly.cachefly.net/10mb.test ; date
–2020-08-07 13:56:49–  http://cachefly.cachefly.net/10mb.test
Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)… 205.234.175.175
Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)|205.234.175.175|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 10485760 (10M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘/dev/null’

     0K …….. …….. …….. …….. …….. …….. 30%  142M 0s
  3072K …….. …….. …….. …….. …….. …….. 60%  179M 0s
  6144K …….. …….. …….. …….. …….. …….. 90%  204M 0s
  9216K …….. ……..                                    100%  197M=0.06s

2020-08-07 13:56:50 (173 MB/s) – ‘/dev/null’ saved [10485760/10485760]

Fri 07 Aug 2020 01:56:50 PM UTC


To be sure you have a real picture on remote machine Internet speed it is always a good idea to run download of random big files on a certain locations that are well known to have a very stable Internet bandwidth to the Internet backbone routers.

4. Using Simple shell script to test Internet speed


Fetch and use speedtest.sh

 


wget https://raw.github.com/blackdotsh/curl-speedtest/master/speedtest.sh && chmod u+x speedtest.sh && bash speedtest.sh

 

 

5. Using iperf to test connectivity between two servers 

 

iperf is another good tool worthy to mention that can be used to test the speed between client and server.

To use iperf install it with apt and do on the server machine to which bandwidth will be tested:

 

# iperf -s 

 

On the client machine do:

 

# iperf -c 192.168.1.1 

 

where 192.168.1.1 is the IP of the server where iperf was spawned to listen.

6. Using Netflix fast to determine Internet connection speed on host


Fast

fast is a service provided by Netflix. Its web interface is located at Fast.com and it has a command-line interface available through npm (npm is a package manager for nodejs) so if you don't have it you will have to install it first with:

# apt install –yes npm

 

Note that if you run on Debian this will install you some 249 new nodejs packages which you might not want to have on the system, so this is useful only for machines that has already use of nodejs.

 

$ fast

 

     82 Mbps ↓


The command returns your Internet download speed. To get your upload speed, use the -u flag:

 

$ fast -u

 

   ⠧ 80 Mbps ↓ / 8.2 Mbps ↑

 

7. Use speedometer / iftop to measure incoming and outgoing traffic on interface


If you're measuring connectivity on a live production server system, then you might consider that the measurement output might not be exactly correct especially if you're measuring the Uplink / Downlink on a Heavy loaded webserver / Mail Server / Samba or DNS server.
If this is the case a very useful tools to consider to extract the already taken traffic used on your Incoming and Outgoing ( TX / RX ) Network interfaces
are speedometer and iftop, they're present and installable depending on the OS via yum / apt or the respective package manager.

 


To install on Debian server:

 

 

 

# apt install –yes iftop speedometer

 


The most basic use to check the live received traffic in a nice Ncurses like text graphic is with: 

 

 

 

 

# speedometer -r 


speedometer-check-received-transmitted-network-traffic-on-linux1

To generate real time ASCII art graph on RX / TX traffic do:

 

 

# speedometer -r eth0 -t eth0


speedometer-check-received-transmitted-network-traffic-on-linux

 

 

 

 

# iftop -P -i eth0

 

 


iftop-show-statistics-on-connections-screenshot-pcfreak

 

 

 

 

 

How to configure VIVACOM 3g USB ( internet ) modem HUAWEI Mobile broadband E173 on Debian and Ubuntu GNU / Linux

Wednesday, July 4th, 2012

sakis3g-configure-usb-modem-kdialog-shot

I've been given a HUAWEI Mobile Broadband E173 USB 3g model. The USB modem contains a flash USB Storage segment storing a little install program dedicated to make the modem work fine on Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7 and probably other M$ OSes. I'm a long time DebianGNU / Linux user and as a free software enthusiast I ofcourse wanted to be able to use Vivacom's 3G USB Modem on my Linux powered notebook.

Thanksfully as I've red on Vivacom's website the modem supports Linux OS 🙂

For those unaware in Bulgaria there are currently 3 major GSM network providers providing 3G internet this are;;;
 

  • VIVACOM – The ex Government ran national company BTC (Bulgarian Telecommunication Company)
  • M-Tel – The first GSM network provider that entered Bulgaria around year 1995
  • GLOBUL – The 3rd and last GSM mobile and net provider entered last and not so much used by Bulgarians today

Until today I had no experience in running any 3G modems on Linux, neither I had used the 3 networks 3G internet to determine which one is best, however I've been given for temporal use a VIVACOM 3G internet modem today so I proceeded to try installing it on my Debian host.

My Linux system is a bit strangely configured as I use wicd network connection manager -( wicd-gtk ) to manage wireless and LAN connections instead of the standard installed GNOME network manager – available through package ( network-manager-gnome ).

The reason I use wicd is not that it is so much better than GNOME network manger but rather for historical reasons because few years past I had impression it works better in connecting me to wireless networks. Another reason why I choosed wicd back then was the nice looking stats …

I tried plugging in the Vivacom USB 3G modem stick and checked in wicd to see if I can see a possibility to connect to the mobile opeartor 3G network but unfortunately nothing appeared.

Though the 3G adsl modem was unavailable straing in wicd, checking about it in the list of attached USB devices I could see it detected, e.g.:

noah:~# lsusb |grep -i huawei
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 12d1:1c05 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

This was at least a good sign pointing me to the thoughts that the modem is probably gonna work.

I did a quick Google search to see if other people succeded running the device on a Linux host and came across a few blog posts in Bulgarian explaining a "success story" on Ubuntu Linux through using a tweakened shell script – sakis3g. For more on how the script works and script download check out Sakis3g

Here is a quote from sakis3g's website describing the script:
 

It automagically setups your USB or Bluetooth™ modem, and may even detect operator settings.
You should try it when anything else fails!

Sakis3g has different versions designed for for plenty of spacific hware architectures i.e. for (i386, amd64, armv4t, armv5t).
There is also a version of the script which by the way contains a combination of bash shell scripting instruction and some binary exec data.

To run sakis3g on my laptop I did:

1. Download sakis3g

My notebook architecture is 64 bit so I download and used the amd64 version of the script;;;

hipo@noah:~$ mkdir sakis3g
hipo@noah:~$ cd sakis3g
hipo@noah:~/sakis3g$ wget http://www.sakis3g.org/versions/latest/amd64/sakis3g.gz

I've made also a mirror of sakis3g i386, 64 bit and all architecture the mirrors just in case it disappears in future. The mirror versions of sakis3g are here:

a. sakis3g i386 b. sakis3g amd64 c. sakis3g all architectures source

2. Unarchive and make it executable

After downloading it as it is in gzip I had to do the usual de-gzipping and making the file executable;;;

hipo@noah:~/sakis3g$ /bin/gzip -d sakis3g.gz
hipo@noah:~/sakis3g$ chmod +x sakis3g

The script is then ready to run by either clicking twice on it or (as I prefer for debugging reasons to run it in terminal):

hipo@noah:~$ ./sakis3g

Something that I have wondered a bit was the dialog where I had to fill in some data of some variable APN abbreviation for – (Access Point Name)

The APN host for VIVACOM mobile internet is;;;
APN: internet.vivacom.bg

I've used the Windows configuration progrma to gather also the following data that I thought might be important for configuring the 3G adsl modem on the Linux host;;;

Auth: *99#
User: VIVACOM
pass: VIVACOM

Here are all the configuration screenshots I've taken from sakis3g and all the data that I filled in.
Next the following tiny window appeared on screen:

Sakis3g configure usb modem kdialog shot 1 VIVACOM USB Modem Sakis 3g Shot 2 sakis 3g usb modem vivacom connect screenshot 2 vivacom 3g modem linux sakis3g enter pin dialog shot 4 Sending pin screenshot 5 sakis3g APN Dialog sakis3g screenshot 6sakis3g Internet Linux VIVACOM screenshot 7sakis3g Debian GNU Linux VIVACOM 3g Internet screenshot 8sakis3g initializing modem screenshot 9sakis3g successful connect to VIVACOM mobile 3g usb adls modem shot 10

Well that's all folks, now sakis3g succesfully connected to the I_net via an (PPP) VPN connection tunnel here is data from ifconfig command showing the succesful 3G connection to VIVACOM;;;

noah:~# /sbin/ifconfig ppp0
ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:10.58.146.232 P-t-P:10.64.64.64 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2066 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1609 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:2232058 (2.1 MiB) TX bytes:341693 (333.6 KiB)

The internet via the 3G connection is not blazing fast but good enough to check your mail or read some webpages. VIVACOM currently has different (traffic limited packages) for their 3G internet, I'm not sure which package exactly is the 3G USB stick modem but probably the "quick" internet connection that is now would slow down once the traffic limit is reached …
Hope this post helps someone to configure 3G internet on VIVACOM in Debian and Ubuntu Linux. Though I've tested sakis3g on Debian it should work with no hassles on any other GNU Linux distribution that has bash installed.

Optimizing Linux TCP/IP Networking to increase Linux Servers Performance

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

optimize-linux-servers-for-network-performance-to-increase-speed-and-decrease-hardware-costs-_tyan-exhibits-hpc-optimized-server-platforms-featuring-intel-xeon-processor-e7-4800-v3-e5-2600-supercomputing-15_full

Some time ago I thought of ways to optimize my Linux Servers network performance.

Even though there are plenty of nice articles on the topic on how to better optimize Linux server performance by tunning up the kernel sysctl (variables).

Many of the articles I found was not structed in enough understandable way so I decided togoogle around and  found few interesting websites which gives a good overview on how one can speed up a bit and decrease overall server loads by simply tuning few basic kernel sysctl variables.

Below article is a product of my research on the topic on how to increase my GNU / Linux servers performance which are mostly running LAMP (Linux / Apache / MySQL / PHP) together with Qmail mail servers.

The article is focusing on Networking as networking is usual bottleneck for performance.
Below are the variables I found useful for optimizing the Linux kernel Network stack.

Implementing the variables might reduce your server load or if not decrease server load times and CPU utilization, they would at lease increase thoroughput so more users will be able to access your servers with (hopefully) less interruptions.
That of course would save you some Hardware costs and raise up your Servers efficiency.

Here are the variables themselves and some good example:
 

# values.net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0 ( Turn off IP Forwarding )

net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

# ( Control Source route verification )
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_redirects = 0

# ( Disable ICMP redirects )
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0 ( same as above )
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0

# ( Disable IP source routing )
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0
( - || - )net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 40

# ( Decrease FIN timeout ) - Useful on busy/high load
serversnet.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 4000 ( keepalive tcp timeout )
net.core.rmem_default = 786426 - Receive memory stack size ( a good idea to increase it if your server receives big files )
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = "4096 87380 4194304"
net.core.wmem_default = 8388608 ( Reserved Memory per connection )
net.core.wmem_max = 8388608
net.core.optmem_max = 40960
( maximum amount of option memory buffers )

# like a homework investigate by yourself what the variables below stand for :)
net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 360000
net.ipv4.tcp_reordering = 5
net.core.hot_list_length = 256
net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 1024

 

# Below are newly added experimental
#net.core.rmem_max = 16777216
#net.core.wmem_max = 16777216
##kernel.msgmni = 1024
##kernel.sem = 250 256000 32 1024
##vm.swappiness=0
kernel.sched_migration_cost=5000000

 

Also a good sysctl.conf file which one might want to substitite or use as a skele for some productive server is ready for download here


Even if you can't reap out great CPU reduction benefits from integrating above values or similar ones, your overall LAMP performance to end customers should increase – at some occasions dramatically, at others little bit but still noticable.

If you're unsure on exact kernel variable values to use check yourself what should be the best values that fits you according to your server Hardware – usually this is done by experimenting and reading the kernel documentation as provided for each one of uplisted variables.

Above sysctl.conf is natively created to run on Debian and on other distributions like CentOS, Fedora Slackware some values might either require slight modifications.

Hope this helps and gives you some idea of how network optimization in Linux is usually done. Happy (hacking) tweakening !