Posts Tagged ‘inside’

Must have software on freshly installed windows – Essential Software after fresh Windows install

Friday, March 18th, 2016

Install-update-multiple-programs-applications-at-once-using-ninite

If you're into IT industry even if you don't like installing frequently Windows or you're completely Linux / BSD user, you will certainly have a lot of friends which will want help from you to re-install or fix their Windows 7 / 8 / 10 OS. At least this is the case with me every year, I'm kinda of obliged to install fresh windowses on new bought friends or relatives notebooks / desktop PCs.

Of course according to for whom the new Windows OS installed the preferrences of necessery software varies, however more or less there is sort of standard list of Windows Software which is used daily by most of Avarage Computer user, such as:
 

Not to forget a good candidate from the list to install on new fresh windows Installation candidates are:

  • Winrar
  • PeaZIP
  • WinZip
  • GreenShot (to be able to easily screenshot stuff and save pictures locally and to the cloud)
  • AnyDesk (non free but very functional alternative to TeamViewer) to be able to remotely access remote PC
  • TightVNC
  • ITunes / Spotify (for people who have also iPhone smart phone)
  • DropBox or pCloud (to have some extra cloud free space)
  • FBReader (for those reading a lot of books in different formats)
  • Rufus – Rufus is an efficient and lightweight tool to create bootable USB drives. It helps you to create BIOS or UEFI bootable devices. It helps you to create Windows TO Go drives. It provides support for various disk, format, and partition.
  • Recuva is a data recovery software for Windows 10 (non free)
  • EaseUS (for specific backup / restore data purposes but unfortunately (non free)
  • For designers
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • f.lux –  to control brightness of screen and potentially Save your eyes
  • ImDisk virtual Disk Driver
  • KeePass / PasswordSafe – to Securely store your passwords
  • Putty / MobaXterm / SecureCRT / mPutty (for system administrators and programmers that has to deal with Linux / UNIX)

I tend to install on New Windows installs and thus I have more or less systematized the process.

I try to usually stick to free software where possible for each of the above categories as a Free Software enthusiast and luckily nowadays there is a lot of non-priprietary or at least free as in beer software available out there.

For Windows sysadmins or College and other public institutions networks including multiple of Windows Computers which are not inside a domain and also for people in computer repair shops where daily dozens of windows pre-installs or a set of software Automatic updates are  necessery make sure to take a look at Ninite

ninite-automate-windows-program-deploy-and-update-on-new-windows-os-openoffice-screenshot

As official website introduces Ninite:

Ninite – Install and Update All Your Programs at Once

Of course as Ninite is used by organizations as NASA, Harvard Medical School etc. it is likely the tool might reports your installed list of Windows software and various other Win PC statistical data to Ninite developers and most likely NSA, but this probably doesn't much matter as this is probably by the moment you choose to have installed a Windows OS on your PC.

ninite-choises-to-build-an-install-package-with-useful-essential-windows-software-screenshot
 

For Windows System Administrators managing small and middle sized network PCs that are not inside a Domain Controller, Ninite could definitely save hours and at cases even days of boring install and maintainance work. HP Enterprise or HP Inc. Employees or ex-employees would definitely love Ninite, because what Ninite does is pretty much like the well known HP Internal Tool PC COE.

Ninite could also prepare an installer containing multiple applications based on the choice on Ninite's website, so that's also a great thing especially if you need to deploy a different type of Users PCs (Scientific / Gamers / Working etc.)

Perhaps there are also other useful things to install on a new fresh Windows installations, if you're using something I'm missing let me know in comments.

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Posted in Everyday Life, Remote System Administration, System Administration, Various, Windows | 1 Comment »

How to install Viber client on Debian GNU / Linux / Ubuntu / Mint in 2022 and enable Bulgarian language cyrillic phonetic keyboard

Tuesday, October 4th, 2022

How to install Viber client on Debian GNU / Linux / Ubuntu / Mint in 2022 and enable Bulgarian language cyrillic phonetic keyboard

how-to-install-and-use-viber-on-gnu-linux-desktop-viber-logo-tux-for-audio-video-communication-with-nonfree-world

So far I've always used Viber on my mobile phone earlier on my Blu H1 HD and now after my dear friend Nomen give me his old iPhone X, i have switched to the iOS version which i find still a bit strangely looking.
Using Viber on the phone and stretching for the Phone all day long is really annoying especially if you work in the field of Information technology like me as System Administrator programmer. Thus having a copy of Viber on your Linux desktop that is next to you is a must.
Viber is proprietary software on M$ Windows its installation is a piece of cake, you install confirm that you want to use it on a secondary device by scanning the QR and opening the URL with your phone and you're ready to Chat and Viber Call with your friends or colleagues. 

As often on Linux, it is a bit more complicated as the developers of Viber, perhaps did not put too much effort to port it to Linux or did not have much knowledge of how Linux is organized or they simply did not have the time to put for enough testing, and hence installing the Viber on Linux does not straight supported the Bulgarian traditional cyrillic. I've done some small experimentation and installed Viber on Linux both as inidividual package from their official Linux .deb package as well as of a custom build flatpak. In this small article, i'll put it down how i completed that as well as how managed to workaround the language layout problems with a simple setxkbmap cmd.

How to install Viber client on Debian GNU / Linux / Ubuntu / Mint in 2022 and enable Bulgarian language cyrillic phonetic

1.Install and use Viber as a standard Desktop user Linux application

Download latest Debian AMD64 .deb binary from official Viber website inside some dir with Opera / Chrome / Firefox browser and store it in:

hipo@jericho: ~$ cd /usr/local/src

Alternatively you can run the above wget command, but this is not the recommended way since you might end up with Viber Linux version that is older.

hipo@jericho: ~$ sudo wget http://download.cdn.viber.com/cdn/desktop/Linux/viber.deb
hipo@jericho: ~$ su – root

1.2. Resolve the required Viber .deb package dependecies

To resolve the required dependencies of viber.deb package, easiest way is to use gdebi-core # apt-cache show gdebi-core|grep Description-en -A4 Description-en: simple tool to install deb files  gdebi lets you install local deb packages resolving and installing  its dependencies. apt does the same, but only for remote (http, ftp)  located packages. # apt-get install gdebi-core … # apt-get install -f ./viber …

1.3. Setting the default language for Viber to support non-latin languages like Cyrillic

I'm Bulgarian and I use the Phonetic Traidional BG keyboard that is UTF8 compatible but cyrillic and non latin. However Viber developers seems to not put much effort and resolve that the Bulgarian Phonetic Traditional keyboard added in my Mate Desktop Environment to work out of the box with Viber on Linux. So as usual in Linux you need a hack ! The hack consists of using setxkbmap to set supported keyboard layouts for Viber US,BG and Traditional Phonetic. This can be done with above command:

setxkbmap -layout 'us,bg' -variant ' ,phonetic' -option 'grp:lalt_lshift_toggle'

To run it everytime together with the Viber binary executable that is stored in location /opt/viber/Viber as prepared by the package developer by install and post-install scripts in the viber.deb, prepared also a 3 liner tine script:

# cat start_viber.sh
#!/bin/bash
cd /opt/viber; setxkbmap -layout 'us,bg' -variant ' ,phonetic' -option 'grp:lalt_lshift_toggle'
./Viber


viber-appearance-menu-screenshot-linux


2. Install Viber in separated isolated sandbox from wider system

Second way if you don't trust a priorietary third party binary of Viber (and don't want for Viber to be able to possibly read data of your login GNOME / KDE user, e.g. not be spied by KGB 🙂

For those curious why i'm saying that Viber is mostly used mainly in the ex Soviet Union and in the countries that used to be Soviet satellite ones for one or another reason and though being developed in Israel some of its development in the past was done in Belarus as far as I remember one of the main 3 members (Ukraine, Belarus and Russia) that took the decision to dissolve the USSR 🙂

Talking about privacy if you're really concerned about privacy the best practice is not to use neither WhatApp nor Viber at all on any OS, but this is hard as usually most people are already "educated" to use one of the two. 
For the enthusiasts however I do recommend just to use the Viber / WhatsApp free GPLed software alternative for Vital communication that you don't want to have been listened to by the China / USA / Russia etc. 
Such a good free software alternative is Jitsy and it has both a Web interface that can be used very easily straight inside a browser or you could install a desktop version for PC / iOS and Android and more.
An interesting and proud fact to mention about Jitsy is that its main development that led the project to the state it is now is being done by a buddy Bulgarian ! Good Job man ! 🙂

If you want to give jitsy a try in web with a friend just clik over my pc-freak home lab machine has installed usable version on meet.pc-freak.net

In the same way people in most countries with American and English free world use the WhatsApp which is a another free spy and self analysis software offered by America most likely collecting your chat data and info about you in the (US Central Intelligence Agency) CIA databases. But enough blant so to minimize a bit the security risks of having the binary run directly as a process you can use a containerization like docker to run it inside and isolate from the rest of your Linux desktop. flatpak is a tool developed exactly for that.

 

hipo@jeremiah:/opt/viber$ apt-cache show flatpak|grep -i Description-en -A 13

Description-en: Application deployment framework for desktop apps
 Flatpak installs, manages and runs sandboxed desktop application bundles.
 Application bundles run partially isolated from the wider system, using
 containerization techniques such as namespaces to prevent direct access
 to system resources. Resources from outside the sandbox can be accessed
 via "portal" services, which are responsible for access control; for
 example, the Documents portal displays an "Open" dialog outside the
 sandbox, then allows the application to access only the selected file.
 .
 Each application uses a specified "runtime", or set of libraries, which is
 available as /usr inside its sandbox. This can be used to run application
 bundles with multiple, potentially incompatible sets of dependencies within
 the same desktop environment.

Having Viber installed on Linux inside a container with flatpak is as simple as to adding, repository and installing the flatpak package
already bundled and stored inside flathub repository, e.g.:
 

2.1. Install flatpak 

# sudo apt install flatpak


flatpak-viber-installation-linux-screenshot
 

2.2. Add flathub install repository

flatpak is pretty much like dockerhub, it contains images of containered sandbox copies of software, the main advantage of flatpak is its portability, scalability and security.
Of course if you're a complete security freak you can prepare yourself an own set of Viber and add it to flathub and use instead of the original one 🙂
 

# sudo flatpak remote-add –if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

2.3. Install Flatpak-ed Viber 

#sudo flatpak install flathub com.viber.Viber

 

Reboot the PC and to test Viber will run containerized normally issue below flapak start command:

# /usr/bin/flatpak run –branch=stable –arch=x86_64 –command=viber com.viber.Viber

 

Viber-inside-flatpak-sandbox-on-debian-linux-screenshot-running

! NOTE !  The Linux version of Viber is missing Backups options, exclusively the Settings -> Account -> Viber backup menus is missing, but the good news is that if you're using the Viber client
as a secondary device message client, on first login you'll be offered to Synchronize your Viber data with your 1st Active device (usually your Smart Phone). Just click on it and allow the synchronization from your phone and in a while the Contacts and message history should be on the Linux Viber client.

That's it Enjoy your Viber Sound and Video on Linux ! 🙂

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Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video, Video Streaming | No Comments »

How to configure multiple haproxies and frontends to log in separate log files via rsyslog

Monday, September 5th, 2022

log-multiple-haproxy-servers-to-separate-files-log-haproxy-froentend-to-separate-file-haproxy-rsyslog-Logging-diagram
In my last article How to create multiple haproxy instance separate processes for different configuration listeners,  I've shortly explained how to create a multiple instances of haproxies by cloning the systemd default haproxy.service and the haproxy.cfg to haproxyX.cfg.
But what if you need also to configure a separate logging for both haproxy.service and haproxy-customname.service instances how this can be achieved?

The simplest way is to use some system local handler staring from local0 to local6, As local 1,2,3 are usually used by system services a good local handler to start off would be at least 4.
Lets say we already have the 2 running haproxies, e.g.:

[root@haproxy2:/usr/lib/systemd/system ]# ps -ef|grep -i hapro|grep -v grep
root      128464       1  0 Aug11 ?        00:01:19 /usr/sbin/haproxy -Ws -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg -p /run/haproxy.pid -S /run/haproxy-master.sock
haproxy   128466  128464  0 Aug11 ?        00:49:29 /usr/sbin/haproxy -Ws -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg -p /run/haproxy.pid -S /run/haproxy-master.sock
root      346637       1  0 13:15 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/haproxy-customname-wrapper -Ws -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy_customname_prod.cfg -p /run/haproxy_customname_prod.pid -S /run/haproxy-customname-master.sock
haproxy   346639  346637  0 13:15 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/haproxy-customname-wrapper -Ws -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy_customname_prod.cfg -p /run/haproxy_customname_prod.pid -S /run/haproxy-customname-master.sock


1. Configure local messaging handlers to work via /dev/log inside both haproxy instance config files
 

To congigure the separte logging we need to have in /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg and in /etc/haproxy/haproxy_customname_prod.cfg the respective handlers.

To log in separate files you should already configured in /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg something like:

 

global
        stats socket /var/run/haproxy/haproxy.sock mode 0600 level admin #Creates Unix-Like socket to fetch stats
        log /dev/log    local0
        log /dev/log    local1 notice
#       nbproc 1
#       nbthread 2
#       cpu-map auto:1/1-2 0-1
        nbproc          1
        nbthread 2
        cpu-map         1 0
        cpu-map         2 1
        chroot /var/lib/haproxy
        user haproxy
        group haproxy
        daemon
        maxconn 99999

defaults
        log     global
        mode    tcp


        timeout connect 5000
        timeout connect 30s
        timeout server 10s

    timeout queue 5s
    timeout tunnel 2m
    timeout client-fin 1s
    timeout server-fin 1s

    option forwardfor
        maxconn 3000
    retries                 15

frontend http-in
        mode tcp

        option tcplog
        log global
 

        option logasap
        option forwardfor
        bind 0.0.0.0:80

default_backend webservers_http
backend webservers_http
    fullconn 20000
        balance source
stick match src
    stick-table type ip size 200k expire 30m

        server server-1 192.168.1.50:80 check send-proxy weight 255 backup
        server server-2 192.168.1.54:80 check send-proxy weight 254
        server server-3 192.168.0.219:80 check send-proxy weight 252 backup
        server server-4 192.168.0.210:80 check send-proxy weight 253 backup
        server server-5 192.168.0.5:80 maxconn 3000 check send-proxy weight 251 backup

For the second /etc/haproxy/haproxy_customname_prod.cfg the logging configuration should be similar to:
 

global
        stats socket /var/run/haproxy/haproxycustname.sock mode 0600 level admin #Creates Unix-Like socket to fetch stats
        log /dev/log    local5
        log /dev/log    local5 notice
#       nbproc 1
#       nbthread 2
#       cpu-map auto:1/1-2 0-1
        nbproc          1
        nbthread 2
        cpu-map         1 0
        cpu-map         2 1
        chroot /var/lib/haproxy
        user haproxy
        group haproxy
        daemon
        maxconn 99999

defaults
        log     global
        mode    tcp

 

2. Configure separate haproxy Frontend logging via local5 inside haproxy.cfg
 

As a minimum you need a configuration for frontend like:

 

frontend http-in
        mode tcp

        option tcplog
        log /dev/log    local5 debug
…..
….
…
..
.

Of course the mode tcp in my case is conditional you might be using mode http etc. 


3. Optionally but (preferrably) make local5 / local6 handlers to work via rsyslogs UDP imudp protocol

 

In this example /dev/log is straightly read by haproxy instead of sending the messages first to rsyslog, this is a good thing in case if you have doubts that rsyslog might stop working and respectively you might end up with no logging, however if you prefer to use instead rsyslog which most of people usually do you will have instead for /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg to use config:

global
    log          127.0.0.1 local6 debug

defaults
        log     global
        mode    tcp

And for /etc/haproxy_customname_prod.cfg config like:

global
    log          127.0.0.1 local5 debug

defaults
        log     global
        mode    tcp

If you're about to send the haproxy logs directly via rsyslog, it should have enabled in /etc/rsyslog.conf the imudp module if you're not going to use directly /dev/log

# provides UDP syslog reception
module(load="imudp")
input(type="imudp" port="514")

 

4. Prepare first and second log file and custom frontend output file and set right permissions
 

Assumably you already have /var/log/haproxy.log and this will be the initial haproxy log if you don't want to change it, normally it is installed on haproxy package install time on Linux and should have some permissions like following:

root@haproxy2:/etc/rsyslog.d# ls -al /var/log/haproxy.log
-rw-r–r– 1 haproxy haproxy 6681522  1 сеп 16:05 /var/log/haproxy.log


To create the second config with exact permissions like haproxy.log run:

root@haproxy2:/etc/rsyslog.d# touch /var/log/haproxy_customname.log
root@haproxy2:/etc/rsyslog.d# chown haproxy:haproxy /var/log/haproxy_customname.log

Create the haproxy_custom_frontend.log file that will only log output of exact frontend or match string from the logs
 

root@haproxy2:/etc/rsyslog.d# touch  /var/log/haproxy_custom_frontend.log
root@haproxy2:/etc/rsyslog.d# chown haproxy:haproxy  /var/log/haproxy_custom_frontend.log


5. Create the rsyslog config for haproxy.service to log via local6 to /var/log/haproxy.log
 

root@haproxy2:/etc/rsyslog.d# cat 49-haproxy.conf
# Create an additional socket in haproxy's chroot in order to allow logging via
# /dev/log to chroot'ed HAProxy processes
$AddUnixListenSocket /var/lib/haproxy/dev/log

# Send HAProxy messages to a dedicated logfile
:programname, startswith, "haproxy" {
  /var/log/haproxy.log
  stop
}

 

Above configs will make anything returned with string haproxy (e.g. proccess /usr/sbin/haproxy) to /dev/log to be written inside /var/log/haproxy.log and trigger a stop (by the way the the stop command works exactly as the tilda '~' discard one, except in some newer versions of haproxy the ~ is no now obsolete and you need to use stop instead (bear in mind that ~ even though obsolete proved to be working for me whether stop not ! but come on this is no strange this is linux mess), for example if you run latest debian Linux 11 as of September 2022 haproxy with package 2.2.9-2+deb11u3.
 

6. Create configuration for rsyslog to log from single Frontend outputting local2 to /var/log/haproxy_customname.log
 

root@haproxy2:/etc/rsyslog.d# cat 48-haproxy.conf
# Create an additional socket in haproxy's chroot in order to allow logging via
# /dev/log to chroot'ed HAProxy processes
$AddUnixListenSocket /var/lib/haproxy/dev/log

# Send HAProxy messages to a dedicated logfile
#:programname, startswith, "haproxy" {
#  /var/log/haproxy.log
#  stop
#}
# GGE/DPA 2022/08/02: HAProxy logs to local2, save the messages
local5.*                                                /var/log/haproxy_customname.log
 


You might also explicitly define the binary that will providing the logs inside the 48-haproxy.conf as we have a separate /usr/sbin/haproxy-customname-wrapper in that way you can log the output from the haproxy instance only based
on its binary command and you can omit writting to local5 to log via it something else 🙂

root@haproxy2:/etc/rsyslog.d# cat 48-haproxy.conf
# Create an additional socket in haproxy's chroot in order to allow logging via
# /dev/log to chroot'ed HAProxy processes
$AddUnixListenSocket /var/lib/haproxy/dev/log

# Send HAProxy messages to a dedicated logfile
#:programname, startswith, "haproxy" {
#  /var/log/haproxy.log
#  stop
#}
# GGE/DPA 2022/08/02: HAProxy logs to local2, save the messages

:programname, startswith, "haproxy-customname-wrapper " {
  /var/log/haproxy_customname.log
  stop
}

 

7. Create the log file to log the custom frontend of your preference e.g. /var/log/haproxy_custom_frontend.log under local5 /prepare rsyslog config for
 

root@haproxy2:/etc/rsyslog.d# cat 47-haproxy-custom-frontend.conf
$ModLoad imudp
$UDPServerAddress 127.0.0.1
$UDPServerRun 514
#2022/02/02: HAProxy logs to local6, save the messages
local4.*                                                /var/log/haproxy_custom_frontend.log
:msg, contains, "https-in" ~

The 'https-in' is my frontend inside /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg it returns the name of it every time in /var/log/haproxy.log therefore I will log the frontend to local5 and to prevent double logging inside /var/log/haproxy.log of connections incoming towards the same frontend inside /var/log/haproxy.log, I have the tilda symbol '~' which instructs rsyslog to discard any message coming to rsyslog with "https-in" string in, immediately after the same frontend as configured inside /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg will output the frontend operations inside local5.


!!! Note that for rsyslog it is very important to have the right order of configurations, the configuration order is being considered based on the file numbering. !!!
 

Hence notice that my filter file number 47_* preceeds the other 2 configured rsyslog configs.
 

root@haproxy2:/etc/rsyslog.d# ls -1
47-haproxy-custom-frontend.conf
48-haproxy.conf
49-haproxy.conf

This will make 47-haproxy-custom-frontend.conf to be read and processed first 48-haproxy.conf processed second and 49-haproxy.conf processed third.


8. Reload rsyslog and haproxy and test

 

root@haproxy2: ~# systemctl restart rsyslog
root@haproxy2: ~# systemctl restart haproxy
root@haproxy2: ~# systemctl status rsyslog

● rsyslog.service – System Logging Service
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/rsyslog.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2022-09-01 17:34:51 EEST; 1s ago
TriggeredBy: ● syslog.socket
       Docs: man:rsyslogd(8)
             man:rsyslog.conf(5)
             https://www.rsyslog.com/doc/
   Main PID: 372726 (rsyslogd)
      Tasks: 6 (limit: 4654)
     Memory: 980.0K
        CPU: 8ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/rsyslog.service
             └─372726 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n -iNONE

сеп 01 17:34:51 haproxy2 systemd[1]: Stopped System Logging Service.
сеп 01 17:34:51 haproxy2 rsyslogd[372726]: warning: ~ action is deprecated, consider using the 'stop' statement instead [v8.210>
сеп 01 17:34:51 haproxy2 systemd[1]: Starting System Logging Service…
сеп 01 17:34:51 haproxy2 rsyslogd[372726]: [198B blob data]
сеп 01 17:34:51 haproxy2 systemd[1]: Started System Logging Service.
сеп 01 17:34:51 haproxy2 rsyslogd[372726]: [198B blob data]
сеп 01 17:34:51 haproxy2 rsyslogd[372726]: [198B blob data]
сеп 01 17:34:51 haproxy2 rsyslogd[372726]: [198B blob data]
сеп 01 17:34:51 haproxy2 rsyslogd[372726]: imuxsock: Acquired UNIX socket '/run/systemd/journal/syslog' (fd 3) from systemd.  [>
сеп 01 17:34:51 haproxy2 rsyslogd[372726]: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="8.2102.0" x-pid="372726" x-info="https://www.

Do some testing with some tool like curl / wget / lynx / elinks etc. on each of the configured haproxy listeners and frontends and check whether everything ends up in the correct log files.
That's all folks enjoy ! 🙂
 

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Posted in Hacks, Haproxy, Linux, Web and CMS | No Comments »

Create Linux High Availability Load Balancer Cluster with Keepalived and Haproxy on Linux

Tuesday, March 15th, 2022

keepalived-logo-linux

Configuring a Linux HA (High Availibiltiy) for an Application with Haproxy is already used across many Websites on the Internet and serious corporations that has a crucial infrastructure has long time
adopted and used keepalived to provide High Availability Application level Clustering.
Usually companies choose to use HA Clusters with Haproxy with Pacemaker and Corosync cluster tools.
However one common used alternative solution if you don't have the oportunity to bring up a High availability cluster with Pacemaker / Corosync / pcs (Pacemaker Configuration System) due to fact machines you need to configure the cluster on are not Physical but VMWare Virtual Machines which couldn't not have configured a separate Admin Lans and Heartbeat Lan as we usually do on a Pacemaker Cluster due to the fact the 5 Ethernet LAN Card Interfaces of the VMWare Hypervisor hosts are configured as a BOND (e.g. all the incoming traffic to the VMWare vSphere  HV is received on one Virtual Bond interface).

I assume you have 2 separate vSphere Hypervisor Physical Machines in separate Racks and separate switches hosting the two VMs.
For the article, I'll call the two brand new brought Virtual Machines with some installation automation software such as Terraform or Ansible – vm-server1 and vm-server2 which would have configured some recent version of Linux.

In that scenario to have a High Avaiability for the VMs on Application level and assure at least one of the two is available at a time if one gets broken due toe malfunction of the HV, a Network connectivity issue, or because the VM OS has crashed.
Then one relatively easily solution is to use keepalived and configurea single High Availability Virtual IP (VIP) Address, i.e. 10.10.10.1, which would float among two VMs using keepalived so at a time at least one of the two VMs would be reachable on the Network.

haproxy_keepalived-vip-ip-diagram-linux

Having a VIP IP is quite a common solution in corporate world, as it makes it pretty easy to add F5 Load Balancer in front of the keepalived cluster setup to have a 3 Level of security isolation, which usually consists of:

1. Physical (access to the hardware or Virtualization hosts)
2. System Access (The mechanism to access the system login credetials users / passes, proxies, entry servers leading to DMZ-ed network)
3. Application Level (access to different programs behind L2 and data based on the specific identity of the individual user,
special Secondary UserID,  Factor authentication, biometrics etc.)
 

1. Install keepalived and haproxy on machines

Depending on the type of Linux OS:

On both machines
 

[root@server1:~]# yum install -y keepalived haproxy
…

If you have to install keepalived / haproxy on Debian / Ubuntu and other Deb based Linux distros

[root@server1:~]# apt install keepalived haproxy –yes
…

2. Configure haproxy (haproxy.cfg) on both server1 and server2

 

Create some /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg configuration

 

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg

#———————————————————————
# Global settings
#———————————————————————
global
    log          127.0.0.1 local6 debug
    chroot       /var/lib/haproxy
    pidfile      /run/haproxy.pid
    stats socket /var/lib/haproxy/haproxy.sock mode 0600 level admin 
    maxconn      4000
    user         haproxy
    group        haproxy
    daemon
    #debug
    #quiet

#———————————————————————
# common defaults that all the 'listen' and 'backend' sections will
# use if not designated in their block
#———————————————————————
defaults
    mode        tcp
    log         global
#    option      dontlognull
#    option      httpclose
#    option      httplog
#    option      forwardfor
    option      redispatch
    option      log-health-checks
    timeout connect 10000 # default 10 second time out if a backend is not found
    timeout client 300000
    timeout server 300000
    maxconn     60000
    retries     3

#———————————————————————
# round robin balancing between the various backends
#———————————————————————

listen FRONTEND_APPNAME1
        bind 10.10.10.1:15000
        mode tcp
        option tcplog
#        #log global
        log-format [%t]\ %ci:%cp\ %bi:%bp\ %b/%s:%sp\ %Tw/%Tc/%Tt\ %B\ %ts\ %ac/%fc/%bc/%sc/%rc\ %sq/%bq
        balance roundrobin
        timeout client 350000
        timeout server 350000
        timeout connect 35000
        server app-server1 10.10.10.55:30000 weight 1 check port 68888
        server app-server2 10.10.10.55:30000 weight 2 check port 68888

listen FRONTEND_APPNAME2
        bind 10.10.10.1:15000
        mode tcp
        option tcplog
        #log global
        log-format [%t]\ %ci:%cp\ %bi:%bp\ %b/%s:%sp\ %Tw/%Tc/%Tt\ %B\ %ts\ %ac/%fc/%bc/%sc/%rc\ %sq/%bq
        balance roundrobin
        timeout client 350000
        timeout server 350000
        timeout connect 35000
        server app-server1 10.10.10.55:30000 weight 5
        server app-server2 10.10.10.55:30000 weight 5 

 

You can get a copy of above haproxy.cfg configuration here.
Once configured roll it on.

[root@server1:~]#  systemctl start haproxy
 [root@server1:~]# ps -ef|grep -i hapro
root      285047       1  0 Mar07 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/haproxy -Ws -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg -p /run/haproxy.pid
haproxy   285050  285047  0 Mar07 ?        00:00:26 /usr/sbin/haproxy -Ws -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg -p /run/haproxy.pid

Bring up the haproxy also on server2 machine, by placing same configuration and starting up the proxy.
 

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg
…

…

 

3. Configure keepalived on both servers

We'll be configuring 2 nodes with keepalived even though if necessery this can be easily extended and you can add more nodes.
First we make a copy of the original or existing server configuration keepalived.conf (just in case we need it later on or if you already had something other configured manually by someone – that could be so on inherited servers by other sysadmin)
 

[root@server1:~]# mv /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf.orig
[root@server2:~]# mv /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf.orig

a. Configure keepalived to serve as a MASTER Node

 

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf

Master Node
global_defs {
  router_id server1-fqdn # The hostname of this host.
  
  enable_script_security
  # Synchro of the state of the connections between the LBs on the eth0 interface
   lvs_sync_daemon eth0
 
notification_email {
        linuxadmin@notify-domain.com     # Email address for notifications 
    }
 notification_email_from keepalived@server1-fqdn        # The from address for the notifications
    smtp_server 127.0.0.1                       # SMTP server address
    smtp_connect_timeout 15
}

vrrp_script haproxy {
  script "killall -0 haproxy"
  interval 2
  weight 2
  user root
}

vrrp_instance LB_VIP_QA {
  virtual_router_id 50
  advert_int 1
  priority 51

  state MASTER
  interface eth0
  smtp_alert          # Enable Notifications Via Email
  
  authentication {
              auth_type PASS
              auth_pass testp141

    }
### Commented because running on VM on VMWare
##    unicast_src_ip 10.44.192.134 # Private IP address of master
##    unicast_peer {
##        10.44.192.135           # Private IP address of the backup haproxy
##   }

#        }
# master node with higher priority preferred node for Virtual IP if both keepalived up
###  priority 51
###  state MASTER
###  interface eth0
  virtual_ipaddress {
     10.10.10.1 dev eth0 # The virtual IP address that will be shared between MASTER and BACKUP
  }
  track_script {
      haproxy
  }
}
 

 To dowload a copy of the Master keepalived.conf configuration click here

Below are few interesting configuration variables, worthy to mention few words on, most of them are obvious by their names but for more clarity I'll also give a list here with short description of each:

 

  • vrrp_instance – defines an individual instance of the VRRP protocol running on an interface.
  • state – defines the initial state that the instance should start in (i.e. MASTER / SLAVE )state –
  • interface – defines the interface that VRRP runs on.
  • virtual_router_id – should be unique value per Keepalived Node (otherwise slave master won't function properly)
  • priority – the advertised priority, the higher the priority the more important the respective configured keepalived node is.
  • advert_int – specifies the frequency that advertisements are sent at (1 second, in this case).
  • authentication – specifies the information necessary for servers participating in VRRP to authenticate with each other. In this case, a simple password is defined.
    only the first eight (8) characters will be used as described in  to note is Important thing
    man keepalived.conf – keepalived.conf variables documentation !!! Nota Bene !!! – Password set on each node should match for nodes to be able to authenticate !
  • virtual_ipaddress – defines the IP addresses (there can be multiple) that VRRP is responsible for.
  • notification_email – the notification email to which Alerts will be send in case if keepalived on 1 node is stopped (e.g. the MASTER node switches from host 1 to 2)
  • notification_email_from – email address sender from where email will originte
    ! NB ! In order for notification_email to be working you need to have configured MTA or Mail Relay (set to local MTA) to another SMTP – e.g. have configured something like Postfix, Qmail or Postfix

b. Configure keepalived to serve as a SLAVE Node

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf
 

#Slave keepalived
global_defs {
  router_id server2-fqdn # The hostname of this host!

  enable_script_security
  # Synchro of the state of the connections between the LBs on the eth0 interface
  lvs_sync_daemon eth0
 
notification_email {
        linuxadmin@notify-host.com     # Email address for notifications
    }
 notification_email_from keepalived@server2-fqdn        # The from address for the notifications
    smtp_server 127.0.0.1                       # SMTP server address
    smtp_connect_timeout 15
}

vrrp_script haproxy {
  script "killall -0 haproxy"
  interval 2
  weight 2
  user root
}

vrrp_instance LB_VIP_QA {
  virtual_router_id 50
  advert_int 1
  priority 50

  state BACKUP
  interface eth0
  smtp_alert          # Enable Notifications Via Email

authentication {
              auth_type PASS
              auth_pass testp141
}
### Commented because running on VM on VMWare    
##    unicast_src_ip 10.10.192.135 # Private IP address of master
##    unicast_peer {
##        10.10.192.134         # Private IP address of the backup haproxy
##   }

###  priority 50
###  state BACKUP
###  interface eth0
  virtual_ipaddress {
     10.10.10.1 dev eth0 # The virtual IP address that will be shared betwee MASTER and BACKUP.
  }
  track_script {
    haproxy
  }
}
 

Download the keepalived.conf slave config here

 

c. Set required sysctl parameters for haproxy to work as expected
 

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/sysctl.conf
#Haproxy config
# haproxy
net.core.somaxconn=65535
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
net.ipv4.ip_nonlocal_bind = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 10240
net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 400000
net.ipv4.tcp_max_orphans = 60000
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 3

4. Test Keepalived keepalived.conf configuration syntax is OK

 

[root@server1:~]# keepalived –config-test
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 7) Unknown keyword 'lvs_sync_daemon_interface'
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 21) Unable to set default user for vrrp script haproxy – removing
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 31) (LB_VIP_QA) Specifying lvs_sync_daemon_interface against a vrrp is deprecated.
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 31)              Please use global lvs_sync_daemon
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 35) Truncating auth_pass to 8 characters
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 50) (LB_VIP_QA) track script haproxy not found, ignoring…

I've experienced this error because first time I've configured keepalived, I did not mention the user with which the vrrp script haproxy should run,
in prior versions of keepalived, leaving the field empty did automatically assumed you have the user with which the vrrp script runs to be set to root
as of RHELs keepalived-2.1.5-6.el8.x86_64, i've been using however this is no longer so and thus in prior configuration as you can see I've
set the user in respective section to root.
The error Unknown keyword 'lvs_sync_daemon_interface' is also easily fixable by just substituting the lvs_sync_daemon_interface and lvs_sync_daemon and reloading
keepalived etc.

Once keepalived is started and you can see the process on both machines running in process list.

[root@server1:~]# ps -ef |grep -i keepalived
root     1190884       1  0 18:50 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D
root     1190885 1190884  0 18:50 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D

Next step is to check the keepalived statuses as well as /var/log/keepalived.log

If everything is configured as expected on both keepalived on first node you should see one is master and one is slave either in the status or the log

[root@server1:~]#systemctl restart keepalived

 

[root@server1:~]# systemctl status keepalived|grep -i state
Mar 14 18:59:02 server1-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1192003]: (LB_VIP_QA) Entering MASTER STATE

[root@server1:~]# systemctl status keepalived

● keepalived.service – LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/keepalived.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) since Mon 2022-03-14 18:15:51 CET; 32min ago
  Process: 1187587 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/keepalived $KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 1187589 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Mar 14 18:15:04 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1187590]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.44.192.142
Mar 14 18:15:50 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: Stopping LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor…
Mar 14 18:15:50 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1187589]: Stopping
Mar 14 18:15:50 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1187590]: (LB_VIP_QA) sent 0 priority
Mar 14 18:15:50 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1187590]: (LB_VIP_QA) removing VIPs.
Mar 14 18:15:51 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1187590]: Stopped – used 0.002007 user time, 0.016303 system time
Mar 14 18:15:51 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1187589]: CPU usage (self/children) user: 0.000000/0.038715 system: 0.001061/0.166434
Mar 14 18:15:51 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1187589]: Stopped Keepalived v2.1.5 (07/13,2020)
Mar 14 18:15:51 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: keepalived.service: Succeeded.
Mar 14 18:15:51 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: Stopped LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor

[root@server2:~]# systemctl status keepalived|grep -i state
Mar 14 18:59:02 server2-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: (LB_VIP_QA) Entering BACKUP STATE

[root@server1:~]# grep -i state /var/log/keepalived.log
Mar 14 18:59:02 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: (LB_VIP_QA) Entering MASTER STATE
 

a. Fix Keepalived SECURITY VIOLATION – scripts are being executed but script_security not enabled.
 

When configurating keepalived for a first time we have faced the following strange error inside keepalived status inside keepalived.log 
 

Feb 23 14:28:41 server1 Keepalived_vrrp[945478]: SECURITY VIOLATION – scripts are being executed but script_security not enabled.

 

To fix keepalived SECURITY VIOLATION error:

Add to /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf on the keepalived node hosts
inside 

global_defs {}

After chunk
 

enable_script_security

include

# Synchro of the state of the connections between the LBs on the eth0 interface
  lvs_sync_daemon_interface eth0

 

5. Prepare rsyslog configuration and Inlcude additional keepalived options
to force keepalived log into /var/log/keepalived.log

To force keepalived log into /var/log/keepalived.log on RHEL 8 / CentOS and other Redhat Package Manager (RPM) Linux distributions

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/rsyslog.d/48_keepalived.conf

#2022/02/02: HAProxy logs to local6, save the messages
local7.*                                                /var/log/keepalived.log
if ($programname == 'Keepalived') then -/var/log/keepalived.log
if ($programname == 'Keepalived_vrrp') then -/var/log/keepalived.log
& stop

[root@server:~]# touch /var/log/keepalived.log

Reload rsyslog to load new config
 

[root@server:~]# systemctl restart rsyslog
[root@server:~]# systemctl status rsyslog
 

● rsyslog.service – System Logging Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rsyslog.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/rsyslog.service.d
           └─rsyslog-service.conf
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2022-03-07 13:34:38 CET; 1 weeks 0 days ago
     Docs: man:rsyslogd(8)
           https://www.rsyslog.com/doc/
 Main PID: 269574 (rsyslogd)
    Tasks: 6 (limit: 100914)
   Memory: 5.1M
   CGroup: /system.slice/rsyslog.service
           └─269574 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n

Mar 15 08:15:16 server1lb-fqdn rsyslogd[269574]: — MARK —
Mar 15 08:35:16 server1lb-fqdn rsyslogd[269574]: — MARK —
Mar 15 08:55:16 server1lb-fqdn rsyslogd[269574]: — MARK —

 

If once keepalived is loaded but you still have no log written inside /var/log/keepalived.log

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/sysconfig/keepalived
 KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS="-D -S 7"

[root@server2:~]# vim /etc/sysconfig/keepalived
 KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS="-D -S 7"

[root@server1:~]# systemctl restart keepalived.service
[root@server1:~]#  systemctl status keepalived

● keepalived.service – LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/keepalived.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Thu 2022-02-24 12:12:20 CET; 2 weeks 4 days ago
 Main PID: 1030501 (keepalived)
    Tasks: 2 (limit: 100914)
   Memory: 1.8M
   CGroup: /system.slice/keepalived.service
           ├─1030501 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D
           └─1030502 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D

Warning: Journal has been rotated since unit was started. Log output is incomplete or unavailable.

[root@server2:~]# systemctl restart keepalived.service
[root@server2:~]# systemctl status keepalived
…

6. Monitoring VRRP traffic of the two keepaliveds with tcpdump
 

Once both keepalived are up and running a good thing is to check the VRRP protocol traffic keeps fluently on both machines.
Keepalived VRRP keeps communicating over the TCP / IP Port 112 thus you can simply snoop TCP tracffic on its protocol.
 

[root@server1:~]# tcpdump proto 112

tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
11:08:07.356187 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:08.356297 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:09.356408 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:10.356511 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:11.356655 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20

[root@server2:~]# tcpdump proto 112

tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
​listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
11:08:07.356187 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:08.356297 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:09.356408 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:10.356511 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:11.356655 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20

As you can see the VRRP traffic on the network is originating only from server1lb-fqdn, this is so because host server1lb-fqdn is the keepalived configured master node.

It is possible to spoof the password configured to authenticate between two nodes, thus if you're bringing up keepalived service cluster make sure your security is tight at best the machines should be in a special local LAN DMZ, do not configure DMZ on the internet !!! 🙂 Or if you eventually decide to configure keepalived in between remote hosts, make sure you somehow use encrypted VPN or SSH tunnels to tunnel the VRRP traffic.

[root@server1:~]# tcpdump proto 112 -vv
tcpdump: listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
11:36:25.530772 IP (tos 0xc0, ttl 255, id 59838, offset 0, flags [none], proto VRRP (112), length 40)
    server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: vrrp server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20, addrs: VIPIP_QA auth "testp431"
11:36:26.530874 IP (tos 0xc0, ttl 255, id 59839, offset 0, flags [none], proto VRRP (112), length 40)
    server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: vrrp server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20, addrs: VIPIP_QA auth "testp431"

Lets also check what floating IP is configured on the machines:

[root@server1:~]# ip -brief address show
lo               UNKNOWN        127.0.0.1/8 
eth0             UP             10.10.10.5/26 10.10.10.1/32 

The 10.10.10.5 IP is the main IP set on LAN interface eth0, 10.10.10.1 is the floating IP which as you can see is currently set by keepalived to listen on first node.

[root@server2:~]# ip -brief address show |grep -i 10.10.10.1

An empty output is returned as floating IP is currently configured on server1

To double assure ourselves the IP is assigned on correct machine, lets ping it and check the IP assigned MAC  currently belongs to which machine.
 

[root@server2:~]# ping 10.10.10.1
PING 10.10.10.1 (10.10.10.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.526 ms
^C
— 10.10.10.1 ping statistics —
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.526/0.526/0.526/0.000 ms
[root@server2:~]# arp -an |grep -i 10.44.192.142
? (10.10.10.1) at 00:48:54:91:83:7d [ether] on eth0
[root@server2:~]# ip a s|grep -i 00:48:54:91:83:7d
[root@server2:~]# 

As you can see from below output MAC is not found in configured IPs on server2.
 

[root@server1-fqdn:~]# /sbin/ip a s|grep -i 00:48:54:91:83:7d -B1 -A1
 eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:48:54:91:83:7d brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 10.10.10.1/26 brd 10.10.1.191 scope global noprefixroute eth0

Pretty much expected MAC is on keepalived node server1.

 

7. Testing keepalived on server1 and server2 maachines VIP floating IP really works
 

To test the overall configuration just created, you should stop keeaplived on the Master node and in meantime keep an eye on Slave node (server2), whether it can figure out the Master node is gone and switch its
state BACKUP to save MASTER. By changing the secondary (Slave) keepalived to master the floating IP: 10.10.10.1 will be brought up by the scripts on server2.

Lets assume that something went wrong with server1 VM host, for example the machine crashed due to service overload, DDoS or simply a kernel bug or whatever reason.
To simulate that we simply have to stop keepalived, then the broadcasted information on VRRP TCP/IP proto port 112 will be no longer available and keepalived on node server2, once
unable to communicate to server1 should chnage itself to state MASTER.

[root@server1:~]# systemctl stop keepalived
[root@server1:~]# systemctl status keepalived
● keepalived.service – LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/keepalived.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) since Tue 2022-03-15 12:11:33 CET; 3s ago
  Process: 1192001 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/keepalived $KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 1192002 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Mar 14 18:59:07 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1192003]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:32 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: Stopping LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor…
Mar 15 12:11:32 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1192002]: Stopping
Mar 15 12:11:32 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1192003]: (LB_VIP_QA) sent 0 priority
Mar 15 12:11:32 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1192003]: (LB_VIP_QA) removing VIPs.
Mar 15 12:11:33 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1192003]: Stopped – used 2.145252 user time, 15.513454 system time
Mar 15 12:11:33 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1192002]: CPU usage (self/children) user: 0.000000/44.555362 system: 0.001151/170.118126
Mar 15 12:11:33 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1192002]: Stopped Keepalived v2.1.5 (07/13,2020)
Mar 15 12:11:33 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: keepalived.service: Succeeded.
Mar 15 12:11:33 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: Stopped LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor.

 

On keepalived off, you will get also a notification Email on the Receipt Email configured from keepalived.conf from the working keepalived node with a simple message like:

=> VRRP Instance is no longer owning VRRP VIPs <=

Once keepalived is back up you will get another notification like:

=> VRRP Instance is now owning VRRP VIPs <=

[root@server2:~]# systemctl status keepalived
● keepalived.service – LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/keepalived.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2022-03-14 18:13:52 CET; 17h ago
  Process: 297366 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/keepalived $KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 297367 (keepalived)
    Tasks: 2 (limit: 100914)
   Memory: 2.1M
   CGroup: /system.slice/keepalived.service
           ├─297367 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D -S 7
           └─297368 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D -S 7

Mar 15 12:11:33 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:33 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:33 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Remote SMTP server [127.0.0.1]:25 connected.
Mar 15 12:11:33 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: SMTP alert successfully sent.
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: (LB_VIP_QA) Sending/queueing gratuitous ARPs on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1

[root@server2:~]#  ip addr show|grep -i 10.10.10.1
    inet 10.10.10.1/32 scope global eth0
    

As you see the VIP is now set on server2, just like expected – that's OK, everything works as expected. If the IP did not move double check the keepalived.conf on both nodes for errors or misconfigurations.

To recover the initial order of things so server1 is MASTER and server2 SLAVE host, we just have to switch on the keepalived on server1 machine.

[root@server1:~]# systemctl start keepalived

The automatic change of server1 to MASTER node and respective move of the VIP IP is done because of the higher priority (of importance we previously configured on server1 in keepalived.conf).
 

What we learned?
 

So what we learned in  this article?
We have seen how to easily install and configure a High Availability Load balancer with Keepalived with single floating VIP IP address with 1 MASTER and 1 SLAVE host and a Haproxy example config with few frontends / App backends. We have seen how the config can be tested for potential errors and how we can monitor whether the VRRP2 network traffic flows between nodes and how to potentially debug it further if necessery.
Further on rawly explained some of the keepalived configurations but as keepalived can do pretty much more,for anyone seriously willing to deal with keepalived on a daily basis or just fine tune some already existing ones, you better read closely its manual page "man keepalived.conf" as well as the official Redhat Linux documentation page on setting up a Linux cluster with Keepalived (Be prepare for a small nightmare as the documentation of it seems to be a bit chaotic, and even I would say partly missing or opening questions on what does the developers did meant – not strange considering the havoc that is pretty much as everywhere these days.)

Finally once keepalived hosts are prepared, it was shown how to test the keepalived application cluster and Floating IP does move between nodes in case if one of the 2 keepalived nodes is inaccessible.

The same logic can be repeated multiple times and if necessery you can set multiple VIPs to expand the HA reachable IPs solution.

high-availability-with-two-vips-example-diagram

The presented idea is with haproxy forward Proxy server to proxy requests towards Application backend (servince machines), however if you need to set another set of server on the flow to  process HTML / XHTML / PHP / Perl / Python  programming code, with some common Webserver setup ( Nginx / Apache / Tomcat / JBOSS) and enable SSL Secure certificate with lets say Letsencrypt, this can be relatively easily done. If you want to implement letsencrypt and a webserver check this redundant SSL Load Balancing with haproxy & keepalived article.

That's all folks, hope you enjoyed.
If you need to configure keepalived Cluster or a consultancy write your query here 🙂

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Posted in Cloud services, Educational, Haproxy, Keepalived, System Administration | No Comments »

Zabbix rkhunter monitoring check if rootkits trojans and viruses or suspicious OS activities are detected

Wednesday, December 8th, 2021

monitor-rkhunter-with-zabbix-zabbix-rkhunter-check-logo

If you're using rkhunter to monitor for malicious activities, a binary changes, rootkits, viruses, malware, suspicious stuff and other famous security breach possible or actual issues, perhaps you have configured your machines to report to some Email.
But what if you want to have a scheduled rkhunter running on the machine and you don't want to count too much on email alerting (especially because email alerting) makes possible for emails to be tracked by sysadmin pretty late?

We have been in those situation and in this case me and my dear colleague Georgi Stoyanov developed a small rkhunter Zabbix userparameter check to track and Alert if any traces of "Warning"''s are mateched in the traditional rkhunter log file /var/log/rkhunter/rkhunter.log

To set it up and use it is pretty use you will need to have a recent version of zabbix-agent installed on the machine and connected to a Zabbix server, in my case this is:

[root@centos ~]# rpm -qa |grep -i zabbix-agent
zabbix-agent-4.0.7-1.el7.x86_64

 placed inside /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.d/userparameter_rkhunter_warning_check.conf

[root@centos /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.d ]# cat userparameter_rkhunter_warning_check.conf
# userparameter script to check if any Warning is inside /var/log/rkhunter/rkhunter.log and if found to trigger Zabbix alert
UserParameter=rkhunter.warning, (TODAY=$(date |awk '{ print $1" "$2" "$3 }'); if [ $(cat /var/log/rkhunter/rkhunter.log | awk “/$TODAY/,EOF” | /bin/grep -i ‘\[ Warning \]’ | /usr/bin/wc -l) != ‘0’ ]; then echo 1; else echo 0; fi)
UserParameter=rkhunter.suspected,(/bin/grep -i 'Suspect files: ' /var/log/rkhunter/rkhunter.log|tail -n 1| awk '{ print $4 }')
UserParameter=rkhunter.rootkits,(/bin/grep -i 'Possible rootkits: ' /var/log/rkhunter/rkhunter.log|tail -n 1| awk '{ print $4 }')


2. Prepare Rkhunter Template, Triggers and Items


In Zabbix Server that you access from web control interface, you will have to prepare a new template called lets say Rkhunter with the necessery Triggers and Items


2.1 Create Rkhunter Items
 

On Zabbix Server side, uou will have to configure 3 Items for the 3 configured userparameter above script keys, like so:

rkhunter-items-zabbix-screenshot.png

  • rkhunter.suspected Item configuration


rkhunter-suspected-files

  • rkhunter.warning Zabbix Item config

rkhunter-warning-found-check-zabbix

  • rkhunter.rootkits Zabbix Item config

     

     

    rkhunter-zabbix-possible-rootkits-item1

    2.2 Create Triggers
     

You need to have an overall of 3 triggers like in below shot:

zabbix-rkhunter-all-triggers-screenshot
 

  • rkhunter.rootkits Trigger config

rkhunter-rootkits-trigger-zabbix1

  • rkhunter.suspected Trigger cfg

rkhunter-suspected-trigger-zabbix1

  • rkhunter warning Trigger cfg

rkhunter-warning-trigger1

3. Reload zabbix-agent and test the keys


It is necessery to reload zabbix agent for the new userparameter to start to be sent to remote zabbix server (through a proxy if you have one configured).

[root@centos ~]# systemctl restart zabbix-agent
…


To make the zabbix-agent send the keys to the server you can use zabbix_sender to have the test tool you will have to have installed (zabbix-sender) on the server.

To trigger a manualTest if you happen to have some problems with the key which shouldn''t be the case you can sent a value to the respectve key with below command:

[root@centos ~ ]# zabbix_sender -vv -c "/etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf" -k "khunter.warning" -o "1"


Check on Zabbix Server the sent value is received, for any oddities as usual check what is inside  /var/log/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.log for any errors or warnings.

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Posted in Linux, Monitoring, Zabbix | No Comments »

Apache disable requests to not log to access.log Logfile through SetEnvIf and dontlog httpd variables

Monday, October 11th, 2021

apache-disable-certain-strings-from-logging-to-access-log-logo

Logging to Apache access.log is mostly useful as this is a great way to keep log on who visited your website and generate periodic statistics with tools such as Webalizer or Astats to keep track on your visitors and generate various statistics as well as see the number of new visitors as well most visited web pages (the pages which mostly are attracting your web visitors), once the log analysis tool generates its statistics, it can help you understand better which Web spiders visit your website the most (as spiders has a predefined) IP addresses, which can give you insight on various web spider site indexation statistics on Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. . Sometimes however either due to bugs in web spiders algorithms or inconsistencies in your website structure, some of the web pages gets double visited records inside the logs, this could happen for example if your website uses to include iframes.

Having web pages accessed once but logged to be accessed twice hence is erroneous and unwanted, and though that usually have to be fixed by the website programmers, if such approach is not easily doable in the moment and the website is running on critical production system, the double logging of request can be omitted thanks to a small Apache log hack with SetEnvIf Apache config directive. Even if there is no double logging inside Apache log happening it could be that some cron job or automated monitoring scripts or tool such as monit is making periodic requests to Apache and this is garbling your Log Statistics results.

In this short article hence I'll explain how to do remove certain strings to not get logged inside /var/log/httpd/access.log.

1. Check SetEnvIf is Loaded on the Webserver
 

On CentOS / RHEL Linux:

# /sbin/apachectl -M |grep -i setenvif
AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using localhost.localdomain. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
 setenvif_module (shared)


On Debian / Ubuntu Linux:

# /usr/sbin/apache2ctl -M |grep -i setenvif
AH00548: NameVirtualHost has no effect and will be removed in the next release /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf:1
 setenvif_module (shared)


2. Using SetEnvIf to omit certain string to get logged inside apache access.log


SetEnvIf could be used either in some certain domain VirtualHost configuration (if website is configured so), or it can be set as a global Apache rule from the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf 

To use SetEnvIf  you have to place it inside a <Directory …></Directory> configuration block, if it has to be enabled only for a Certain Apache configured directory, otherwise you have to place it in the global apache config section.

To be able to use SetEnvIf, only in a certain directories and subdirectories via .htaccess, you will have defined in <Directory>

AllowOverride FileInfo


The general syntax to omit a certain Apache repeating string from keep logging with SetEnvIf is as follows:
 

SetEnvIf Request_URI "^/WebSiteStructureDirectory/ACCESS_LOG_STRING_TO_REMOVE$" dontlog


General syntax for SetEnvIf is as follows:

SetEnvIf attribute regex env-variable

SetEnvIf attribute regex [!]env-variable[=value] [[!]env-variable[=value]] …

Below is the overall possible attributes to pass as described in mod_setenvif official documentation.
 

  • Host
  • User-Agent
  • Referer
  • Accept-Language
  • Remote_Host: the hostname (if available) of the client making the request.
  • Remote_Addr: the IP address of the client making the request.
  • Server_Addr: the IP address of the server on which the request was received (only with versions later than 2.0.43).
  • Request_Method: the name of the method being used (GET, POST, etc.).
  • Request_Protocol: the name and version of the protocol with which the request was made (e.g., "HTTP/0.9", "HTTP/1.1", etc.).
  • Request_URI: the resource requested on the HTTP request line – generally the portion of the URL following the scheme and host portion without the query string.

Next locate inside the configuration the line:

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined


To enable filtering of included strings, you'll have to append env=!dontlog to the end of line.

 

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog

 

You might be using something as cronolog for log rotation to prevent your WebServer logs to become too big in size and hard to manage, you can append env=!dontlog to it in same way.

If you haven't used cronolog is it is perhaps best to show you the package description.

server:~# apt-cache show cronolog|grep -i description -A10 -B5
Version: 1.6.2+rpk-2
Installed-Size: 63
Maintainer: Debian QA Group <packages@qa.debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Depends: perl:any, libc6 (>= 2.4)
Description-en: Logfile rotator for web servers
 A simple program that reads log messages from its input and writes
 them to a set of output files, the names of which are constructed
 using template and the current date and time.  The template uses the
 same format specifiers as the Unix date command (which are the same
 as the standard C strftime library function).
 .
 It intended to be used in conjunction with a Web server, such as
 Apache, to split the access log into daily or monthly logs:
 .
   TransferLog "|/usr/bin/cronolog /var/log/apache/%Y/access.%Y.%m.%d.log"
 .
 A cronosplit script is also included, to convert existing
 traditionally-rotated logs into this rotation format.
Description-md5: 4d5734e5e38bc768dcbffccd2547922f
Homepage: http://www.cronolog.org/
Tag: admin::logging, devel::lang:perl, devel::library, implemented-in::c,
 implemented-in::perl, interface::commandline, role::devel-lib,
 role::program, scope::utility, suite::apache, use::organizing,
 works-with::logfile
Section: web
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/main/c/cronolog/cronolog_1.6.2+rpk-2_amd64.deb
Size: 27912
MD5sum: 215a86766cc8d4434cd52432fd4f8fe7

If you're using cronolog to daily rotate the access.log and you need to filter out the strings out of the logs, you might use something like in httpd.conf:

 

CustomLog "|/usr/bin/cronolog –symlink=/var/log/httpd/access.log /var/log/httpd/access.log_%Y_%m_%d" combined env=!dontlog


 

3. Disable Apache logging access.log from certain USERAGENT browser
 

You can do much more with SetEnvIf for example you might want to omit logging requests from a UserAgent (browser) to end up in /dev/null (nowhere), e.g. prevent any Website requests originating from Internet Explorer (MSIE) to not be logged.

SetEnvIf User_Agent "(MSIE)" dontlog

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog


4. Disable Apache logging from requests coming from certain FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) localhost 127.0.0.1 or concrete IP / IPv6 address

SetEnvIf Remote_Host "dns.server.com$" dontlog

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog


Of course for this to work, your website should have a functioning DNS servers and Apache should be configured to be able to resolve remote IPs to back resolve to their respective DNS defined Hostnames.

SetEnvIf recognized also perl PCRE Regular Expressions, if you want to filter out of Apache access log requests incoming from multiple subdomains starting with a certain domain hostname.

 

SetEnvIf Remote_Host "^example" dontlog

– To not log anything coming from localhost.localdomain address ( 127.0.0.1 ) as well as from some concrete IP address :

SetEnvIf Remote_Addr "127\.0\.0\.1" dontlog

SetEnvIf Remote_Addr "192\.168\.1\.180" dontlog

– To disable IPv6 requests that be coming at the log even though you don't happen to use IPv6 at all

SetEnvIf Request_Addr "::1" dontlog

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog


– Note here it is obligatory to escape the dots '.'


5. Disable robots.txt Web Crawlers requests from being logged in access.log

SetEnvIf Request_URI "^/robots\.txt$" dontlog

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog

Using SetEnvIfNoCase to read incoming useragent / Host / file requests case insensitve

The SetEnvIfNoCase is to be used if you want to threat incoming originators strings as case insensitive, this is useful to omit extraordinary regular expression SetEnvIf rules for lower upper case symbols.

SetEnvIFNoCase User-Agent "Slurp/cat" dontlog
SetEnvIFNoCase User-Agent "Ask Jeeves/Teoma" dontlog
SetEnvIFNoCase User-Agent "Googlebot" dontlog
SetEnvIFNoCase User-Agent "bingbot" dontlog
SetEnvIFNoCase Remote_Host "fastsearch.net$" dontlog

Omit from access.log logging some standard web files .css , .js .ico, .gif , .png and Referrals from own domain

Sometimes your own site scripts do refer to stuff on your own domain that just generates junks in the access.log to keep it off.

SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI "\.(gif)|(jpg)|(png)|(css)|(js)|(ico)|(eot)$" dontlog

 

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "www\.myowndomain\.com" dontlog

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog

 

6. Disable Apache requests in access.log and error.log completely


Sometimes at rare cases the produced Apache logs and error log is really big and you already have the requests logged in another F5 Load Balancer or Haproxy in front of Apache WebServer or alternatively the logging is not interesting at all as the Web Application served written in ( Perl / Python / Ruby ) does handle the logging itself. 
I've earlier described how this is done in a good amount of details in previous article Disable Apache access.log and error.log logging on Debian Linux and FreeBSD

To disable it you will have to comment out CustomLog or set it to together with ErrorLog to /dev/null in apache2.conf / httpd.conf (depending on the distro)
 

CustomLog /dev/null
ErrorLog /dev/null


7. Restart Apache WebServer to load settings
 

An important to mention is in case you have Webserver with multiple complex configurations and there is a specific log patterns to omit from logs it might be a very good idea to:

a. Create /etc/httpd/conf/dontlog.conf / etc/apache2/dontlog.conf
add inside all your custom dontlog configurations
b. Include dontlog.conf from /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf / /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Finally to make the changes take affect, of course you will need to restart Apache webserver depending on the distro and if it is with systemd or System V:

For systemd RPM based distro:

systemctl restart httpd

or for Deb based Debian etc.

systemctl apache2 restart

On old System V scripts systems:

On RedHat / CentOS etc. restart Apache with:
 

/etc/init.d/httpd restart


On Deb based SystemV:
 

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart


What we learned ?
 

We have learned about SetEnvIf how it can be used to prevent certain requests strings getting logged into access.log through dontlog, how to completely stop certain browser based on a useragent from logging to the access.log as well as how to omit from logging certain requests incoming from certain IP addresses / IPv6 or FQDNs and how to stop robots.txt from being logged to httpd log.


Finally we have learned how to completely disable Apache logging if logging is handled by other external application.
 

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Posted in Linux, Various, Web and CMS | No Comments »

Convert .doc to .pdf on Linux and BSD using console / Convertion of PDF to DOC inside scripts

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

how to Convert .doc to .PDF using console / terminal on Linux and FreeBSD

On Linux, there are plenty of ways nowadays to convert Microsoft Word or OpenOffice .DOC documents to Adobe's PDF (Postscript). However most of the ways require a graphical environment. As I'm interested in how convertion is done mainly from console to suit shell scripts and php which has to routinely convert a bunch of .DOC files to .PDF. I've checked today how PDF to DOC is possible on Debian, Ubuntu, Arch Linux  and FreeBSD..

There are few tools one can use from console, that doesn't requiere you to have running Xorg on the convertion host. The quality of the produced converted document, may vary and with some Microsoft Office doc files, there might be some garbage. But generally for simplistic and well written "macros" free documents the quality of PDF is satisfactory with few of the tools.

Here I will list the few tools, one can use for convertion:

  • abiword – you probably know abiword GUI program which is a good substitute for people who doesn't want the huge openoffice on the host. interestingly abiword supports converts with no need for GUI
     
  • wvPDF (you have to have install wv package and usually this converter works well only with very old .DOC (MS Office 97) – I was not impressed with those convert results
     
  • oowriter / swriter (whether LibreOffice installed) or writer (on LibreOffice), on some Ubuntus and derivatives the equivalent cmd is lowriter
     
  • unoconv – this tool produces really good DOC to  PDF converts, it is a python script using openoffice / libreoffice as backend convertion engine so produced PDFs will be identical like the ones produced with oowriter, the pros of the tool is its syntax is very user friendly and along with PDF to DOC it supports easy syntax converting to  bunch of other file formats. Actually unoconv supports same convertions which supported by OpenOffice.org, the advantage is however you can use it within console and even schedule convertion to be processed by a remote host.

 

1. Convertion of DOC to PDF with abiword

abiword --to=pdf doc_file_to_convert.doc

2. Convert DOC to PDF with wvPDF

apt-get install --yes wv texlive-base texlive-latex-base ghostscript

wvPDF doc-file-to-convert-to-pdf.doc converted-to-pdf.pdf

wvPDF doc-file-to-convert-to-pdf.doc convert-to-pdf.pdf

Current directory: /home/hipo/Desktop
"doc-file-to-convert-to-pdf.eps" exists - skipping...
Some problem running latex.
Check for Errors in steinway.log
Continuing... 
 

The produced .pdf was not useful most of the text inside was completely missing as well as some weird probably PostScript convertion characters were in the .PDF. Seeing its output I would as of time of writing wvPDF Debian's verion 1.2.4 is crap.


3. Convert DOC to PDF with oowriter / swriter / lowrite

a) convert with oowriter and swriter

I saw posts online claiming DOC to PDF convertion is possible directly with oowriter or swriters with commands:

oowriter -convert-to pdf:writer_pdf_Export input-doc-file-to-convert.doc

or

swriter -convert-to pdf:writer_pdf_Export steinway.doc - as named on some Linux-es
 

As long as I tested it on my Debian Squeeze, neither of the two works
.I saw some suggestions that PDF can be generated by installing and using cups-pdf debian package:

apt-get install cups-pdf oowriter -pt pdf your_word_file.doc b) convert DOC to PDF with lowriter I've seen in Ubuntu documentation and in Ubuntu forums, users saying they had some good results using lowriter, which is a sort of front-end program to ImageMagick's convert. I never tested that but I doubt of any satisfactory results, as I tried converting to PDF earlier using convert and often converts failed. Anyways you try it with:

lowriter --convert-to pdf *.doc

 

4. Converting PDF to DOC  with unoconv

As of time of writing it seems unoconv is best Linux console tool for converting .doc to .pdf

It produces good readable text, as well as pictures and elements looks exactly as in OpenOffice.

To install it I run:

# apt-get install --yes unoconv
....

To use it:

$ unoconv -fpdf any-file-to-convert.doc

If you don't get errors or it doesn't crash a .doc file with same name any-file-to-convert.doc is created.

What unoconv, does is precisely the same as if using OpenOffice GUI's  to convert to PDF:

 

  • Open -> Open Office (3.2 in my case)
  • Open Document to export
  • File->Export as PDF
  • Click: Export
  • Choose file namefor output PDF


An interesting feature of unoconv is its possibility to run and convert as a port listening server. I never used this but noticed it mentioned in manual EXAMPLE section:

 

EXAMPLES
       You can use unoconv in standalone mode, this means that in absence of an OpenOffice listener, it will starts its own:

       unoconv -f pdf some-document.odt
       One can use unoconv as a listener (by default localhost:2002) to let other unoconv instances connect to it:

       unoconv --listener &
       unoconv -f pdf some-document.odt
       unoconv -f doc other-document.odt
       unoconv -f jpg some-image.png
       unoconv -f xsl some-spreadsheet.csv
       kill -15 %-
       This also works on a remote host:

       unoconv --listener --server 1.2.3.4 --port 4567
       and then connect another system to convert documents:

       unoconv --server 1.2.3.4 --port 4567

unoconv does not recognize wildcards like ' * ' , so in order to convert multiple DOC to PDF files one has to use the usual shell loop:

for i in *.doc; do unoconv -fpdf $i; done
From all my tests, I think unoconv is preferred tool for Linux and BSD users (good time to mention unoconv is available on FreeBSD too. BSD users can install it via port  /usr/ports/textproc/unoconv)

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