Posts Tagged ‘Resolving’

How to configure static DNS and Search domain for Redhat / CentOS and Redhat Linux

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021

Fedora-Red-Hat-and-CentOS-fix-DNS-resolv-conf-automatically-deleted-records
In latest Redhat based OS-es Fedora / CentOS / Redhat etc. just like on many other Linux distributions, we have /etc/resolv.conf being overwritten by NetworkManager and / or systemd configurations setup which since some time has been introduced to be a "more sophisticated" (default)  so the file is being written by Network Manager / dhcp or systemd config. Though the idea is good, having other programs modify /etc/resolv.conf is a real pain in the ass especially as you end up with an empty file because some service has overwritten what you have placed in the file and the DNS records and Search Domain is deleted forever. If you're not aware of this "new cool" linux feature you might first think that it was a bug that has ovewritten /etc/resolv.conf but ok guys as Bill Gates loved to say "this is not a bug it is a feature", so any attemps you make to manually change /etc/resolv.conf will be soon gone 🙂

This is pretty annoying for old school sysadmins which like to just set the necessery Domain name server resolving

search Subdomain.SearchDomain.Com
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
nameserver yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy


However as said Nowdays if you just place the desired config with in /etc/resolv.conf on next Server reboot or Network restart (or next fetch of DHCP if the ethernet interface IPs are being obtained via DHCP protocol) you will end up in a situation with an empty /etc/resolv.conf  with one commented line reading:

[root@redhat ~]# cat /etc/resolv.conf
# Generated by NetworkManager

To make the DNS and Search Domain be always presented on any network restart or reboot on the server hence you will need to define  DNS1 DNS2 DNS3 etc. and SEARCH variable inside the network configuration files for Bridge or Network interfaces located in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno1np0 etc.  that will automatically append above search / nameserver fields in /etc/resolv.conf on any NetworkManager or system restart.
Below is example with the variables added to a Network bridge configuration on Redhat 8.3 (Ootpa):

[root@redhat ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0
STP=yes
BRIDGING_OPTS=priority=32768
TYPE=Bridge
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME=br0
UUID=f87e54a8-0fc4-4197-8ccc-0d8a671f30d0
DEVICE=br0
ONBOOT=yes
IPADDR=10.10.51.16
PREFIX=26
GATEWAY=10.10.51.1

DNS1="172.80.11.2"
DNS2="172.80.11.3"
DNS3="172.80.11.4"
SEARCH="sub.search-domain.com"


To test the configuration does append proper records into /etc/resolv.conf on Network restart  or /sbin/reboot reload the network.

[root@redhat ~]# systemctl restart NetworkManager


The result is you should have a good looking resolv.conf as so

[root@redhat ~]#  cat /etc/resolv.conf
# Generated by NetworkManager
search sub.search-domain.com
nameserver 172.20.88.2
nameserver 172.20.88.3
nameserver 172.20.88.4

 

Install certbot on Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora Linux 10 / Generate and use Apache / Nginx SSL Letsencrypt certificates

Monday, December 21st, 2020

letsencrypt certbot install on any linux distribution with apache or nginx webserver howto</a><p> Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority brought to you by the nonprofit <a data-cke-saved-href=
Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). ISRG group gave initiative with the goal to "encrypt the internet", i.e. offer free alternative to the overpriced domani registrer sold certificates with the goal to make more people offer SSL / TSL Free secured connection line on their websites. 
ISRG group supported Letsencrypt non-profit certificate authority actrively by Internet industry standard giants such as Mozilla, Cisco, EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation),  Facebook, Google Chrome, Amazon AWS, OVH Cloud, Redhat, VMWare, Github and many many of the leading companies in IT.

Letsencrpyt is aimed at automating the process designed to overcome manual creation, validation, signing, installation, and renewal of certificates for secure websites. I.e. you don't have to manually write on console complicated openssl command lines with passing on Certificate CSR /  KEY / PEM files etc and generate Self-Signed Untrusted Authority Certificates (noted in my previous article How to generate Self-Signed SSL Certificates with openssl or use similar process to pay money generate secret key and submit the key to third party authority through a their website webadmin  interface in order to Generate SSL brought by Godaddy or Other Certificate Authority.

But of course as you can guess there are downsides as you submit your private key automatically via letsencrypt set of SSL certificate automation domain scripts to a third party Certificate Authority which is at Letsencrypt.org. A security intrusion in their private key store servers might mean a catastrophy for your data as malicious stealer might be able to decrypt your data with some additional effort and see in plain text what is talking to your Apache / Nginx or Mail Server nevertheless the cert. Hence for a high standards such as PCI environments Letsencrypt as well as for the paranoid security freak admins,  who don't trust the mainstream letsencrypt is definitely not a choice. Anyways for most small and midsized businesses who doesn't hold too much of a top secret data and want a moderate level of security Letsencrypt is a great opportunity to try. But enough talk, lets get down to business.

How to install and use certbot on Debian GNU / Linux 10 Buster?
Certbot is not available from the Debian software repositories by default, but it’s possible to configure the buster-backports repository in your /etc/apt/sources.list file to allow you to install a backport of the Certbot software with APT tool.
 

1. Install certbot on Debian / Ubuntu Linux

 

root@webserver:/etc/apt# tail -n 1 /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian buster-backports main


If not there append the repositories to file:

 

  • Install certbot-nginx certbot-apache deb packages

root@webserver:/ # echo 'deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian buster-backports main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list

 

  • Install certbot-nginx certbot-apache deb packages

root@webserver:/ # apt update
root@webserver:/ # apt install certbot python-certbot-nginx python3-certbot-apache python-certbot-nginx-doc


This will install the /usr/bin/certbot python executable script which is used to register / renew / revoke / delete your domains certificates.
 

2. Install letsencrypt certbot client on CentOS / RHEL / Fedora and other Linux Distributions

 


For RPM based distributions and other Linux distributions you will have to install snap package (if not already installed) and use snap command :

 

 

[root@centos ~ :] # yum install snapd
systemctl enable –now snapd.socket

To enable classic snap support, enter the following to create a symbolic link between

[root@centos ~ :] # ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap

snap command lets you install, configure, refresh and remove snaps.  Snaps are packages that work across many different Linux distributions, enabling secure delivery and operation of the latest apps and utilities.

[root@centos ~ :] # snap install core; sudo snap refresh core

Logout from console or Xsession to make the snap update its $PATH definitions.

Then use snap universal distro certbot classic package

 [root@centos ~ :] # snap install –classic certbot
[root@centos ~ :] # ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot
 

 

If you're having an XOrg server access on the RHEL / CentOS via Xming or other type of Xemulator you might check out also the snap-store as it contains a multitude of packages installable which are not usually available in RPM distros.

 [root@centos ~ :] # snap install snap-store


how-to-install-snap-applications-on-centos-rhel-linux-snap-store

snap-store is a powerful and via it you can install many non easily installable stuff on Linux such as eclipse famous development IDE, notepad++ , Discord, the so favourite for the Quality Assurance guy Protocol tester Postman etc.

  • Installing certbot to any distribution via acme.sh script

Another often preferred solution to Universally deploy  and upgrade an existing LetsEncrypt program to any Linux distribution (e.g. RHEL / CentOS / Fedora etc.) is the acme.sh script. To install acme you have to clone the repository and run the script with –install

P.S. If you don't have git installed yet do

root@webserver:/ # apt-get install –yes git


and then the usual git clone to fetch it at your side

# cd /root
# git clone https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh
Cloning into 'acme.sh'…
remote: Enumerating objects: 71, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (71/71), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (53/53), done.
remote: Total 12475 (delta 39), reused 38 (delta 18), pack-reused 12404
Receiving objects: 100% (12475/12475), 4.79 MiB | 6.66 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (7444/7444), done.

# sh acme.sh –install


To later upgrade acme.sh to latest you can do

# sh acme.sh –upgrade


In order to renew a concrete existing letsencrypt certificiate

# sh acme.sh –renew domainname.com


To renew all certificates using acme.sh script

# ./acme.sh –renew-all

 

3. Generate Apache or NGINX Free SSL / TLS Certificate with certbot tool

Now lets generate a certificate for a domain running on Apache Webserver with a Website WebRoot directory /home/phpdev/public/www

 

root@webserver:/ # certbot –apache –webroot -w /home/phpdev/public/www/ -d your-domain-name.com -d your-domain-name.com

root@webserver:/ # certbot certonly –webroot -w /home/phpdev/public/www/ -d your-domain-name.com -d other-domain-name.com


As you see all the domains for which you will need to generate are passed on with -d option.

Once certificates are properly generated you can test it in a browser and once you're sure they work as expected usually you can sleep safe for the next 3 months ( 90 days) which is the default for TSL / SSL Letsencrypt certificates the reason behind of course is security.

 

4. Enable freshly generated letsencrypt SSL certificate in Nginx VirtualHost config

Go to your nginx VirtualHost configuration (i.e. /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/phpmyadmin.adzone.pro ) and inside chunk of config add after location { … } – 443 TCP Port SSL listener (as in shown in bolded configuration)
 

server {

….
   location ~ \.php$ {
      include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
##      fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
      fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.3-fpm.sock;
      fastcgi_index index.php;
      fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/share/phpmyadmin$fastcgi_script_name;
   }
 

 

 

    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/phpmyadmin.adzone.pro/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/phpmyadmin.adzone.pro/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot

 

5. Enable new generated letsencrypt SSL certificate in Apache VirtualHost


In /etc/apache2/{sites-available,sites-enabled}/your-domain.com-ssl.conf you should have as a minimum a configuration setup like below:
 

 

NameVirtualHost *:443 <VirtualHost 123.123.123.12:443>
    ServerAdmin hipo@domain.com
    ServerName www.pc-freak.net
    ServerAlias www.your-domain.com wwww.your-domain.com your-domain.com
 
    HostnameLookups off
    DocumentRoot /var/www
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php index.html.var

 

 

CheckSpelling on
SSLEngine on

    <Directory />
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        ##Order allow,deny
        ##allow from all
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
    <Directory /var/www>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
##      Order allow,deny
##      allow from all
Require all granted
    </Directory>

Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-domain.com/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-domain.com/privkey.pem
</VirtualHost>

 

6. Simulate a certificate regenerate with –dry-run

Soon before the 90 days period expiry approaches, it is a good idea to test how all installed Nginx webserver certficiates will be renewed and whether any issues are expected this can be done with the –dry-run option.

root@webserver:/ # certbot renew –dry-run

 

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
** DRY RUN: simulating 'certbot renew' close to cert expiry
**          (The test certificates below have not been saved.)

Congratulations, all renewals succeeded. The following certs have been renewed:
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/adzone.pro/fullchain.pem (success)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/cdn.natsr.pro/fullchain.pem (success)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.adzone.pro/fullchain.pem (success)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/natsr.pro-0001/fullchain.pem (success)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/natsr.pro/fullchain.pem (success)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/phpmyadmin.adzone.pro/fullchain.pem (success)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.adzone.pro/fullchain.pem (success)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.natsr.pro/fullchain.pem (success)
** DRY RUN: simulating 'certbot renew' close to cert expiry
**          (The test certificates above have not been saved.)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

 

7. Renew a certificate from a multiple installed certificate list

In some time when you need to renew letsencrypt domain certificates you can list them and choose manually which one you want to renew.

root@webserver:/ # certbot –force-renewal
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log

How would you like to authenticate and install certificates?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
1: Apache Web Server plugin (apache)
2: Nginx Web Server plugin (nginx)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel): 2
Plugins selected: Authenticator nginx, Installer nginx

Which names would you like to activate HTTPS for?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
1: adzone.pro
2: mail.adzone.pro
3: phpmyadmin.adzone.pro
4: www.adzone.pro
5: natsr.pro
6: cdn.natsr.pro
7: www.natsr.pro
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Select the appropriate numbers separated by commas and/or spaces, or leave input
blank to select all options shown (Enter 'c' to cancel): 3
Renewing an existing certificate
Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/phpmyadmin.adzone.pro

Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
1: No redirect – Make no further changes to the webserver configuration.
2: Redirect – Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for
new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS. You can undo this
change by editing your web server's configuration.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel): 2
Redirecting all traffic on port 80 to ssl in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/phpmyadmin.adzone.pro

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Your existing certificate has been successfully renewed, and the new certificate
has been installed.

The new certificate covers the following domains: https://phpmyadmin.adzone.pro

You should test your configuration at:
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=phpmyadmin.adzone.pro
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

IMPORTANT NOTES:
 – Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at:
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/phpmyadmin.adzone.pro/fullchain.pem

   Your key file has been saved at:
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/phpmyadmin.adzone.pro/privkey.pem
   Your cert will expire on 2021-03-21. To obtain a new or tweaked
   version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot again
   with the "certonly" option. To non-interactively renew *all* of
   your certificates, run "certbot renew"
 – If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:

   Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt:   https://letsencrypt.org/donate
   Donating to EFF:                    https://eff.org/donate-le

 

8. Renew all present SSL certificates

root@webserver:/ # certbot renew

Processing /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/www.natsr.pro.conf
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Cert not yet due for renewal

 

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

The following certs are not due for renewal yet:
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/adzone.pro/fullchain.pem expires on 2021-03-01 (skipped)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/cdn.natsr.pro/fullchain.pem expires on 2021-02-28 (skipped)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.adzone.pro/fullchain.pem expires on 2021-02-28 (skipped)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/natsr.pro-0001/fullchain.pem expires on 2021-03-01 (skipped)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/natsr.pro/fullchain.pem expires on 2021-02-25 (skipped)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/phpmyadmin.adzone.pro/fullchain.pem expires on 2021-03-21 (skipped)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.adzone.pro/fullchain.pem expires on 2021-02-28 (skipped)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.natsr.pro/fullchain.pem expires on 2021-03-01 (skipped)
No renewals were attempted.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

 

 

9. Renew all existing server certificates from a cron job


The certbot package will install a script under /etc/cron.d/certbot to be run that will attempt every 12 hours however from my experience
often this script is not going to work, the script looks similar to below:

# Upgrade all existing SSL certbot machine certificates

 

0 */12 * * * root test -x /usr/bin/certbot -a \! -d /run/systemd/system && perl -e 'sleep int(rand(43200))' && certbot -q renew

Another approach to renew all installed certificates if you want to have a specific options and keep log of what happened is using a tiny shell script like this:

 

10. Auto renew installed SSL / TSL Certbot certificates with a bash loop over all present certificates

#!/bin/sh
# update SSL certificates
# prints from 1 to 104 (according to each certbot generated certificate and triggers rewew and logs what happened to log file
# an ugly hack for certbot certificate renew
for i in $(seq 1 104); do echo "Updating $i SSL Cert" | tee -a /root/certificate-update.log; yes "$i" | certbot –force-renewal | tee -a /root/certificate-update.log 2>&1; sleep 5; done

Note: The seq 1 104 is the range depends on the count of installed SSL certificates you have installed on the machine, that can be seen and set the proper value according to your case when you run one time certbot –force-renewal.
 

Check weather forecast from console (terminal) on GNU / Linux and FreeBSD howto

Friday, August 23rd, 2019

how to get weather forecast prognosis from command line text terminal / console on Linux and FreeBSD

Doing everything in Linux console / terminal is a question perhaps every Linux / BSD hacker wants to do as Graphical user interface and using web search or using Graphical Environment plugins is an unneded complexity + googling or duckduckgoing for weather to check your next vacation destination city has been more and more of a terrible experience (for me) as I'm not a big fan of using the OS in a GUI.
In that manner of thoughts, as a Linux console geek and hard core ASCII art fan. I was recently happy to find that  possible to check weather forecast in tty console or Linux terminal in a beautiful ascii art way easily through a Web wttr.in service – a web application weather forecast service that supports displaying the current and few days in future, weather forecast either in browser as a plain text or from the command line by simply accessing it with your favourite web access / transfer tool such as;
wget / curl or any of your favourite text browser elinks / lynx / w3m or if on *BSDs use fetch command.

 

Install Curl data transfer tool if it is not already


Wget is installed by default across most Linux distributions and fetch is present by default on BSDs, displaying it in text browser would perhaps be never used but if you decide to give it a try maybe try with elinks (to get colorful output), w3m and lynx will display a black and white results.

In case if you miss curl, install it:

On Debian distro

 

aptitude install -y curl


or Fedora

yum install -y curl


Of course to use wttr.in as it is Internet based Weather Forecast service the minimum you need to have is to have Internet connection to your Linux / BSD desktop computer.

Text based Weather Forecast Web App currently supports:

display the current weather as well as a 3-day weather forecast, split into morning, noon, evening and night

  • Temperature is displayed for morning, noon, evening and night (includes temperature range, wind speed and direction, viewing distance, precipitation amount and probability)
  • Provide results for Weather based on City / town / village location
  • Supports display of Moon Phases Forecast in calendar days
  • Supports multilingual names (Bulgarian Phonetic cyrillic / Russian and other exotic UTF-8 encodings such as Chineese and Japanese),  50+ languages are currently supported
  • Has ability for prognosis for hostname (domain) location based on an its IP GeoIP location on the Globe
  • Geographical locations / landmarks such as Lakes / Mountains etc. can be easily queried
  • Query results metrics could be configured, e.g. USCS units or EU and rest of world accepted ones (SI) metric
  • Displayed result could be either in ANSI (if from terminal / console / HTML if queried from browser or in PNG – if needed)

 

Where wttr.in could be useful ?

The best applications use, I can think of are for server (shell) / perl scripting automation purposes, it could be useful especially in TOO HOT, TOO, COLD, TOO WET location in Small and Middle sized Data Centers Green Energy (Sun Panel) Parks / Wind Energy situated Linux monitoring hosts to track possible problems of overheats or overcolding of servers due to abnormal excessive temperatures such as the ones we experienced this summer here All across in Europe or in too Cold DC locations such as heat locations Deserts in African Countries, Saudi Arabia or Chukotka or Siberia in Russia.
Other application is as a backup option to other normal Weather report services by PHP or Python scripts that fetch data, from multiple places.
Of course since this is a third party controlled service, the downtime is due to excessive connection requests, the service could get flooded and stopped working, but I guess for any Commercial use, wttr.in creator Igor Chubin would be happy to sell a specific crafted service for any end user candidates.


Here is few examples of the beautiful returned ASCII art formatted output of wttr.in.
 

1. Getting a three days Weather Forecast prognosis for city / town location

To get what is current weather in my current city of Living, Sofia Bulgaria just pass the city to the URL address

curl http://wttr.in/Sofia

text-console-wttr.in-Weather-forecast-Sofia-for-Linux

 

links http://wttr.in/Dobrich

 

curl-Linux-show--Dobrich-Weather-forecast-in-lynx-text-browser


Default links (Linux) www text browser produces ugly black and white

2. Displaying Weather forecast with wget

 

wget -O- -q http://wttr.in


getting-weather-forecast-on-linux-terminal-console-with-wget-command

If you're lazy you can even omit the http:// as wget will look for HyperText Transmission Protocol by itself

 

wget -O- -q wttr.in

 

3. Getting Forecast results for a Tourist Destination


Lets get the weather forecast for the popular tourist Bulgarian destination of the Seven Rila Lakes (near Rila Monastery), situated in the Rila Mountain BG.

 

curl http://wttr.in/Seven+Rila+Lakes

 

Console-terminal-Weather-forecast-Linux-Seven-Rila-Lakes

 

 

4. Display Forecast for a specific server IP


Displaying information on specific server IP address current situated in GeoIP database, of course could be not really true, as the IP could be just a Load Balancer a router that does NAT to some internal DMZ-ed location server, but anyways it is a cool feature.

Lets get information on what is the weather on Google Global's Public DNS server IP 8.8.8.8 so commonly used to guarantee a Windows and Linux Desktop client machines Internet connectivity.
 

curl wttr.in/@8.8.8.8

 

wttr.in-Linux-text--forecast-service-curl-screenshot Google Public DNS location weather forecast

5. Download PNG image picture from wttr.in service

 


Lets say you want to get a 3 days standard Weather forecast for the popular Black Sea Resort town in Bulgaria Pomorie (a beautiful sea city which has even a functioning 5 Monks Monastery Pomorie Monastery situated near sea coast)

 

curl http://wttr.in/Pomorie.png
 

 

–2019-08-22 20:15:51–  http://wttr.in/Pomorie.png
Resolving wttr.in (wttr.in)… 5.9.243.187
Connecting to wttr.in (wttr.in)|5.9.243.187|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 42617 (42K) [image/png]
Saving to: ‘Pomorie.png’

Pomorie.png                                     100%[=======================================================================================================>]  41.62K  –.-KB/s    in 0.07s   

2019-08-22 20:15:52 (586 KB/s) – ‘Pomorie.png’ saved [42617/42617]

 

Note: The generated .png is again the ASCII art produced by a direct text fetch bug in pic format

 

6. Displaying Current Moon Phase


If you want to enjoy a text based Moon phase picture through wttr.in 🙂

wget -O- -q wttr.in/Moon


Display-current-Phase-of-Moon-in-terminal-console-Linux-wttr.in-service

You can also get a Moon Phase prognosis for a current future date or get a previous date phase

 

curl wttr.in/moon@2019-09-15

Full-Moon-Weather-forecast-text-console-reporting-via-wttr.in-on-Gnu_Linux


Full Moon Madness !! – Vampires are out beaware and Enjoy the ultra kewl ASCII Colorful Art 🙂
 

7. Getting help for wttr.in terminal Waether Forecast results

 

 

$ curl wttr.in/:help
Usage:

 

    $ curl wttr.in          # current location
    $ curl wttr.in/muc      # weather in the Munich airport

Supported location types:

    /paris                  # city name
    /~Eiffel+tower          # any location
    /Москва                 # Unicode name of any location in any language
    /muc                    # airport code (3 letters)
    /@stackoverflow.com     # domain name
    /94107                  # area codes
    /-78.46,106.79          # GPS coordinates

Special locations:

    /moon                   # Moon phase (add ,+US or ,+France for these cities)
    /moon@2016-10-25        # Moon phase for the date (@2016-10-25)

Units:

    m                       # metric (SI) (used by default everywhere except US)
    u                       # USCS (used by default in US)
    M                       # show wind speed in m/s

View options:

    0                       # only current weather
    1                       # current weather + 1 day
    2                       # current weather + 2 days
    A                       # ignore User-Agent and force ANSI output format (terminal)
    F                       # do not show the "Follow" line
    n                       # narrow version (only day and night)
    q                       # quiet version (no "Weather report" text)
    Q                       # superquiet version (no "Weather report", no city name)
    T                       # switch terminal sequences off (no colors)

PNG options:

    /paris.png              # generate a PNG file
    p                       # add frame around the output
    t                       # transparency 150
    transparency=…        # transparency from 0 to 255 (255 = not transparent)

Options can be combined:

    /Paris?0pq
    /Paris?0pq&lang=fr
    /Paris_0pq.png          # in PNG the file mode are specified after _
    /Rome_0pq_lang=it.png   # long options are separated with underscore

Localization:

    $ curl fr.wttr.in/Paris
    $ curl wttr.in/paris?lang=fr
    $ curl -H "Accept-Language: fr" wttr.in/paris

Supported languages:

    af da de el et fr fa hu id it nb nl pl pt-br ro ru tr uk vi (supported)
    az be bg bs ca cy cs eo es fi ga hi hr hy is ja jv ka kk ko ky lt lv mk ml nl fy nn pt pt-br sk sl sr sr-lat sv sw th te uz zh zu he (in progress)

Special URLs:

    /:help                  # show this page
    /:bash.function         # show recommended bash function wttr()
    /:translation           # show the information about the translators

 


 

 

8. Comparing two cities weather from command line

 


One useful use of wttr.in if you plan to travel from Location city A to Location city B is to compare the temperatures with a simple bash one liner script:

 

 

 

diff -Naur <(curl -s http://wttr.in/Sofia ) <(curl -s http://wttr.in/Beograd )

 

 

9. Using ansiweather command to get Weather Temperature / Wind / Humidity in one line beuatiful text

 


If you go and install answeather Linux package

 

apt-get install –yes ansiweather


You will get a shell script wrapper with ANSI colors and Unicode symbols support. Weather data comes from OpenWeatherMap, this is useful if wttr.in is not working due to some URL malfunction (due to service is DoS-ed) etc.

 

ansiweather -l Atina

 

ansiweather-Atina-weather-forecast-result-linux-text-console

Lets use ansiweather to print the weather prognosis for upcoming 5 days for near port of Burgas, BG
 

ansiweather -F -l Burgas

ansiweather-print-weather-forecast-prognosis-for-5-days-in-Linux-text-terminal

 

10. Get all Weather current forecast for each Capital in the world


You can download and use this simple plain text file list of All Country Capitals in the World (country-capitals-all-world.txt) with ansiweather and a bash loop to get displayed each and every current day Weather Forecast in the World, here is how:

 

while read line; do ansiweather -l $line; sleep 3; done < country-capitals-all-world.txt


ansiweather-all-countires-capitals-result

As you can see some of the very exotic third world capitals does not return data so 'ERROR: Cannot fetch weather data' is returned.


You can also substitute ansiweather with curl wttr.in/$line to do get the beautiful ASCII art 3 days weather forecast via wttr.in

 

while read line; do curl http://wttr.in/$line; sleep 3; done < country-capitals-all-world.txt


I'll be happy to know other nice ASCII Art supporting Web service to enjoy from text terminal on Linux (nomatter useful or) just funny joyful prank maniacal pranks such as Watching text ASCII version remake of Star Wars Classic Movie by simply telnetting to towel.blinkenlights.nl (if you haven't so just telnet and enjoy the streamed ASCIIs ! 🙂

 

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

 

watch-star-wars-ascii-art-version-remake-online-with-telnet-on-linux-console-terminal

 

Talking about fun and ASCII, its worthy to mention hollywood Linux package

hipo@jeremiah:~/Desktop$ apt-cache show hollywood|grep -i desc -A 3
Description-en: fill your console with Hollywood melodrama technobabble
 This utility will split your console into a multiple panes of genuine
 technobabble, perfectly suitable for any Hollywood geek melodrama.
 It is particularly suitable on any number of computer consoles in the


Description-md5: 768f44c76220ea2b35f855ea34c8bc35
Homepage: http://launchpad.net/hollywood
Section: games
Priority: optional


Once installed on Debian with:

aptitude install -y hollywood

You can get in a rapid manner plenty of tmux (screen like – virtual console emulator) split screen statistics about your notebook / workstation / server CPU usage, mlocate.db status, info about plugged in machine voltage, Speedometer (statistics about Network bandwidth usage), System load avarage (CPU Count, Memory Utilization) and some other random info coming out of dmesg kernel log and more. The information displayed in splitted windows changes rapidly and (assuming you run it at home Desktop with a soundblaster) and not remotely, a james bond Agent 007 soundtrack is played on the back, that brings up one's adrenaline and makes it look even cooler.

hollywood-melodrama-technobubble-split-console-multiple-panes-for-genuine-technobubble

To give you an idea what to expect, here is shot of /usr/games/hollywood (the program start binary location) on Debian GNU / Linux running, Enjoy! 🙂
 

Resolving “nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.” flood message in dmesg Linux kernel log

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

nf_conntrack_table_full_dropping_packet
On many busy servers, you might encounter in /var/log/syslog or dmesg kernel log messages like

nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet

to appear repeatingly:

[1737157.057528] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
[1737157.160357] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
[1737157.260534] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
[1737157.361837] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
[1737157.462305] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
[1737157.564270] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
[1737157.666836] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
[1737157.767348] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
[1737157.868338] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
[1737157.969828] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
[1737157.969928] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet
[1737157.989828] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet
[1737162.214084] __ratelimit: 83 callbacks suppressed

There are two type of servers, I've encountered this message on:

1. Xen OpenVZ / VPS (Virtual Private Servers)
2. ISPs – Internet Providers with heavy traffic NAT network routers
 

I. What is the meaning of nf_conntrack: table full dropping packet error message

In short, this message is received because the nf_conntrack kernel maximum number assigned value gets reached.
The common reason for that is a heavy traffic passing by the server or very often a DoS or DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. Sometimes encountering the err is a result of a bad server planning (incorrect data about expected traffic load by a company/companeis) or simply a sys admin error…

– Checking the current maximum nf_conntrack value assigned on host:

linux:~# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_conntrack_max
65536

– Alternative way to check the current kernel values for nf_conntrack is through:

linux:~# /sbin/sysctl -a|grep -i nf_conntrack_max
error: permission denied on key 'net.ipv4.route.flush'
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_max = 65536
error: permission denied on key 'net.ipv6.route.flush'
net.nf_conntrack_max = 65536

– Check the current sysctl nf_conntrack active connections

To check present connection tracking opened on a system:

:

linux:~# /sbin/sysctl net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_count
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_count = 12742

The shown connections are assigned dynamicly on each new succesful TCP / IP NAT-ted connection. Btw, on a systems that work normally without the dmesg log being flooded with the message, the output of lsmod is:

linux:~# /sbin/lsmod | egrep 'ip_tables|conntrack'
ip_tables 9899 1 iptable_filter
x_tables 14175 1 ip_tables

On servers which are encountering nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet error, you can see, when issuing lsmod, extra modules related to nf_conntrack are shown as loaded:

linux:~# /sbin/lsmod | egrep 'ip_tables|conntrack'
nf_conntrack_ipv4 10346 3 iptable_nat,nf_nat
nf_conntrack 60975 4 ipt_MASQUERADE,iptable_nat,nf_nat,nf_conntrack_ipv4
nf_defrag_ipv4 1073 1 nf_conntrack_ipv4
ip_tables 9899 2 iptable_nat,iptable_filter
x_tables 14175 3 ipt_MASQUERADE,iptable_nat,ip_tables

 

II. Remove completely nf_conntrack support if it is not really necessery

It is a good practice to limit or try to omit completely use of any iptables NAT rules to prevent yourself from ending with flooding your kernel log with the messages and respectively stop your system from dropping connections.

Another option is to completely remove any modules related to nf_conntrack, iptables_nat and nf_nat.
To remove nf_conntrack support from the Linux kernel, if for instance the system is not used for Network Address Translation use:

/sbin/rmmod iptable_nat
/sbin/rmmod ipt_MASQUERADE
/sbin/rmmod rmmod nf_nat
/sbin/rmmod rmmod nf_conntrack_ipv4
/sbin/rmmod nf_conntrack
/sbin/rmmod nf_defrag_ipv4

Once the modules are removed, be sure to not use iptables -t nat .. rules. Even attempt to list, if there are any NAT related rules with iptables -t nat -L -n will force the kernel to load the nf_conntrack modules again.

Btw nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. message is observable across all GNU / Linux distributions, so this is not some kind of local distribution bug or Linux kernel (distro) customization.
 

III. Fixing the nf_conntrack … dropping packets error

– One temporary, fix if you need to keep your iptables NAT rules is:

linux:~# sysctl -w net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_max=131072

I say temporary, because raising the nf_conntrack_max doesn't guarantee, things will get smoothly from now on.
However on many not so heavily traffic loaded servers just raising the net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_max=131072 to a high enough value will be enough to resolve the hassle.

– Increasing the size of nf_conntrack hash-table

The Hash table hashsize value, which stores lists of conntrack-entries should be increased propertionally, whenever net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_max is raised.

linux:~# echo 32768 > /sys/module/nf_conntrack/parameters/hashsize
The rule to calculate the right value to set is:
hashsize = nf_conntrack_max / 4

– To permanently store the made changes ;a) put into /etc/sysctl.conf:

linux:~# echo 'net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_count = 131072' >> /etc/sysctl.conf
linux:~# /sbin/sysct -p

b) put in /etc/rc.local (before the exit 0 line):

echo 32768 > /sys/module/nf_conntrack/parameters/hashsize

Note: Be careful with this variable, according to my experience raising it to too high value (especially on XEN patched kernels) could freeze the system.
Also raising the value to a too high number can freeze a regular Linux server running on old hardware.

– For the diagnosis of nf_conntrack stuff there is ;

/proc/sys/net/netfilter kernel memory stored directory. There you can find some values dynamically stored which gives info concerning nf_conntrack operations in "real time":

linux:~# cd /proc/sys/net/netfilter
linux:/proc/sys/net/netfilter# ls -al nf_log/

total 0
dr-xr-xr-x 0 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 ./
dr-xr-xr-x 0 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 10
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 11
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 3
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 23 23:02 9

 

IV. Decreasing other nf_conntrack NAT time-out values to prevent server against DoS attacks

Generally, the default value for nf_conntrack_* time-outs are (unnecessery) large.
Therefore, for large flows of traffic even if you increase nf_conntrack_max, still shorty you can get a nf_conntrack overflow table resulting in dropping server connections. To make this not happen, check and decrease the other nf_conntrack timeout connection tracking values:

linux:~# sysctl -a | grep conntrack | grep timeout
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_generic_timeout = 600
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_syn_sent = 120
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_syn_recv = 60
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_established = 432000
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_fin_wait = 120
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_close_wait = 60
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_last_ack = 30
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_time_wait = 120
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_close = 10
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_max_retrans = 300
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_unacknowledged = 300
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_udp_timeout = 30
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_udp_timeout_stream = 180
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_icmp_timeout = 30
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_events_retry_timeout = 15
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_generic_timeout = 600
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_syn_sent = 120
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_syn_sent2 = 120
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_syn_recv = 60
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_established = 432000
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_fin_wait = 120
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_close_wait = 60
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_last_ack = 30
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_time_wait = 120
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_close = 10
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_max_retrans = 300
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_udp_timeout = 30
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_udp_timeout_stream = 180
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_icmp_timeout = 30

All the timeouts are in seconds. net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_generic_timeout as you see is quite high – 600 secs = (10 minutes).
This kind of value means any NAT-ted connection not responding can stay hanging for 10 minutes!

The value net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_established = 432000 is quite high too (5 days!)
If this values, are not lowered the server will be an easy target for anyone who would like to flood it with excessive connections, once this happens the server will quick reach even the raised up value for net.nf_conntrack_max and the initial connection dropping will re-occur again …

With all said, to prevent the server from malicious users, situated behind the NAT plaguing you with Denial of Service attacks:

Lower net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_generic_timeout to 60 – 120 seconds and net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_established to stmh. like 54000

linux:~# sysctl -w net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_generic_timeout = 120
linux:~# sysctl -w net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_established = 54000

This timeout should work fine on the router without creating interruptions for regular NAT users. After changing the values and monitoring for at least few days make the changes permanent by adding them to /etc/sysctl.conf

linux:~# echo 'net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_generic_timeout = 120' >> /etc/sysctl.conf
linux:~# echo 'net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_tcp_timeout_established = 54000' >> /etc/sysctl.conf

Fixing / Resolving Fullscreen Adobe Flash issues in Debian Linux

Monday, April 11th, 2011

Adobe Flash Player ugly Logo!

If you’re experiencing problems with maximising flash (let’s say youtube) videos on your Debian or Ubuntu or any other debian derivative.
You’re not the only one! I myself has often experienced the same annoying issue.

The flash fullscreen failures or slownesses are caused by flash player’s attempts to use directly your machine hardware, as Linux kernel is rather different than Windows and the guys from Macromedia are creating always a way more buggy port of flash for unix than it’s windows versions, it’s quite normal that the flash player is unable to properly address the computer hardware on Linux.

As i’m not programmer and I couldn’t exactly explain the cause for the fullscreen flash player mishaps, I’ll skip this and right give you the two command lines solution:

debian:~# mkdir /etc/adobe
debian:~# echo "OverrideGPUValidation = 1" >> /etc/adobe/mms.cfg

This should fix it for, you now just restart your Icedove (Firefox), Epiphany Opera or whatever browser you’re used to and launch some random video in youtube to test the solution, hopefully it should be okay 😉 But you never know with flash let’s just hope that very soon the open flash alternative gnash will be production ready and at last we the free software users will be freed from the evil “slavery” of adobe’s non-free flash player!
Though this tip is tested on Debian based Linux distributions it should most likely work same in all kind of other Linuxes.

The tip should also probably have effect in FreeBSD, though the location of the adobe directory and mms.cfg should probably be /usr/local/etc/adobe, I’ll be glad to hear from some FreeBSD user if including the OverrideGPUValidation = 1 flash option to mms.cfg like below:

# mkdir /usr/local/etc/adobe
# echo "OverrideGPUValidation = 1" >> /usr/local/etc/adobe/mms.cfg

would have an impact on any flash player fullscreen issues on FreeBSD and other BSD direvative OSes that run the linux-flash port.