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How to install and configure AIDE ( Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment ) on Debian GNU / Linux 11 to monitor files for changes

Thursday, March 9th, 2023

aide-logo-linux

How to install and configure AIDE ( Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment ) on Debian GNU / Linux 11 to monitor files for changes

Having a intrusion detection system is essential to keeping a server security to good level and being compliant with PCI (Payment Card Industry) DSS Standards. It is a great thing for the sake to protect oneself from hackers assaults. 

There is plenty of Intrusion Detection systems available all around since many years, in the past one of main ones for Linux as older system administrators should remember was Tripwire – integrity tool for monitoring and alerting on specific file change(s) on a range of systems. 

Tripwire is still used today but many today prefer to use AIDE that is a free software replacement for Tripwire under GPL (General Public License), that is starting to become like a "standard"  for many Unix-like systems as an inexpensive baseline control and rootkit detection system.

In this article I'll explain shortly how to Install / Configure and Use AIDE to monitor, changes with files on the system.

But before proceeding it is worthy to mention on some of the alternatives companies and businesses choose to as an IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems), that is useful to give a brief idea of the sysadmins that has to deal with Security, on what is some of the main Intrusion Detection Systems adopted on UNIX OSes today:
 

  • Samhain

    An integrity checker and host intrusion detection system that can be used on single hosts as well as large, UNIX-based networks. It supports central monitoring as well as powerful (and new) stealth features to run undetected in memory, using steganography. Samhain is an open-source multiplatform application for POSIX systems (Unix, Linux, Cygwin/Windows).

  • OSSEC 
    OSSEC uses a centralized, cross-platform architecture allowing multiple systems to be monitored and managed.
     
  • Snort
    IDS which has the capabilities to prevent attacks. By taking a particular action based on traffic patterns, it can become an intrusion prevention system (IPS). – written in Pure C.
     
  • Zeek (Bro)
    Zeek helps to perform security monitoring by looking into the network's activity. It can find suspicious data streams. Based on the data, it alert, react, and integrate with other tools – written in C++.
  • Maltrail (Maltrail monitors for traffic on the network that might indicate system compromise or other bad behavior. It is great for intrusion detection and monitoring. – written in Python).

1. Install aide deb package

# apt -y install aide
…

root@haproxy2:~# aide -v
Aide 0.17.3

Compiled with the following options:

WITH_MMAP
WITH_PCRE
WITH_POSIX_ACL
WITH_SELINUX
WITH_XATTR
WITH_CAPABILITIES
WITH_E2FSATTRS
WITH_ZLIB
WITH_MHASH
WITH_AUDIT

Default config values:
config file: <none>
database_in: <none>
database_out: <none>

Available hashsum groups:
md5: yes
sha1: yes
sha256: yes
sha512: yes
rmd160: yes
tiger: yes
crc32: yes
crc32b: yes
haval: yes
whirlpool: yes
gost: yes
stribog256: no
stribog512: no

Default compound groups:
R: l+p+u+g+s+c+m+i+n+md5+acl+selinux+xattrs+ftype+e2fsattrs+caps
L: l+p+u+g+i+n+acl+selinux+xattrs+ftype+e2fsattrs+caps
>: l+p+u+g+i+n+acl+S+selinux+xattrs+ftype+e2fsattrs+caps
H: md5+sha1+rmd160+tiger+crc32+haval+gost+crc32b+sha256+sha512+whirlpool
X: acl+selinux+xattrs+e2fsattrs+caps

2. Prepare AIDE configuration and geenrate (initialize) database

Either you can use the default AIDE configuration which already has a preset rules for various files and directories to be monitored,
or you might add up additional ones.
 

  • For details on configuration of aide.conf accepted options "man aide.conf"

The rules and other configurations resides lays under  /etc/aide/ directory
 

The AIDE database is located under /var/lib/aide

root@server:~# ls -al /var/lib/aide/
общо 33008
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096  9 мар 12:38 ./
drwxr-xr-x 27 root root     4096  9 мар 12:01 ../
-rw——-  1 root root 16895467  9 мар 16:03 aide.db
-rw——-  1 root root 16895467  9 мар 18:49 aide.db.new


Also, details about major setting rules config regarding how AIDE will run via cronjob as with most debian services are into /etc/default/aide

Default aide.conf config is in /etc/aide/aide.conf if you need custom stuff to do with it simply edit it.

Here is an Example:
Lets say you want to omit some directory to not be monitored by aide, which would otherwise do, i.e.
omit /var/log/* from monitoring

# At the end of file /etc/aide/aide.conf

add:

!/var/log
!/home/
!/var/lib
!/proc

  • Initialize the aide database first time

Run aideinit command, aideinit will create a new baseline database –  /var/lib/aide/aide.db.new (a baseline)
Note that, /var/lib/aide/aide.db is the old database that aide uses to check against for any changes of files / directories on the configured monitored filesystem objects.

root@server:~# aideinit
Running aide –init…

debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype keepalive@openssh.com reply 1
debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype keepalive@openssh.com reply 1
debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype keepalive@openssh.com reply 1
debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype keepalive@openssh.com reply 1
debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype keepalive@openssh.com reply 1
Start timestamp: 2023-03-09 12:06:16 +0200 (AIDE 0.17.3)
AIDE initialized database at /var/lib/aide/aide.db.new

Number of entries:      66971

—————————————————
The attributes of the (uncompressed) database(s):
—————————————————

/var/lib/aide/aide.db.new
 SHA256    : nVrYljiBFM/KaKCTjbaJtR2w6N8vc8qN
             DPObbo2UMVo=
 SHA512    : S1ZNB0DCqb4UTmuqaalTgiQ3UAltTOzO
             YNfEQJldp32q5ahplBo4/65uwgtGusMy
             rJC8nvxvYmh+mq+16kfrKA==
 RMD160    : xaUnfW1+/DJV/6FEm/nn1k1UKOU=
 TIGER     : nGYEbX281tsQ6T21VPx1Hr/FwBdwF4cK
 CRC32     : fzf7cg==
 HAVAL     : yYQw/87KUmRiRLSu5JcEIvBUVfsW/G9H
             tVvs6WqL/0I=
 WHIRLPOOL : 6b5y42axPjpUxWFipUs1PtbgP2q0KJWK
             FwFvAGxHXjZeCBPEYZCNkj8mt8MkXBTJ
             g83ZELK9GQBPLea7UF3tng==
 GOST      : sHAzx7hkr5H3q8TCSGCKjndEiZgcvCEL
             E45qcRb25tM=


End timestamp: 2023-03-09 12:38:30 +0200 (run time: 32m 14s)


Be patient now, go grab a coffee / tea or snack as the command might take up to few minutes for the aide to walk through the whole monitored filesystems and built its database.

root@server:~# echo cp /var/lib/aide/aide.db{.new,}
cp /var/lib/aide/aide.db.new /var/lib/aide/aide.db

 

root@server:~# cp /var/lib/aide/aide.db{.new,}

root@server:~# aide –check –config /etc/aide/aide.conf

Start timestamp: 2023-03-09 13:01:32 +0200 (AIDE 0.17.3)
AIDE found differences between database and filesystem!!

Summary:
  Total number of entries:      66972
  Added entries:                1
  Removed entries:              0
  Changed entries:              7

—————————————————
Added entries:
—————————————————

f+++++++++++++++++: /var/lib/aide/aide.db

—————————————————
Changed entries:
—————————————————

d =…. mc.. .. . : /etc/aide
d =…. mc.. .. . : /root
f <…. mci.H.. . : /root/.viminfo
f =…. mc..H.. . : /var/lib/fail2ban/fail2ban.sqlite3
d =…. mc.. .. . : /var/lib/vnstat
f =…. mc..H.. . : /var/lib/vnstat/vnstat.db
f >b… mc..H.. . : /var/log/sysstat/sa09

—————————————————
Detailed information about changes:
—————————————————

Directory: /etc/aide
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 12:04:03 +0200        | 2023-03-09 12:51:11 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 12:04:03 +0200        | 2023-03-09 12:51:11 +0200

Directory: /root
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 12:06:13 +0200        | 2023-03-09 12:51:11 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 12:06:13 +0200        | 2023-03-09 12:51:11 +0200

File: /root/.viminfo
 Size      : 18688                            | 17764
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 12:06:13 +0200        | 2023-03-09 12:51:11 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 12:06:13 +0200        | 2023-03-09 12:51:11 +0200
 Inode     : 133828                           | 133827
 SHA256    : aV54gi33aA/z/FuBj2ZioU2cTa9H16TT | dnFdLVQ/kx3UlTah09IgEMrJ/aYgczHe
             TzkLSxBDSB4=                     | DdxDAmPOSAM=

…

3. Test aide detects file changes

Create a new file and append some text and rerun the aide check

 

root@server:~# touch /root/test.txt
root@server:~# echo aaa > /root/test.txt
root@server:~# aide –check –config /etc/aide/aide.conf

 

Start timestamp: 2023-03-09 13:07:21 +0200 (AIDE 0.17.3)
AIDE found differences between database and filesystem!!

Summary:
  Total number of entries:      66973
  Added entries:                2
  Removed entries:              0
  Changed entries:              7

—————————————————
Added entries:
—————————————————

f+++++++++++++++++: /root/test.txt
f+++++++++++++++++: /var/lib/aide/aide.db

—————————————————
Changed entries:
—————————————————

d =…. mc.. .. . : /etc/aide
d =…. mc.. .. . : /root
f <…. mci.H.. . : /root/.viminfo
f =…. mc..H.. . : /var/lib/fail2ban/fail2ban.sqlite3
d =…. mc.. .. . : /var/lib/vnstat
f =…. mc..H.. . : /var/lib/vnstat/vnstat.db
f >b… mc..H.. . : /var/log/sysstat/sa09

….


The same command can be shortened for the lazy typist:

root@server:~# aide -c /etc/aide/aide.conf -C

The command will basically try to check the deviation between the AIDE database and the filesystem.

4. Limiting AIDES Integrity Checks to Specific Files / Directories

In order to limit the integrity checks to a specific entries for example /etc, pass the –limit REGEX option to AIDE check command where REGEX is the entry to check.

For example, check and update the database entries matching /etc, you would run aide command as shown below;
 

root@server:~# aide -c /etc/aide/aide.conf –limit /etc –check

 

AIDE found differences between database and filesystem!!
Limit: /etc

Summary:
  Total number of entries:      66791
  Added entries:                0
  Removed entries:              0
  Changed entries:              2

—————————————————
Changed entries:
—————————————————

d =…. mc.. .. . : /etc/aide
d =…. mc.. .. . : /etc/default

—————————————————
Detailed information about changes:
—————————————————

Directory: /etc/aide
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 15:59:53 +0200        | 2023-03-09 16:43:03 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 15:59:53 +0200        | 2023-03-09 16:43:03 +0200

Directory: /etc/default
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 12:06:13 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:42:12 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 12:06:13 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:42:12 +0200


—————————————————
The attributes of the (uncompressed) database(s):
—————————————————

/var/lib/aide/aide.db
 SHA256    : sjCxyIkr0nC/gTkNmn7DNqAQWttreDF6
             vSUV4jBoFY4=
 SHA512    : vNMpb54qxrbOk6S1Z+m9r0UwGvRarkWY
             0m50TfMvGElfZWR1I3SSaeTdORAZ4rQe
             17Oapo5+Sc0E2E+STO93tA==
 RMD160    : anhm5E6UlKmPYYJ4WYnWXk/LT3A=
 TIGER     : 5e1wycoF35/ABrRf7FNypZ45169VTuV4
 CRC32     : EAJlFg==
 HAVAL     : R5imONWRYgNGEfhBTc096K+ABnMFkMmh
             Hsqe9xt20NU=
 WHIRLPOOL : c6zySLliXNgnOA2DkHUdLTCG2d/T18gE
             4rdAuKaC+s7gqAGyA4p2bnDHhdd0v06I
             xEGY7YXCOXiwx8BM8xHAvQ==
 GOST      : F5zO2Ovtvf+f7Lw0Ef++ign1znZAQMHM
             AApQOiB9CqA=


End timestamp: 2023-03-09 20:02:18 +0200 (run time: 1m 32s)

5. Add the modified /root/test.txt to AIDE list of known modified files database
 

root@server:~# aide –update –config /etc/aide/aide.
  ERROR: cannot open config file '/etc/aide/aide.': No such file or directory

 

root@server:~# ​ aide –update –config /etc/aide/aide.conf
 

Start timestamp: 2023-03-09 18:45:17 +0200 (AIDE 0.17.3)
AIDE found differences between database and filesystem!!
New AIDE database written to /var/lib/aide/aide.db.new

Summary:
  Total number of entries:      66791
  Added entries:                0
  Removed entries:              0
  Changed entries:              8

—————————————————
Changed entries:
—————————————————

d =…. mc.. .. . : /etc/aide
d =…. mc.. .. . : /etc/default
d =…. mc.. .. . : /root
f >…. mci.H.. . : /root/.viminfo
f >…. mci.H.. . : /root/test.txt
f =…. mc..H.. . : /var/lib/fail2ban/fail2ban.sqlite3
d =…. mc.. .. . : /var/lib/vnstat
f =…. mc..H.. . : /var/lib/vnstat/vnstat.db

—————————————————
Detailed information about changes:
—————————————————

Directory: /etc/aide
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 15:59:53 +0200        | 2023-03-09 16:43:03 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 15:59:53 +0200        | 2023-03-09 16:43:03 +0200

Directory: /etc/default
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 12:06:13 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:42:12 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 12:06:13 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:42:12 +0200

Directory: /root
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 15:59:53 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:44:34 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 15:59:53 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:44:34 +0200

File: /root/.viminfo
 Size      : 16706                            | 16933
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 15:59:53 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:44:34 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 15:59:53 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:44:34 +0200
 Inode     : 136749                           | 133828
 SHA256    : KMHGoMVJo10BtafVrWIOLt3Ht9gK8bc+ | rrp8S3VftzZzvjBP1JC+PBpODv9wPKGw
             9uHh/z7iJWA=                     | TA+hyhTiY+U=
 SHA512    : ieDHy7ObSTfYm5d8DtYcHKxHya13CS65 | PDAJjyZ39uU3kKFo2lHBduTqxMDq4i01
             ObMYIRAre6IgvLslEs0ZodQFyrczMyRt | 1Kvm/h6xzFhHtFgjidtcemG8wDcjtfNF
             +d6SrW0gn3skKn2B7G09eQ==         | Z7LO230fgGeO7UepqtxZjQ==
 RMD160    : nUgg/G4zsVGKzVmmrqltuYUDvtg=     | jj61KAFONK92mj+u66RDJmxFhmI=
 TIGER     : 3vPSOrla5k+k2br1E2ES4eNiSZ2novFX | mn4kNCzd8SQr2ID2VSe4f4l0ta7pO/xo
 CRC32     : NDnMgw==                         | AyzVUQ==
 HAVAL     : Q9/KozxRiPbLEkaIfnBUZdEWftaF52Mw | 6jADKV6jg7ZVr/A/oMhR4NXc8TO1AOGW
             7tiR7DXhl0o=                     | NrYe+j6UcO0=
 WHIRLPOOL : vB/ZMCul4hN0aYd39gBu+HmZT/peRUI8 | mg6c1lYYVNZcy4mVzGojwraim8e3X2/R
             KDkaslNb8+YleoFWx0mbhAbkGurc0+jh | urVvEmbsgTuUCJOuf9+OrEACiF0fbe/x
             YPBviZIKcxUbTc2nGthTWw==         | t+BXnSQWk08OL9EI6gMGqA==
 GOST      : owVGTgU9BH3b0If569wQygw3FAbZIZde | ffx29GV2jaCB7XzuNjdiRzziIiZYnbi3
             eAfQfzlRPGY=                     | Ar7jyNMUutk=

File: /root/test.txt
 Size      : 4                                | 8
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 13:07:12 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:44:34 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 13:07:12 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:44:34 +0200
 Inode     : 133828                           | 136751
 SHA256    : F+aC8GC1+OR+oExcSFWQiwpa1hICImD+ | jUIZMGfiMdAlWFHu8mmmlml4qAGNQNL5
             UOEeywzAq3Y=                     | 6NhzJ1sYFZE=
 SHA512    : d+UmFKFBzvGadt5hk+nIRbjP//7PSXNl | ixn20lcEMDEtsJo3hO90Ea/wHWLCHcrz
             Pl16XRIUUPq2FCiQ4PeUcVciukJX7ijL | seBWunbBysY0z3BWcfgnN2vH05WfRfvA
             D045ZvGOEcnmL6a6vwp0jw==         | QiNtQS1tStuEdB3Voq54zQ==
 RMD160    : I6waxKN3rMx4WTz4VCUQXoNoxUg=     | urTh1j1t3UHchnJGnBG4lUZnjI4=
 TIGER     : cwUYgfKHcJnWXcA0pr/OKuxuoxh+b9lA | prstKqCfMXL39aVGFPA0kX4Q9x7a+hUn
 CRC32     : UD78Dw==                         | zoYiEA==
 HAVAL     : bdbKR9LvPgsYClViKiHx48fFixfIL/jA | ZdpdeMhw4MvKBgWsM4EeyUgerO86Rt82
             F3tjdc2Gm8Y=                     | W94fJFRWbrM=
 WHIRLPOOL : OLP0Y4oKcqW2yEvme8z419N1KE4TB9GJ | Xk8Ujo3IU2SzSqbJFegq7p1ockmrnxJF
             biHn/9XgrBz4fQiDJ8eHpx+0exA9hXmY | R3Rfstd1jWSwLFNTEwfbRRw+TARtRK50
             EbbakMJJdzLt1ipKWiV9gg==         | iWJeHLsD5dZ+CzV0tf4sUg==
 GOST      : ystISzoeH/ZznYrrXmxe4rwmybWMpGuE | GhMWNxg7Is0svJ+5LP+DVWbgt+CDQO+3
             0PzRnVEqnR8=                     | 08dwBuVAwB8=

File: /var/lib/fail2ban/fail2ban.sqlite3
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 15:55:01 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:45:01 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 15:55:01 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:45:01 +0200
 SHA256    : lLilXNleqSgHIP1y4o7c+oG5XyUPGzgi | NCJJ2H6xgCw/NYys1LMA7hOWwoOoxI8Y
             RHYH+zvlAL4=                     | 4SJygfqEioE=
 SHA512    : iQj2pNT4NES4fBcujzdlEEGZhDnkhKgc | ClQZ5HMOSayUNb//++eZc813fiMJcXnj
             QDlGFSAn6vi+RXesFCjCABT7/00eEm5/ | vTGs/2tANojoe6cqpsT/LaJ3QZXpmrfh
             ILcaqlQtBSLJgHjMQehzdg==         | syVak1I4n9yg8cDKEkZUvw==
 RMD160    : Xg4YU8YI935L+DLvkRsDanS4DGo=     | SYrQ27n+/1fvIZ7v+Sar/wQHulI=
 TIGER     : 2WhhPq9kuyeNJkOicDTDeOeJB8HR8zZe | o1LDZtRclri2KfZBe5J3D4YhM05UaP4E
 CRC32     : NQmi4A==                         | tzIsqg==
 HAVAL     : t1ET+84+8WgfwqlLy4R1Qk9qGZQRUbJI | MwVnjtM3dad/RuN2BfgsySX2DpfYq4qi
             z2J0ROGduXc=                     | H1pq6RYsA6o=
 WHIRLPOOL : xKSn71gFIVhk5rWJIBaYQASl0V+pGn+3 | m5LEXfhBbhWFg/d8CFJhklOurmRSkDSG
             N85R0tiCKsTZ2+LRkxDrzcVQdss2k8+z | LC/vICnbEWzLwrCuMwBi1/e5wDNIY8gK
             oqExhoXtPsMaREjpCugd3Q==         | mvGn40x+G4cCYNZ6lGT9Zg==
 GOST      : WptpUlfooIlUjzDHU8XGuOU2waRud5SR | i6K4COXU0nyZ1mL3ZBuGUPz/ZXTj8KKQ
             E/tnoBqk+q0=                     | L6VNyS8/X2Y=

Directory: /var/lib/vnstat
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 16:00:00 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:45:01 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 16:00:00 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:45:01 +0200

File: /var/lib/vnstat/vnstat.db
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 16:00:00 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:45:00 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 16:00:00 +0200        | 2023-03-09 18:45:00 +0200
 SHA256    : X/lnJuuSo4jX4HRzxMBodnKHAjQFvugi | oqtY3HTNds/qDNFCRAEsfN5SuO0U5LRg
             2sh2c0u69x8=                     | otc5z1y+eGY=
 SHA512    : U/g8O6G8cuhsqCUCbrElxgiy+naJKPkI | y+sw4LX8mlDWkRJMX38TsYSo1DQzxPOS
             hG7vdH9rBINjakL87UWajT0s6WSy0pvt | 068otnzw2FSSlM5X5j5EtyJiY6Hd5P+A
             ALaTcDFKHBAmmFrl8df2nQ==         | jFiWStMbx+dQidXYZ4XFAw==
 RMD160    : F6YEjIIQu2J3ru7IaTvSemA9e34=     | bmVSaRKN2qU7qpEWkzfXFoH4ZK4=
 TIGER     : UEwLoeR6Qlf2oOI58pUCEDaWk0pHDkcY | 0Qb4nUqe3cKh/g5CQUnOXGfjZwJHjeWa
 CRC32     : Bv3/6A==                         | jvW6mg==
 HAVAL     : VD7tjHb8o8KTUo5xUH7eJEmTWgB9zjft | rumfiWJvy/sTK/09uj7XlmV3f7vj6KBM
             kOkzKxFWqqU=                     | qeOuKvu0Zjc=
 WHIRLPOOL : wR0qt8u4N8aQn8VQ+bmfrxB7CyCWVwHi | FVWDRE3uY6qHxLlJQLU9i9QggLW+neMj
             ADHpMTUxBEKOpOBlHTWXIk13qYZiD+o/ | Wt+Dj9Rz92BG9EomgLUgUkxfiVFO8cMq
             XtzTB4rMbxS4Z5PAdC/07A==         | WaR/KKq3Z7R8f/50tc9GMQ==
 GOST      : l3ibqMkHMSPpQ+9ok51/xBthET9+JQMd | qn0GyyCg67KRGP13At52tnviZfZDgyAm
             OZtiFGYXmgU=                     | c82NXSzeyV0=


—————————————————
The attributes of the (uncompressed) database(s):
—————————————————

/var/lib/aide/aide.db
 SHA256    : sjCxyIkr0nC/gTkNmn7DNqAQWttreDF6
             vSUV4jBoFY4=
 SHA512    : vNMpb54qxrbOk6S1Z+m9r0UwGvRarkWY
             0m50TfMvGElfZWR1I3SSaeTdORAZ4rQe
             17Oapo5+Sc0E2E+STO93tA==
 RMD160    : anhm5E6UlKmPYYJ4WYnWXk/LT3A=
 TIGER     : 5e1wycoF35/ABrRf7FNypZ45169VTuV4
 CRC32     : EAJlFg==
 HAVAL     : R5imONWRYgNGEfhBTc096K+ABnMFkMmh
             Hsqe9xt20NU=
 WHIRLPOOL : c6zySLliXNgnOA2DkHUdLTCG2d/T18gE
             4rdAuKaC+s7gqAGyA4p2bnDHhdd0v06I
             xEGY7YXCOXiwx8BM8xHAvQ==
 GOST      : F5zO2Ovtvf+f7Lw0Ef++ign1znZAQMHM
             AApQOiB9CqA=

/var/lib/aide/aide.db.new
 SHA256    : QRwubXnz8md/08n28Ek6DOsSQKGkLvuc
             gSZRsw6gRw8=
 SHA512    : 238RmI1PHhd9pXhzcHqM4+VjNzR0es+3
             6eiGNrXHAdDTz7GlAQQ4WfKeQJH9LdyT
             1r5ho/oXRgzfa2BfhKvTHg==
 RMD160    : GJWuX/nIPY05gz62YXxk4tWiH5I=
 TIGER     : l0aOjXlM4/HjyN9bhgBOvvCYeqoQyjpw
 CRC32     : KFz6GA==
 HAVAL     : a//4jwVxF22URf2BRNA612WOOvOrScy7
             OmI44KrNbBM=
 WHIRLPOOL : MBf+NeXElUvscJ2khIuAp+NDu1dm4h1f
             5tBQ0XrQ6dQPNA2HZfOShCBOPzEl/zrl
             +Px3QFV4FqD0jggr5sHK2g==
 GOST      : EQnPh6jQLVUqaAK9B4/U4V89tanTI55N
             K7XqZR9eMG4=


End timestamp: 2023-03-09 18:49:51 +0200 (run time: 4m 34s)
 

6. Substitute old aide database with the new that includes the modified files

As you see AIDE detected the changes in /root/test.txt

To apply the changes be known by AIDE for next time (e.g. this file was authorized and supposed to be written there) simply move the new generated database
to current aide database.

# copy generated DB to master DB
root@dlp:~# cp -p /var/lib/aide/aide.db.new /var/lib/aide/aide.db

7. Check once again to make sure recently modified files are no longer seen as changed by AIDE

Recheck again the database to make sure the files you wanted to omit are no longer mentioned as changed

root@server:~# aide –check –config /etc/aide/aide.conf
Start timestamp: 2023-03-09 16:23:05 +0200 (AIDE 0.17.3)
AIDE found differences between database and filesystem!!

Summary:
  Total number of entries:      66791
  Added entries:                0
  Removed entries:              0
  Changed entries:              3

—————————————————
Changed entries:
—————————————————

f =…. mc..H.. . : /var/lib/fail2ban/fail2ban.sqlite3
d =…. mc.. .. . : /var/lib/vnstat
f =…. mc..H.. . : /var/lib/vnstat/vnstat.db

—————————————————
Detailed information about changes:
—————————————————

File: /var/lib/fail2ban/fail2ban.sqlite3
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 15:55:01 +0200        | 2023-03-09 16:25:02 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 15:55:01 +0200        | 2023-03-09 16:25:02 +0200
 SHA256    : lLilXNleqSgHIP1y4o7c+oG5XyUPGzgi | MnWXC2rBMf7DNJ91kXtHXpM2c2xxF60X
             RHYH+zvlAL4=                     | DfLUQLHiSiY=
 SHA512    : iQj2pNT4NES4fBcujzdlEEGZhDnkhKgc | gxHVBxhGTKi0TjRE8/sn6/gtWsRw7Mfy
             QDlGFSAn6vi+RXesFCjCABT7/00eEm5/ | /wCfPlDK0dkRZEbr8IE2BNUhBgwwocCq
             ILcaqlQtBSLJgHjMQehzdg==         | zuazTy4N4x6X8bwOzRmY0w==
 RMD160    : Xg4YU8YI935L+DLvkRsDanS4DGo=     | +ksl9kjDoSU9aL4tR7FFFOK3mqw=
 TIGER     : 2WhhPq9kuyeNJkOicDTDeOeJB8HR8zZe | 9cvXZNbU+cp5dA5PLiX6sGncXd1Ff5QO
 CRC32     : NQmi4A==                         | y6Oixg==
 HAVAL     : t1ET+84+8WgfwqlLy4R1Qk9qGZQRUbJI | aPnCrHfmZAUm7QjROGEl6rd3776wO+Ep
             z2J0ROGduXc=                     | s/TQn7tH1tY=
 WHIRLPOOL : xKSn71gFIVhk5rWJIBaYQASl0V+pGn+3 | 9Hu6NBhz+puja7uandb21Nt6cEW6zEpm
             N85R0tiCKsTZ2+LRkxDrzcVQdss2k8+z | bTsq4xYA09ekhDHMQJHj2WpKpzZbA+t0
             oqExhoXtPsMaREjpCugd3Q==         | cttMDX8J8M/UadqfL8KZkQ==
 GOST      : WptpUlfooIlUjzDHU8XGuOU2waRud5SR | WUQfAMtye4wADUepBvblvgO+vBodS0Ej
             E/tnoBqk+q0=                     | cIbXy4vpPYc=

Directory: /var/lib/vnstat
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 16:00:00 +0200        | 2023-03-09 16:25:01 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 16:00:00 +0200        | 2023-03-09 16:25:01 +0200

File: /var/lib/vnstat/vnstat.db
 Mtime     : 2023-03-09 16:00:00 +0200        | 2023-03-09 16:25:01 +0200
 Ctime     : 2023-03-09 16:00:00 +0200        | 2023-03-09 16:25:01 +0200
 SHA256    : X/lnJuuSo4jX4HRzxMBodnKHAjQFvugi | N1lzhV3+tkDBud3AVlmIpDkU1c3Rqhnt
             2sh2c0u69x8=                     | YqE8naDicoM=
 SHA512    : U/g8O6G8cuhsqCUCbrElxgiy+naJKPkI | +8B9HvHhOp1C/XdlOORjyd3J2RtTbRBF
             hG7vdH9rBINjakL87UWajT0s6WSy0pvt | b0Moo2Gj+cIxaMCu5wOkgreMp6FloqJR
             ALaTcDFKHBAmmFrl8df2nQ==         | UH4cNES/bAWtonmbj4W7Vw==
 RMD160    : F6YEjIIQu2J3ru7IaTvSemA9e34=     | 8M6TIOHt0NWgR5Mo47DxU28cp+4=
 TIGER     : UEwLoeR6Qlf2oOI58pUCEDaWk0pHDkcY | Du9Ue0JA2URO2tiij31B/+663OaWKefR
 CRC32     : Bv3/6A==                         | v0Ai4w==
 HAVAL     : VD7tjHb8o8KTUo5xUH7eJEmTWgB9zjft | XA+vRnMNdVGFrO+IZtEA0icunWqBGaCf
             kOkzKxFWqqU=                     | leR27LN4ejc=
 WHIRLPOOL : wR0qt8u4N8aQn8VQ+bmfrxB7CyCWVwHi | HG31dNEEcak2zZGR24W7FDJx8mh24MaJ
             ADHpMTUxBEKOpOBlHTWXIk13qYZiD+o/ | BQNhqkuS6R/bmlhx+P+eQ/JimwPAPOaM
             XtzTB4rMbxS4Z5PAdC/07A==         | xWG7cMETIXdT9sUOUal8Sw==
 GOST      : l3ibqMkHMSPpQ+9ok51/xBthET9+JQMd | y6Ek/TyAMGV5egkfCu92Y4qqk1Xge8c0
             OZtiFGYXmgU=                     | 3ONXRveOlr0=


—————————————————
The attributes of the (uncompressed) database(s):
—————————————————

/var/lib/aide/aide.db
 SHA256    : sjCxyIkr0nC/gTkNmn7DNqAQWttreDF6
             vSUV4jBoFY4=
 SHA512    : vNMpb54qxrbOk6S1Z+m9r0UwGvRarkWY
             0m50TfMvGElfZWR1I3SSaeTdORAZ4rQe
             17Oapo5+Sc0E2E+STO93tA==
 RMD160    : anhm5E6UlKmPYYJ4WYnWXk/LT3A=
 TIGER     : 5e1wycoF35/ABrRf7FNypZ45169VTuV4
 CRC32     : EAJlFg==
 HAVAL     : R5imONWRYgNGEfhBTc096K+ABnMFkMmh
             Hsqe9xt20NU=
 WHIRLPOOL : c6zySLliXNgnOA2DkHUdLTCG2d/T18gE
             4rdAuKaC+s7gqAGyA4p2bnDHhdd0v06I
             xEGY7YXCOXiwx8BM8xHAvQ==
 GOST      : F5zO2Ovtvf+f7Lw0Ef++ign1znZAQMHM
             AApQOiB9CqA=


End timestamp: 2023-03-09 16:27:33 +0200 (run time: 4m 28s)

As you can see there are no new added entries for /root/test.txt and some other changed records for vnstat service as well as fail2ban ones, so the Intrusion detection system works just as we expected it.

8. Configure Email AIDE changed files alerting Email recipient address

From here on aide package has set its own cron job which is automatically doing the check operation every day and any new file modifications will be captured and alerts sent to local root@localhost mailbox account, so you can check it out later with mail command.

If you want to sent the Email alert for any files modifications occured to another email, assuming that you have a locally running SMTP server with a mail relay to send to external mails, you can do it via /etc/default/aide via:

MAILTO=root


For example change it to a FQDN email address

MAILTO=external_mail@your-mail.com

9.Force AIDE to run AIDE at specitic more frequent time intervals

You can as well install a cron job to execute AIDE at specific time intervals, as of your choice

Lets say you want to run a custom prepared set of files to monitor in /etc/aide/aide_custom_config.conf configure a new cronjob like below:

root@server:~# crontab -u root -e
*/5 * * * * aide -c /etc/aide/aide_custom_config.conf -u && cp /var/lib/custom-aide/aide.db{.new,}


This will execute AIDE system check every 5 minutse and email the report to ealier configured email username@whatever-your-smtp.com via /etc/default/aide

10. Check the output of AIDE for changes – useful for getting a files changes from aide from scripts

Check the command exit status.

root@server:~# echo $?

According to AIDE man pages, the AIDE’s exit status is normally 0 if no errors occurred. Except when the –check, –compare or –update command was requested, in which case the exit status is defined as:

   1 * (new files detected?)     +

   2 * (removed files detected?) +

   4 * (changed files detected?)


   Since  those three cases can occur together, the respective error codes are added. For example, if there are new files and removed files detected, the exit status will be 1 + 2 = 3.

   Additionally, the following exit codes are defined for generic error conditions in aide help manual:

   14 Error writing error

   15 Invalid argument error

   16 Unimplemented function error

   17 Invalid configureline error

   18 IO error

   19 Version mismatch error

PLEASE CONSIDER

  • That AIDE checks might be resource intensive
    and could cause a peak in CPU use and have a negative effect on lets very loaded application server machines,
    thus causing a performance issuea during integrity checks !
     
  • If you are scanning file system wide and you do it frequent, be sure to provide “enough” resources or schedule the scan at a times that the Linux host will be less used !
     
  • Whenever you made any AIDE configuration changes, remember to initialize the database to create a baseline !

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Posted in Computer Security, Debian, Linux | 1 Comment »

Reinstall all Debian packages with a copy of apt deb package list from another working Debian Linux installation

Wednesday, July 29th, 2020

Reinstall-all-Debian-packages-with-copy-of-apt-packages-list-from-another-working-Debian-Linux-installation

Few days ago, in the hurry in the small hours of the night, I've done something extremely stupid. Wanting to move out a .tar.gz binary copy of qmail installation to /var/lib/qmail with all the dependent qmail items instead of extracting to admin user /root directory (/root), I've extracted it to the main Operating system root / directrory.
Not noticing this, I've quickly executed rm -rf var with the idea to delete all directory tree under /root/var just 3 seconds later, I've realized I'm issuing the rm -rf var with the wrong location WITH a root user !!!! Being scared on what I've done, I've quickly pressed CTRL+C to immedately cancel the deletion operation of my /var.

wrong-system-var-rm-linux-dont-do-that-ever-or-your-system-will-end-up-irreversably-damaged

But as you can guess, since the machine has an Slid State Drive drive and SSD memory drive are much more faster in I/O operations than the classical ATA / SATA disks. I was not quick enough to cancel the operation and I've noticed already some part of my /var have been R.I.P-pped in the heaven of directories.

This was ofcourse upsetting so for a while I rethinked the situation to get some ideas on what I can do to recover my system ASAP!!! and I had the idea of course to try to reinstall All my installed .deb debian packages to restore system closest to the normal, before my stupid mistake.

Guess my unpleasent suprise when I have realized dpkg and respectively apt-get apt and aptitude package management tools cannot anymore handle packages as Debian Linux's package dependency database has been damaged due to missing dpkg directory 

 

/var/lib/dpkg 

 

Oh man that was unpleasent, especially since I've installed plenty of stuff that is custom on my Mate based desktop and, generally reinstalling it updating the sytem to the latest Debian security updates etc. will be time consuming and painful process I wanted to omit.

So of course the logical thing to do here was to try to somehow recover somehow a database copy of /var/lib/dpkg  if that was possible, that of course led me to the idea to lookup for a way to recover my /var/lib/dpkg from backup but since I did not maintained any backup copy of my OS anywhere that was not really possible, so anyways I wondered whether dpkg does not keep some kind of database backups somewhere in case if something goes wrong with its database.
This led me to this nice Ubuntu thred which has pointed me to the part of my root rm -rf dpkg db disaster recovery solution.
Luckily .deb package management creators has thought about situation similar to mine and to give the user a restore point for /var/lib/dpkg damaged database

/var/lib/dpkg is periodically backed up in /var/backups

A typical /var/lib/dpkg on Ubuntu and Debian Linux looks like so:
 

hipo@jeremiah:/var/backups$ ls -l /var/lib/dpkg
total 12572
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Jul 26 03:22 alternatives
-rw-r–r– 1 root root      11 Oct 14  2017 arch
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 2199402 Jul 25 20:04 available
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 2199402 Oct 19  2017 available-old
-rw-r–r– 1 root root       8 Sep  6  2012 cmethopt
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    1337 Jul 26 01:39 diversions
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    1223 Jul 26 01:39 diversions-old
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  679936 Jul 28 14:17 info
-rw-r—– 1 root root       0 Jul 28 14:17 lock
-rw-r—– 1 root root       0 Jul 26 03:00 lock-frontend
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Sep 17  2012 parts
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    1011 Jul 25 23:59 statoverride
-rw-r–r– 1 root root     965 Jul 25 23:59 statoverride-old
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 3873710 Jul 28 14:17 status
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 3873712 Jul 28 14:17 status-old
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Jul 26 03:22 triggers
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Jul 28 14:17 updates

Before proceeding with this radical stuff to move out /var/lib/dpkg/info from another machine to /var mistakenyl removed oned. I have tried to recover with the well known:

  • extundelete
  • foremost
  • recover
  • ext4magic
  • ext3grep
  • gddrescue
  • ddrescue
  • myrescue
  • testdisk
  • photorec

Linux file deletion recovery tools from a USB stick loaded with a Number of LiveCD distributions, i.e. tested recovery with:

  • Debian LiveCD
  • Ubuntu LiveCD
  • KNOPPIX
  • SystemRescueCD
  • Trinity Rescue Kit
  • Ultimate Boot CD


but unfortunately none of them couldn't recover the deleted files … 

The reason why the standard file recovery tools could not recover ?

My assumptions is after I've done by rm -rf var; from sysroot,  issued the sync (- if you haven't used it check out man sync) command – that synchronizes cached writes to persistent storage and did a restart from the poweroff PC button, this should have worked, as I've recovered like that in the past) in a normal Sys V System with a normal old fashioned blocks filesystem as EXT2 . or any other of the filesystems without a journal, however as the machine run a EXT4 filesystem with a journald and journald, this did not work perhaps because something was not updated properly in /lib/systemd/systemd-journal, that led to the situation all recently deleted files were totally unrecoverable.

1. First step was to restore the directory skele of /var/lib/dpkg

# mkdir -p /var/lib/dpkg/{alternatives,info,parts,triggers,updates}

 

2. Recover missing /var/lib/dpkg/status  file

The main file that gives information to dpkg of the existing packages and their statuses on a Debian based systems is /var/lib/dpkg/status

# cp /var/backups/dpkg.status.0 /var/lib/dpkg/status

 

3. Reinstall dpkg package manager to make package management working again

Say a warm prayer to the Merciful God ! and do:

# apt-get download dpkg
# dpkg -i dpkg*.deb

 

4. Reinstall base-files .deb package which provides basis of a Debian system

Hopefully everything will be okay and your dpkg / apt pair will be in normal working state, next step is to:

# apt-get download base-files
# dpkg -i base-files*.deb

 

5. Do a package sanity and consistency check and try to update OS package list

Check whether packages have been installed only partially on your system or that have missing, wrong or obsolete control  data  or  files.  dpkg  should suggest what to do with them to get them fixed.

# dpkg –audit

Then resynchronize (fetch) the package index files from their sources described in /etc/apt/sources.list

# apt-get update


Do apt db constistency check:

#  apt-get check


check is a diagnostic tool; it updates the package cache and checks for broken dependencies.
 

Take a deep breath ! …

Do :

ls -l /var/lib/dpkg
and compare with the above list. If some -old file is not present don't worry it will be there tomorrow.

Next time don't forget to do a regular backup with simple rsync backup script or something like Bacula / Amanda / Time Vault or Clonezilla.
 

6. Copy dpkg database from another Linux system that has a working dpkg / apt Database

Well this was however not the end of the story … There were still many things missing from my /var/ and luckily I had another Debian 10 Buster install on another properly working machine with a similar set of .deb packages installed. Therefore to make most of my programs still working again I have copied over /var from the other similar set of package installed machine to my messed up machine with the missing deleted /var.

To do so …
On Functioning Debian 10 Machine (Working Host in a local network with IP 192.168.0.50), I've archived content of /var:

linux:~# tar -czvf var_backup_debian10.tar.gz /var
…

Then sftped from Working Host towards the /var deleted broken one in my case this machine's hostname is jericho and luckily still had SSHD and SFTP running processes loaded in memory:

jericho:~# sftp root@192.168.0.50
sftp> get var_backup_debian10.tar.gz
…

Now Before extracting the archive it is a good idea to make backup of old /var remains somewhere for example somewhere in /root 
just in case if we need to have a copy of the dpkg backup dir /var/backups

jericho:~# cp -rpfv /var /root/var_backup_damaged
…
 
jericho:~# tar -zxvf /root/var_backup_debian10.tar.gz 
jericho:/# mv /root/var/ /
…

Then to make my /var/lib/dpkg contain the list of packages from my my broken Linux install I have ovewritten /var/lib/dpkg with the files earlier backupped before  .tar.gz was extracted.

jericho:~# cp -rpfv /var /root/var_backup_damaged/lib/dpkg/ /var/lib/

 

7. Reinstall All Debian  Packages completely scripts

 

I then tried to reinstall each and every package first using aptitude with aptitude this is done with

# aptitude reinstall '~i'

However as this failed, tried using a simple shell loop like below:

for i in $(dpkg -l |awk '{ print $2 }'); do echo apt-get install –reinstall –yes $i; done

Alternatively, all .deb package reninstall is also possible with dpkg –get-selections and with awk with below cmds:

dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall | awk '{print $1}' > list.log;
awk '$1=$1' ORS=' ' list.log > newlist.log;
apt-get install –reinstall $(cat newlist.log)

It can also be run as one liner for simplicity:

dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall | awk '{print $1}' > list.log; awk '$1=$1' ORS=' ' list.log > newlist.log; apt-get install –reinstall $(cat newlist.log)

This produced a lot of warning messages, reporting "package has no files currently installed" (virtually for all installed packages), indicating a severe packages problem below is sample output produced after each and every package reinstall … :

dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'iproute' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'brscan-skey' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libapache2-mod-php7.4' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libexpat1:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libexpat1:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'php5.6-readline' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'linux-headers-4.19.0-5-amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libgraphite2-3:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libgraphite2-3:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libbonoboui2-0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libxcb-dri3-0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libxcb-dri3-0:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'liblcms2-2:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'liblcms2-2:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libpixman-1-0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libpixman-1-0:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'gksu' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'liblogging-stdlog0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'mesa-vdpau-drivers:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'mesa-vdpau-drivers:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libzvbi0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libzvbi0:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libcdparanoia0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libcdparanoia0:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'python-gconf' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'php5.6-cli' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libpaper1:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'mixer.app' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
…

After some attempts I found a way to be able to work around the warning message, for each package by simply reinstalling the package reporting the issue with

apt –reinstall $package_name


Though reinstallation started well and many packages got reinstalled, unfortunately some packages such as apache2-mod-php5.6 and other php related ones  started failing during reinstall ending up in unfixable states right after installation of binaries from packages was successfully placed in its expected locations on disk. The failures occured during the package setup stage ( dpkg –configure $packagename) …

The logical thing to do is a recovery attempt with something like the usual well known by any Debian admin:

apt-get install –fix-missing

As well as Manual requesting to reconfigure (issue re-setup) of all installed packages also did not produced a positive result

dpkg –configure -a
…

But many packages were still failing due to dpkg inability to execute some post installation scripts from respective .deb files.
To work around that and continue installing the rest of packages I had to manually delete all files related to the failing package located under directory 

/var/lib/dpkg/info#

For example to omit the post installation failure of libapache2-mod-php5.6 and have a succesful install of the package next time I tried reinstall, I had to delete all /var/lib/dpkg/info/libapache2-mod-php5.6.postrm, /var/lib/dpkg/info/libapache2-mod-php5.6.postinst scripts and even sometimes everything like libapache2-mod-php5.6* that were present in /var/lib/dpkg/info dir.

The problem with this solution, however was the package reporting to install properly, but the post install script hooks were still not in placed and important things as setting permissions of binaries after install or applying some configuration changes right after install was missing leading to programs failing to  fully behave properly or even breaking up even though showing as finely installed …

The final solution to this problem was radical.
I've used /var/lib/dpkg database (directory) from ther other working Linux machine with dpkg DB OK found in var_backup_debian10.tar.gz (linux:~# host with a working dpkg database) and then based on the dpkg package list correct database responding on jericho:~# to reinstall each and every package on the system using Debian System Reinstaller script taken from the internet.
Debian System Reinstaller works but to reinstall many packages, I've been prompted again and again whether to overwrite configuration or keep the present one of packages.
To Omit the annoying [Y / N ] text prompts I had made a slight modification to the script so it finally looked like this:
 

#!/bin/bash
# Debian System Reinstaller
# Copyright (C) 2015 Albert Huang
# Copyright (C) 2018 Andreas Fendt
# 
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
# 
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
# 
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
# 
# —
# This script assumes you are using a Debian based system
# (Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, #!), and have sudo installed. If you don't
# have sudo installed, replace "sudo" with "su -c" instead.
# 

pkgs=`dpkg –get-selections | grep -w 'install$' | cut -f 1 |  egrep -v '(dpkg|apt)'`

for pkg in $pkgs; do
    echo -e "\033[1m   * Reinstalling:\033[0m $pkg"    

    apt-get –reinstall -o Dpkg::Options::="–force-confdef" -o Dpkg::Options::="–force-confold" -y install $pkg || {
        echo "ERROR: Reinstallation failed. See reinstall.log for details."
        exit 1
    }
done
 

 debian-all-packages-reinstall.sh working modified version of Albert Huang and Andreas Fendt script  can be also downloaded here.

Note ! Omitting the text confirmation prompts to install newest config or keep maintainer configuration is handled by the argument:

 

-o Dpkg::Options::="–force-confold


I however still got few NCurses Console selection prompts during the reinstall of about 3200+ .deb packages, so even with this mod the reinstall was not completely automatic.

Note !  During the reinstall few of the packages from the list failed due to being some old unsupported packages this was ejabberd, ircd-hybrid and a 2 / 3 more.
This failure was easily solved by completely purging those packages with the usual

# dpkg –purge $packagename

and reruninng  debian-all-packages-reinstall.sh on each of the failing packages.

Note ! The failing packages were just old ones left over from Debian 8 and Debian 9 before the apt-get dist-upgrade towards 10 Duster.
Eventually I got a success by God's grance, after few hours of pains and trials, ending up in a working state package database and a complete set of freshly reinstalled packages.

The only thing I had to do finally is 2 hours of tampering why GNOME did not automatically booted after the system reboot due to failing gdm
until I fixed that I've temprary used ligthdm (x-display-manager), to do I've

dpkg –reconfigure gdm3

lightdm-x-display-manager-screenshot-gdm3-reconfige

 to work around this I had to also reinstall few libraries, reinstall the xorg-server, reinstall gdm and reinstall the meta package for GNOME, using below set of commands:
 

apt-get install –reinstall libglw1-mesa libglx-mesa0
apt-get install –reinstall libglu1-mesa-dev
apt install –reinstallgsettings-desktop-schemas
apt-get install –reinstall xserver-xorg-video-intel
apt-get install –reinstall xserver-xorg
apt-get install –reinstall xserver-xorg-core
apt-get install –reinstall task-desktop
apt-get install –reinstall task-gnome-desktop

 

As some packages did not ended re-instaled on system because on the original host from where /var/lib/dpkg db was copied did not have it I had to eventually manually trigger reinstall for those too:

 

apt-get install –reinstall –yes vlc
apt-get install –reinstall –yes thunderbird
apt-get install –reinstall –yes audacity
apt-get install –reinstall –yes gajim
apt-get install –reinstall –yes slack remmina
apt-get install –yes k3b
pt-get install –yes gbgoffice
pt-get install –reinstall –yes skypeforlinux
apt-get install –reinstall –yes vlc
apt-get install –reinstall –yes libcurl3-gnutls libcurl3-nss
apt-get install –yes virtualbox-5.2
apt-get install –reinstall –yes vlc
apt-get install –reinstall –yes alsa-tools-gui
apt-get install –reinstall –yes gftp
apt install ./teamviewer_15.3.2682_amd64.deb –yes

 

Note that some of above packages requires a properly configured third party repositories, other people might have other packages that are missing from the dpkg list and needs to be reinstalled so just decide according to your own case of left aside working system present binaries that doesn't belong to any dpkg installed package.

After a bit of struggle everything is back to normal Thanks God! 🙂 !
 

 

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Posted in Linux, Linux Package Management, System Administration | 1 Comment »

Removing exim and installing qmail / Generate and install pseudo mta dummy package on Debian / Ubuntu etc. .deb based Linux

Thursday, March 10th, 2016

debian-dummy-mta-package-install-howto-tux-mail-nice-mascot
If you happen to be installing Qmail Mail server on a Debian or Ubuntu (.deb) based Linux, you will notice by default there will be some kind of MTA (Mail Transport Agent) already installed mail-transfer-agent package will be installed and because of Debian .deb package depedency to have an MTA always installed on the system you will be unable to remove Exim MTA without installing some other MTA (Postix / Qmail) etc.

This will be a problem for those like me who prefer to compile and install Qmail from source, thus to get around this it is necessery to create a dummy package that will trick the deb packaging depencies that actually mta-local MTA package is present on the server.

The way to go here is to use equivs (Circumvent debian package dependencies):
 

debian:~# apt-cache show equivs|grep -i desc -A 10

Description: Circumvent Debian package dependencies
 This package provides a tool to create trivial Debian packages.
 Typically these packages contain only dependency information, but they
 can also include normal installed files like other packages do.
 .
 One use for this is to create a metapackage: a package whose sole
 purpose is to declare dependencies and conflicts on other packages so
 that these will be automatically installed, upgraded, or removed.
 .
 Another use is to circumvent dependency checking: by letting dpkg
 think a particular package name and version is installed when it

Btw creating a .deb dummy package will be necessery in many other cases when you have to install from some third party debian repositories or some old and alrady unmaintaned deb-src packages for the sake of making some archaic software to resurrect somewhere, so sooner or later even if you're not into Mail servers you will certainly need equivs.

Then install equivs and go on proceeding creating the dummy mail-transport-agent package
 

debian:~# cd /tmp debian:~# cp -rpf /usr/share/doc/equivs/examples/mail-transport-agent.ctl . debian:~# equivs-build mail-transport-agent.ctl


Above command will build and package /tmp/mta-local_1.0_all.deb dummy package.
So continue and install it with dpkg as you use to install debian packages
 

 

debian:~# dpkg -i /tmp/mta-local_1.0_all.deb
…


From then on you can continue your standard LWQ – Life with Qmail or any other source based qmail installation with:

 

 

./config-fast mail.yourmaildomain.net
…


So that's it now .deb packaging system consistency will be complete so standard security package updates with apt-get and aptitude updates or dpkg -i third party custom software insatlls will not be breaking up any more.

Hope that helped someone 🙂

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Qmail, System Administration, Various | No Comments »

Fixing Shellshock new critical remote bash shell exploitable vulnerability on Debian / Ubuntu / CentOS / RHEL / Fedora / OpenSuSE and Slackware

Friday, October 10th, 2014

Bash-ShellShock-remote-exploitable-Vulnerability-affecting-Linux-Mac-OSX-and-BSD-fixing-shellshock-bash-vulnerability-debian-redhat-fedora-centos-ubuntu-slackware-and-opensuse
If you still haven’t heard about the ShellShock Bash (Bourne Again) shell remote exploit vulnerability and you admin some Linux server, you will definitely have to read seriously about it. ShellShock Bash Vulnerabily has become public on Sept 24 and is described in details here.

The vulnerability allows remote malicious attacker to execute arbitrary code under certain conditions, by passing strings of code following environment variable assignments. Affected are most of bash versions starting with bash 1.14 to bash 4.3.
Even if you have patched there are some reports, there are other bash shell flaws in the way bash handles shell variables, so probably in the coming month there will be even more patches to follow.

Affected bash flaw OS-es are Linux, Mac OS and BSDs;

• Some DHCP clients

• OpenSSL servers that use ForceCommand capability in (Webserver config)

• Apache Webservers that use CGi Scripts through mod_cgi and mod_cgid as well as cgis written in bash or launching bash subshells

• Network exposed services that use bash somehow

Even though there is patch there are futher reports claiming patch ineffective from both Google developers and RedHat devs, they say there are other flaws in how batch handles variables which lead to same remote code execution.

There are a couple of online testing tools already to test whether your website or certain script from a website is vulnerable to bash remote code executions, one of the few online remote bash vulnerability scanner is here and here. Also a good usable resource to test whether your webserver is vulnerable to ShellShock remote attack is found on ShellShocker.Net.

As there are plenty of non-standard custom written scripts probably online and there is not too much publicity about the problem and most admins are lazy the vulnerability will stay unpatched for a really long time and we’re about to see more and more exploit tools circulating in the script kiddies irc botnets.

Fixing bash Shellcode remote vulnerability on Debian 5.0 Lenny.

Follow the article suggesting how to fix the remote exploitable bash following few steps on older unsupported Debian 4.0 / 3.0 (Potato) etc. – here.

Fixing the bash shellcode vulnerability on Debian 6.0 Squeeze. For those who never heard since April 2014, there is a A Debian LTS (Long Term Support) repository. To fix in Debian 6.0 use the LTS package repository, like described in following article.

If you have issues patching your Debian Wheezy 6.0 Linux bash, it might be because you already have a newer installed version of bash and apt-get is refusing to overwrite it with an older version which is provided by Debian LTS repos. The quickest and surest way to fix it is to do literally the following:


vim /etc/apt/sources.list

Paste inside to use the following LTS repositories:

deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://http.debian.net/debian squeeze-lts main contrib non-free
deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian squeeze-lts main contrib non-free

Further on to check the available installable deb package versions with apt-get, issue:



apt-cache showpkg bash
...
...
Provides:
4.1-3+deb6u2 -
4.1-3 -
Reverse Provides:

As you see there are two installable versions of bash one from default Debian 6.0 repos 4.1-3 and the second one 4.1-3+deb6u2, another way to check the possible alternative installable versions when more than one version of a package is available is with:



apt-cache policy bash
...
*** 4.1-3+deb6u2 0
500 http://http.debian.net/debian/ squeeze-lts/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
4.1-3 0
500 http://http.debian.net/debian/ squeeze/main amd64 Packages

Then to install the LTS bash version on Debian 6.0 run:



apt-get install bash=4.1-3+deb6u2

Patching Ubuntu Linux supported version against shellcode bash vulnerability:
A security notice addressing Bash vulnerability in Ubuntus is in Ubuntu Security Notice (USN) here
USNs are a way Ubuntu discloses packages affected by a security issues, thus Ubuntu users should try to keep frequently an eye on Ubuntu Security Notices

apt-get update
apt-get install bash

Patching Bash Shellcode vulnerability on EOL (End of Life) versions of Ubuntu:

mkdir -p /usr/local/src/dist && cd /usr/local/src/dist
wget http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/bash/bash-4.3.tar.gz.sig
wget http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/bash/bash-4.3.tar.gz
wget http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/gpgkey.asc
gpg --import gpgkey.asc
gpg --verify bash-4.3.tar.gz.sig
cd ..
tar xzvf dist/bash-4.3.tar.gz
cd bash-4.3
mkdir patches && cd patches
wget -r --no-parent --accept "bash43-*" -nH -nd
ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/gnu/bash/bash-4.3-patches/ # Use a local mirror
echo *sig | xargs -n 1 gpg --verify --quiet # see note 2

cd ..
echo patches/bash43-0?? | xargs -n 1 patch -p0 -i # see note 3 below

./configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/bin
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/bash-4.3
--without-bash-malloc
--with-installed-readline

make
make test && make install

To solve bash vuln in recent Slackware Linux:

slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade bash

For old Slacks, either download a patched version of bash or download the source for current installed package and apply the respective patch for the shellcode vulnerability.
There is also a GitHub project “ShellShock” Proof of Concept code demonstrating – https://github.com/mubix/shellshocker-pocs
There are also non-confirmed speculations for bash vulnerability bug to impact also:

Speculations:(Non-confirmed possibly vulnerable common server services):

• XMPP(ejabberd)

• Mailman

• MySQL

• NFS

• Bind9

• Procmail

• Exim

• Juniper Google Search

• Cisco Gear

• CUPS

• Postfix

• Qmail

Fixing ShellShock bash vulnerability on supported versions of CentOS, Redhat, Fedora

In supported versions of CentOS where EOL has not reached:

yum –y install bash

In Redhat, Fedoras recent releases to patch:

yum update bash

To upgrade the bash vulnerability in OpenSUSE:

zipper patch –cve=CVE-2014-7187

Shellcode is worser vulnerability than recent SSL severe vulnerability Hearbleed. According to Redhat and other sources this new bash vulnerability is already actively exploited in the wild and probably even worms are crawling the net stealing passwords, data and building IRC botnets for remote control and UDP flooding.

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Posted in Computer Security, Everyday Life, FreeBSD, Linux, System Administration, Various | 1 Comment »

Installation and Configuration of Clamav antivirus on Debian GNU / Linux

Monday, September 9th, 2013

Clamav logo installing Clamav antivirus to scan periodically Debian server websites for viruses

Clamav Antivirus is one of must have packages installed on a new Debian Linux server. It is not only necessary whether configuring a new Mail server be it Qmail or Postfix but is good to have to always check files on a Webserver. Until few years infecting of Sites with Viruses / Installing WebShells or Backdooring for further access using Perl or PHP vulnerable PHP code was not so common, However nowadays with increase of complexity of languages and increase of not security minded programmers this possibility dramatically increaed. Thus nowadays, whether I configure a new Apache + PHP + CGI support server I always install Clamav AV. Some might argue that Clamav Virus definitions are still too little compared to proprietary solutions like BitDefender / AVG or Avast but since my experience with this under Linux is not so bright as well as Clamav captures essential Viruses and Backdoors I still prefer to keep on with Clamav.  Even on home Desktops with Linux clamav is of use as there are plenty of free-ware software for Linux which come only distributed only in a binary form and hence its good to check them with clamav before use whether they don't contain some well known Rootkit or Virus. Over the years Clamav has done great job for me whether I had to clean up "hacked" hosts containing  script kiddie exploit scanners or Virus infected ELF binaries
.
1. Installing ClamAV in Debian Wheezy Linux

Before time there was a separate Debian repository called Volatille providing latest version release of Clamav, since Debian Squeeze Volatille project is discontinued, thus installing on Wheezy as a deb package is only available via standard Debian repositories.

apt-get update && apt-get --yes upgrade
...

apt-get install --yes clamav clamav-daemon

As package dependencies you get installed:

clamav clamav-base clamav-freshclam libbz2-1.0 libclamav1 libcurl3 libidn11 ucf

Clamav-Daemon will launch immediately after packages are installed and is available as process name /usr/sbin/clamd

# ps ax |grep -i clam
 2641 ?        Ssl    6:39 /usr/sbin/clamd
 2791 ?        Ss    12:04 /usr/bin/freshclam -d --quiet
12300 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep -i clam

2. Updating Clamav Antivirus Definitions

Its worthy say few words on clamav-freshclam as it is part of ClamAV which is used to update Clamav Virus definitions. Update of ClamAV vir definitions are updating automatically through /usr/bin/freshclam daemon which is started automatically by Debian postconfiguration scripts right after Clamav install.

Manual update of AV definitions can be done also with freshclam.

# freshclam
ClamAV update process started at Sun Sep  8 17:48:36 2013
main.cvd is up to date (version: 54, sigs: 1044387, f-level: 60, builder: sven)
daily.cvd is up to date (version: 17830, sigs: 1696886, f-level: 63, builder: neo)
bytecode.cld is up to date (version: 225, sigs: 42, f-level: 63, builder: dgoddard)
To keep an eye on definition auto-updates (useful to check where something fails), check out in /var/log/clamav/freshclam.log

A sure indication that Anvirus updates are conducting fine should be log records like:
 

Sun Sep  8 16:27:44 2013 -> ————————————–
Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013 -> Received signal: wake up
Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013 -> ClamAV update process started at Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013
Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013 -> main.cvd is up to date (version: 54, sigs: 1044387, f-level: 60, builder: sven)
Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013 -> daily.cld is up to date (version: 17830, sigs: 1696886, f-level: 63, builder: neo)
Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013 -> bytecode.cld is up to date (version: 225, sigs: 42, f-level: 63, builder: dgoddard)
Sun Sep  8 17:27:47 2013 -> ————————————–


3. Configuring ClamAV

For Desktop use clamav default config is pretty good. However for servers its good to raise  2 up MaxThreads:

By default MaxThreads is 12

MaxThreads 12

Change to from 30 to 80 depending on how powerful machine ClamAV runs, even on some servers more Clamav threads might be necessary

MaxThreads 30
Other value I like changing is SelfCheck 3600 is too long time for clamav Virus definitions integrity I prefer to set it to 600, i.e.

SelfCheck 600
By default ClamAV is also configured to scan archive files as well. However for this to work you will have to have previously installed unzip and unrar on system. If still you don't have them installed run:

# apt-get install --yes unrar unzip
...
Note that you will need to have non-free part of Debian deb repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list

Here is one of my sources.list
 

deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.debian.skynet.be/ftp/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.skynet.be/ftp/debian/ stable main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free

3. Scanning with ClamAV

# clamscan -r /tmp/
./dos-58.160.208.43: OK
./dos-108.18.38.140: OK
./dos-188.194.80.100: OK
./dos-91.224.160.135: OK
./dos-128.253.117.70: OK
./dos-128.172.143.110: OK
./dos-77.92.102.34: OK
./dos-195.230.5.12: OK
...
....
----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------
Known viruses: 2735887
Engine version: 0.97.8
Scanned directories: 1
Scanned files: 129
Infected files: 0
Data scanned: 0.00 MB
Data read: 0.00 MB (ratio 0.00:1)
Time: 4.769 sec (0 m 4 s)
-r flag stands for recursive scan – e.g. scan all sub-directories in directory and its content

To not flood your console / ssh connection one very useful option is -i (print only whetherinfected files are matched). Here is one more sample case:

# clamscan -r -i /var/tmp/
----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------
Known viruses: 2735887
Engine version: 0.97.8
Scanned directories: 1
Scanned files: 2
Infected files: 0
Data scanned: 0.26 MB
Data read: 0.13 MB (ratio 1.97:1)
Time: 4.824 sec (0 m 4 s)

 Whether you're on a physical server console and it has pc speaker or sound blaster use –bell option to ring a bell every time a Virus infection is found, for exmpl.

# clamscan -r -i --bell /var/www/ …

4. Scanning periodically and reporting with ClamAV directories with websites

A very common use of ClamAV is to just setup a scheduled cronjob once a month to scan, whether server folder containing a bunch of websites in separate Virtualhosts contain some viruses or malicious stuff. Then as administrator check those logs once a month to make sure server site or group of sites does not become banned in search engine (blocked by Google Chrome and Firefox as Virus hotbed) …
# crontab -u root -e
00 02 01 * * clamscan -r /var/www -l /var/log/websites-scan.log

Then once a month check out /var/log/websites-scan.log

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Posted in Computer Security, Linux, System Administration | No Comments »

How to make VPN PPTP (Point to Point Tunnel) Server on Debian Wheezy GNU / Linux

Thursday, September 5th, 2013

VPN pptp server linux debian logo

Creating VPN server for allowing users to connect is as early practice as the internet was used over Dial-Up modems. PPTP Connections were useful for separating user accounts traffic and easily keeping an eye on who connects to a server via phone line. Besides that VPN tunnels allows the user to connect to every possible running service locally on the server, meaning whether a user opens a VPN (PoPTOP) connection to the VPN server there is no need for port forwarding to local running server services.

Other advantages of plain VPN connection is it is a good way to grant access of Remote host not belonging to a network to have access to a distant local network using the internet as well as it is ultra easy to configure and use.
Even better PPTP is supported by virtually almost any modern operating system including all versions of Microsoft Windows.

As connection between client -> server is insecure and only password is transferred securily there is no complexity of SSL Certificate generation and Exchange like for instance whether configuring to use OpenVPN tunnel, IPsec or L2TP+IPsec.

Besides the many upmentioned advantages, there are some disadvantages of PPTP as it is unsecurely transferring data between VPN Client and VPN server.

After this short intro, here is how easy is to configure PPTP.

1. Install pptpd deb package

apt-get install pptpd

2. Edit /etc/pptpd.conf

vim /etc/pptpd.conf
Place near end of file:

localip 10.10.10.1
remoteip 10.0.10.2-250

localip variable sets local VPN server main IP and remoteip sets range of IPs in which VPN clients will be assigned IPs. As you see clients IPs will be assigned from;
10.0.10.2 to 10.0.10.250 .

Some other reasonable values for localip and remoteip are:

localip 192.168.1.6
remoteip 192.168.1.150-183,192.168.1.244

As you see it is possible to set only a set of few ranges of IP in class C network to be assigned new IPs on connect to PPTPD server.


3. Modify /etc/ppp/pptpd-options configuration

ms-dns 8.8.8.8
ms-dns 8.8.4.4
nobsdcomp
noipx
mtu 1490
mru 1490
I prefer setting Google's Public DNS for VPN clients use (ms-dns 8.8.8.8 … etc.), as they are often more reliable than provided ones by ISPs, however others might be happier with custom ones as they might be quicker to resolve.

4. Edit chap-secrets to place client authentication usernames and passwords

File should look something like:

# Secrets for authentication using CHAP
# client           server         secret                          IP addresses
internet pptpd qwerty
For multiple VPN users just add all user usernames and passwords. If you want to assign certain username IPs from above pre-selected range put write it too.

5. Restart PPTPD server script

/etc/init.d/pptpd restart
Restarting PPTP:
Stopping PPTP: pptpd.
Starting PPTP Daemon pptpd.
By default PPTP server listens for network connections via port 1723. If server launches properly port 1723 should be listening for connections.

netstat -etna|grep -i 1723
tcp       0           0          0.0.0.0:1723                  0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN       0        32810
6. Enable VPN server access to all nodes on local network

Enabling PPTP Client to access the whole network is tricky and very bad security practice especially if VPN server is not behind DMZ. Anyways allowing a client to all local network computers is often needed. This is done via;

– enabling IP Forwarding

To do so add in /etc/sysctl.conf

net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

i.e. exec:

echo 'net.ipv4.ip_forward=1' >> /etc/sysctl.conf
sysctl -p
 …

That's all now PPTP is ready to accept connections. I will not get into details how to configure VPN PPTP Connection from Windows host as this is an easy task and there are plenty of good tutorials online.
Cheers 😉

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Posted in Linux, System Administration, Various, Windows | 2 Comments »

How to Read Holy Bible on GNU / Linux with Xiphos

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

If you're a Christian and you need application to read the Holy Scriptures in Linux. You definitely have to take a look at Xiphos Open Source Bible Study tool.

Here is Xiphos deb package desciprtion;

linux:~# apt-cache show xiphos|grep -i description -A 4

 

Description: environment for Bible reading, study, and research
 Xiphos is a Bible study program for the GNOME desktop environment, based on The
 SWORD Project by the CrossWire Bible Society, a framework for developing Bible
 study tools and of associated texts such as commentaries and dictionaries.
 .

To install Xiphos on Debian, Ubuntu and other Deb derivatives run in terminal:

linux:~# apt-get --yes install xiphos
....
To run it further type in terminal:

hipo@linux:~$ xiphos

Xiphos American King james Holy_Bible on Debian Ubuntu GNU Linux screenshot

Default Holy Bible provided by Xiphos is American version of King James Holy Bible.

However a Holy Bible translation is available on almost any popular Language on earth and is easily installable via Xiphos Module Manager. Xiphos Module Manager uses text obtained from Crosswire  Bible Society – Sword Project.


Linux Xiphos Holy Bible reading GNOME tool Module Manager screenshot

To install your Homeland language Holy Scriptures translation choose whatever language via menus:

Edit -> Module Manager -> Install/Update -> Biblical Texts

Linux Holy Bible reading tool Xiphos choose bible texts in all country homeland language

For English Speaking people, there are some extra Books, Heretical texts well known in Christiandom as well as Concordance (Interpretation of Holy Bible writtings with some general marks on Bible verses).

Xiphos Linux bible reader program Extra General Books screenshot

Orthodoxy as you see in the screenshot doesn't have unfortunately nothing to do with Orthodox Christianity. Take few minutes and click on each of the books install them and check out what's inside. The books are interesting for anyone like me who holds deep interest in Christianity. Something else worthy to check out from Module Manager is Commentaries on Holy Bible unfortunately available only in German, English, Dutch and Finnish.

Xiphos module manager Linux commentaries

The Sword Project has  also few interesting sub-projects, worthy to check out whether you use Linux with KDE or for those who want read Holy Bible on Mac OS and IPhone.

BibleTime – A Free and Easy to Use Bible Reading Tool intended for Linux KDE environment users.

PocketSword – An Iphone Bible Study Open Source App

MacSword – is a free & open-source application for research and study of God and His Word. It is developed specifically for Macintosh computers running Mac OS X.

Alkitab Bible Study – An open source and free desktop Bible study software. It supports parallel view, commentaries, dictionaries, lexicons, daily devotions, with powerful search capability.

Xiphos Parallel View funtionality and Tabs are very handy as they offer the user a very easy way to open a number of Bible Translations in various languages and make comparison between different Holy Bible translations.
Reading in Parallel the Holy BIble in two or more different languages is a great way to learn quickly a new language. On below screenshot you see opened, American King James Holy Bible in Tab 1 and Bulgarian Language (the well known Tsarigrad Edition) in Tab 2

Linux Xiphos Bulgarian with two tabs American King James Translation and New Testament from 1914 known as Tsarigrad Edition

Well that's all, Happy Blessed Bible reading on your Linux Desktop 🙂

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Posted in Christianity, Everyday Life, Various | No Comments »

Preventing packages on Debian and Ubuntu Linux to not update on system updates

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

On Debian based GNU / Linux distros, there are some critical packages which need to be disabled to update during the common routine apt-get update && apt-get upgrade which is a almost daily part of Debian sysadmin living. Example for packages which are good to mark not to upgrade are for example; linux kernel, java virtual machine, adobe flash plugin,  etc.

Setting a package to omit upgrade on system package update for adobe flash plugin for example is with:

# echo adobe-flashplugin hold | dpkg –set-selections
debian:~# echo adobe-flash-properties-gtk hold | dpkg --set-selections
debian:~# echo flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound hold | dpkg --set-selections

To do deb package update on hold for kernel;

 

debian:~# echo linux-image-generic hold | dpkg --set-selections
debian:~# echo linux-image-3.2.0-38-generic | dpkg --set-selections

Do the same for as many packages which seem to break up on updates and when, you explicitly want remove the hold/s run:

debian:~# echo adobe-flashplugin install | dpkg --set-selections
....
debian:~# echo linux-image-generic install | dpkg --set-selections

 

 

 

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How to configure Matrox Graphics MGA G200 AGP on Debian and Ubuntu Linux

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

I just had to configure a Matrox Graphics MGA G200 AGP on a very old computer installed with Xubuntu 12.04. The Graphic card is not automatically detected and Xorg Linux server automatically runs X without generating any config in /etc/X11/xorg.conf after Xubuntu install. By default Linux uses the VESA driver for running X, the problem with VESA is it is very slow in videos and is only good for text reading and simple browsing. For watching video and Youtube, one needs to install the custom Video card driver on this host the Video card was identifying in lpsci as:

user@oldhost:~$ lspci |grep -i matrox
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G200 AGP (rev 03)

In deb package repositories, there is a special xorg MGA driver suited to run MGA cards, thus to use it I had to first install it with:

 

user@oldhost:~# apt-get install --yes xserver-xorg-video-mga
....
For allowing card to normally watch movies – you have to have installed a special video driver which is to be lated built from source:

user@oldhost:~#  apt-get -b source mga-vid-source
user@oldhost:~# dpkg -i /usr/src/modules/mga-vid/debian/mga-vid-source_2.6.32-1_i386.deb
....

There is also special program to test if MGA video driver is installed and work correctly mga_vid_test. To have it installed and use it you have to be running on 2.6.x Linux kernel cause it is a bit of old software plus it is necessary to have installed mga-vid-common i.e.:

user@oldhost:~# apt-get install --yes mga-vid-common
.....

I did a quick research online for other people who faced similar problem and found in Ubuntu Forums the following MGA G200 recommended xorg.conf
Below config was little modified by me as by default it was configured to run in 1280×1024 in 24 bit depth color. Usually 24 bit color is high for old cards, plus the resolution of 1280 seemed quite high for this piece of old iron, so I decided to use the better suiting old computers 1024×768 in 16 bit color depth.

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Posted in Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video | 1 Comment »

Improve default picture viewing on Slackware Linux with XFCE as Desktop environment

Saturday, March 17th, 2012

Default XFce picture viewer on Slackware Linux is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). Though GIMP is great for picture editting, it is rather strange why Patrick Volkerding compiled XFCE to use GIMP as a default picture viewer? The downsides of GIMP being default picture viewing program for Slackware's XFCE are the same like Xubuntu's XFCE risterroro, you can't switch easily pictures back and forward with some keyboard keys (left, right arrow keys, backspace or space etc.). Besides that another disadvantage of using GIMP are;
a) picture opening time in GIMP loading is significantly higher if compared to a simple picture viewer program like Gnome's default, eye of the gnome – eog.

b) GIMP is more CPU intensive and puts high load on each picture opening

A default Slackware install comes with two good picture viewing programs substitute for GIMP:
 

  • Gwenview

    Gwenview on Slackware Linux picture screenshot XFCE

  •  
  • Geeqie
  • Geeqie Slackware Linux Screenshot XFCE

    Both of the programs support picture changing, so if you open a picture you can switch to the other ones in the same directory as the first opened one.
    I personally liked more Gwenview because it has more intutive picture switching controls. With it you can switch with keyboard keys space and backspace

    To change GIMP's default PNG, JPEG opening I had with mouse right button over a pic and in properties change, Open With: program.

    XFCE4 Slackware Linux picture file properties window

    If you're curious about the picture on on all screenshots, this is Church – Saint George (situated in the city center of Dobrich, Bulgaria).
    St. Georgi / St. George Church is built in 1842 and is the oldest Orthodox Church in Dobrich.
    In the Crimean War (1853-1856) the church was burned down and was restored to its present form in 1864.

    gpicview is another cool picture viewing program, I like. Unfortunately on Slackware, there is no prebuild package and the only option is either to convert it with alien from deb package or to download source and compile as usual with ./configure && make && make install .
    Downloading and compiling from source went just fine on Slackware Linux 13.37gpicview has more modern looking interface, than gwenview and geeqie. and is great for people who want to be in pace with desktop fashion 🙂

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Posted in Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, System Administration | No Comments »

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