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CentOS 8 / Redhat 8 insert additional guests additions to VM to enable Fullscreen, Copy / Paste and Shared Folder from host OS

Monday, January 10th, 2022

My experience with enabling virtualbox additions guest tools on many of the separate Linux distributions throughout time is pretty bad as it always is a pain in the ass to enable fully functional full screen and copy paste for Virtualbox…

For those who installed it for a first time vbox guest addition tools for Virtualbox are additional software components added so the Emulated Operating system
could allow better screen resolution and better mouse integration support.

So far I've installed virtualbox additions tools to CentOS 7 and Debian Linux various releases and faced complications there as well.
Few days ago my colleague Georgi Stoyanov have installed CentOS 8.3 with current version of VirtualBox 6.1 (vesrsion from beginning of 2022) and he has also shared had issues with enabling the CentOS 8.3 Linux to work with guestadditions but eventually found a resolution.

Thus he has shared with me the solution and I share it with you, so hopefully someone else could enable Guesttools on his CentOS 8.3 with less digging online.
The error received is:

# ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Trying to install Guest Additions in RHEL 8.3.

VirtualBox Guest Additions: Starting.
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel
modules. This may take a while.
VirtualBox Guest Additions: To build modules for other installed kernels, run
VirtualBox Guest Additions: /sbin/rcvboxadd quicksetup
VirtualBox Guest Additions: or
VirtualBox Guest Additions: /sbin/rcvboxadd quicksetup all
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Building the modules for kernel
4.18.0-193.el8.x86_64.

VirtualBox Guest Additions: Look at /var/log/vboxadd-setup.log to find out what
went wrong
ValueError: File context for /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-6.0.20/other/mount.vboxsf already defined
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Running kernel modules will not be replaced until
the system is restarted
Press Return to close this window…

No idea what to do next. Been trying for sometime.

To enable guestaddtions in CentOS 8.3, e.g. get arount the error you have to:

1. Install all necessery dependncies RPMs required by GuestAddition tools

# dnf install tar bzip2 kernel-devel-$(uname -r) kernel-headers perl gcc make elfutils-libelf-devel

# dnf -y install gcc automake make kernel-headers dkms bzip2 libxcrypt-compat kernel-devel perl

2. Run below semanage and restorecon commands

# semanage fcontext -d /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-/other/mount.vboxsf
# restorecon /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-/other/mount.vboxsf

3. Insert Virtualbox guest additions ISO and Run it

Devices -> Insert Guest Additions CD Image

Click Run button to exec Vbox_GAs_6.0.18 script or run it manually

or mount it manually with mount command and execute the VBoxLinuxAdditions.run to do so:

$ cd /run/media/`whoami`/VB*
$ su
# ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
Installing additional modules …
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules. This may take a while.
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Running kernel modules will not be replaced until the system is restarted
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Starting.

4. Reboot the VM

# reboot

5. Check and Confirm Virtualbox guest additions are properly installed and running

# lsmod | grep vbox
…

6. Enable Copy / Paste from to Virttual Machine e.g. Shared Clipboard / Shared Folder etc.

The three options most useful besides the support for FullScreen OS emulation by Virtualbox to enable right after
guesttools is on are:

1. Devices -> Shared Clipboard -> Bidirectional
2. Devices -> Drag and Drop -> Bidirectional
3. Devices -> Shared Folders -> Shared Folder Settings

Tags: additions, CentOS, copy paste, enable, fullscreen, installed, Installing, log, mount, org, Reboot, Redhat, resolution, sudo, support, vm

Tags: additions, CentOS, copy paste, enable, fullscreen, installed, Installing, log, mount, org, Reboot, Redhat, resolution, sudo, support, vm
Posted in Linux, Various, Virtual Machines | No Comments »

List all existing local admin users belonging to admin group and mail them to monitoring mail box

Monday, February 8th, 2021

local-user-account-creation-deletion-change-monitor-accounts-and-send-them-to-central-monitoring-mail

If you have a bunch of servers that needs to have a tight security with multiple Local users superuser accounts that change over time and you need to frequently keep an have a long over time if some new system UNIX local users in /etc/passwd /etc/group has been added deleted e.g. the /etc/passwd /etc/group then you might have the task to have some primitive monitoring set and the most primitive I can think of is simply routinely log users list for historical purposes to a common mailbox over time (lets say 4 times a month or even more frequently) you might send with a simple cron job a list of all existing admin authorized users to a logging sysadmin mailbox like lets say:

Local-unix-users@yourcompanydomain.com

A remark to make here is the common sysadmin practice scenario to have local existing non-ldap admin users group members of whom are authorized to use sudo su – root via /etc/sudoers is described in my previous article how to add local users to admin group superuser access via sudo I thus have been managing already a number of servers that have user setup using the above explained admin group.

Thus to have the monitoring at place I've developed a tiny shell script that does check all users belonging to the predefined user group dumps it to .csv format that starts with a simple timestamp on when user admin list was made and sends it to a predefined email address as well as logs sent mail content for further reference in a local directory.

The task is a relatively easy but since nowadays the level of competency of system administration across youngsters is declinging -that's of course in my humble opinion (just like it happens in every other profession), below is the developed list-admin-users.sh

#!/bin/bash
# dump all users belonging to a predefined admin user / group in csv format
# with a day / month year timestamp and mail it to a predefined admin
# monitoring address
TO_ADDRESS="Local-unix-users@yourcompanydomain.com";
HOSTN=$(hostname);
# root@server:/# grep -i 1000 /etc/passwd
# username:x:username:1000:username,,,:/home/username:/bin/bash
# username1:x:username1:1000:username1,,,:/home/username1:/bin/bash
# username5:x:username1:1000:username5,,,:/home/username5:/bin/bash

ADMINS_ID='4355';
#
# root@server # group_id_ID='4355'; grep -i group_id_ID /etc/passwd
# …
# username1:x:1005:4355:username1,,,:/home/username1:/bin/bash
# username5:x:1005:4355,,,:/home/username5:/bin/bash

group_id_ID='215';
group_id='group_id';
FIL="/var/log/userlist-log-dir/userlist_$(date +"%d_%m_%Y_%H_%M").txt";
CUR_D="$HOSTN: Current admin users $(date)"; >> $FIL; echo -e "##### $CUR_D #####" >> $FIL;
for i in $(cat /etc/passwd | grep -i /home|grep /bin/bash|grep -e "$ADMINS_ID" -e "$group_id_ID" | cut -d : -f1); do \
if [[ $(grep $i /etc/group|grep $group_id) ]]; then
f=$(echo $i); echo $i,group_id,$(id -g $i); else echo $i,admin,$(id -g $i);
fi
done >> $FIL; mail -s "$CUR_D" $TO_ADDRESS < $FIL

list-admin-users.sh is ready for download also here

To make the script report you will have to place it somewhere for example in /usr/local/bin/list-admin-users.sh , create its log dir location /var/log/userlist-log-dir/ and set proper executable and user/group script and directory permissions to it to be only readable for root user.

root@server: # mkdir /var/log/userlist-log-dir/
root@server: # chmod +x /usr/local/bin/list-admin-users.sh
root@server: # chmod -R 700 /var/log/userlist-log-dir/

To make the script generate its admin user reports and send it to the central mailbox a couple of times in the month early in the morning (assuming you have a properly running postfix / qmail / sendmail … smtp), as a last step you need to set a cron job to routinely invoke the script as root user.

root@server: # crontab -u root -e
12 06 5,10,15,20,25,1 /usr/local/bin/list-admin-users.sh

That's all folks now on 5th 10th, 15th, 20th 25th and 1st at 06:12 you'll get the admin user list reports done. Enjoy 🙂

Tags: admin, Group, list, list-admin-users.shsudoers, list-user-admins.sh, mail, report, script, sudo

Tags: admin, Group, list, list-admin-users.shsudoers, list-user-admins.sh, mail, report, script, sudo
Posted in Linux, System Administration, Various | No Comments »

Preparing your Linux to work with the Cloud providers – Installing aws , gcloud, az, oc, cf CLI Cloud access command interfaces

Wednesday, October 10th, 2018

howto Install-Cloud-access-tools-for-google-aws-azure-openshift-cloud-foundryCloud_computing-explained-on-linux.svg

If you're a sysadmin / developer whose boss requires a migration of Stored Data, Database structures or Web Objects to Amazon Web Services / Google Clourd or you happen to be a DevOps Engineer you will certainly need to have installed as a minimumum amazon AWS and Google Clouds clients to do daily routines and script stuff in managing cloud resources without tampering to use the Web GUI interface.

Here is how to install the aws, gcloud, oc, az and cf next to your kubernetes client (kubectl) on your Linux Desktop.

1. Install Google Cloud gcloud (to manage Google Cloud platform resources and developer workflow

Here is few cmds to run to install gcloud, gcloud alpha, gcloud beta, gsutil, and bq commands to manage your Google Cloud from CLI

a.) On Debian / Ubuntu / Mint or any other deb based distro

# Create environment variable for correct distribution
export CLOUD_SDK_REPO="cloud-sdk-$(lsb_release -c -s)"

# Add the Cloud SDK distribution URI as a package source
# echo "deb http://packages.cloud.google.com/apt $CLOUD_SDK_REPO main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-cloud-sdk.list

# Import the Google Cloud Platform public key
$ sudo curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo apt-key add –

# Update the package list and install the Cloud SDK
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install google-cloud-sdk

b) On CentOS, RHEL, Fedora Linux and other rpm based ones

$ sudo tee -a /etc/yum.repos.d/google-cloud-sdk.repo << EOM
[google-cloud-sdk]
name=Google Cloud SDK
baseurl=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/repos/cloud-sdk-el7-x86_64
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/yum-key.gpg
https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/rpm-package-key.gpg
EOM

# yum install google-cloud-sdk

That's all now the text client to talk to Google Cloud's API gcloud is installed under
/usr/bin/gcloud

Latest install instructions of Google Cloud SDK are here.

2. Install AWS Cloud command line interface tool for managing AWS (Amazon Web Services)

AWS client is dependent on Python PIP so before you proceed you will have to install python-pip deb package if on Debian / Ubuntu Linux use apt:

# apt-get install –yes python-pip

It is also possible to install newest version of PIP a tiny shell script provided by Amazon get-pip.py

# curl -O https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
# python get-pip.py –user

# pip install awscli –upgrade –user

3. Install Azure Cloud Console access CLI command interface

On Debian / Ubuntu or any other deb based distro:

# AZ_REPO=$(lsb_release -cs)
# echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/azure-cli/ $AZ_REPO main" | \
$ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/azure-cli.list
# curl -L https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo apt-key add –
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https azure-cli

Finaly to check that Azure CLI is properly installed run simple login with:

$ az login

$ sudo rpm –import https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc
$ sudo sh -c 'echo -e "[azure-cli]\nname=Azure CLI\nbaseurl=https://packages.microsoft.com/yumrepos/azure-cli\nenabled=1\ngpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc" > /etc/yum.repos.d/azure-cli.repo'
$ sudo yum install azure-cli

$ az login

For Latest install instructions check Amazon's documentation here

4. Install OpenShift OC CLI tool to access OpenShift Open Source Cloud

OpenShift-Redhat-cloud-platform

Even thought OpenShift has its original Redhat produced package binaries, if you're not on RPM distro it is probably
best to install using official latest version from openshift github repo.

As of time of writting this article this is done with:

# wget https://github.com/openshift/origin/releases/download/v1.5.1/openshift-origin-client-tools-v1.5.1-7b451fc-linux-64bit.tar.gz
tar –xvf openshift-origin-client-tools-v1.5.1-7b451fc-linux-64bit.tar.gz

# # mv openshift-origin-client-tools-v1.5.1-7b451fc-linux-64bit oc-tool

# cd oc-tool
# echo'export PATH=$HOME/oc-tool:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc

To test openshift, try to login to OpenShift cloud:

$ oc login
Server [https://localhost:8443]: https://128.XX.XX.XX:8443

Latest install instructions on OC here

5. Install Cloud Foundry cf CLI Cloud access tool

a) On Debian / Ubuntu Linux based distributions, do run:

$ wget -q -O – https://packages.cloudfoundry.org/debian/cli.cloudfoundry.org.key | sudo apt-key add –
$ echo "deb https://packages.cloudfoundry.org/debian stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cloudfoundry-cli.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install cf-cli

b) On RHEL Enterprise Linux / CentOS and Fedoras

$ sudo wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/cloudfoundry-cli.repo https://packages.cloudfoundry.org/fedora/cloudfoundry-cli.repo
$ sudo yum install cf-cli

For latest install insructions on cf cli check Cloud Foundry's install site

There plenty of other Cloud providers with the number exponentially growing and most have their own custom cli tools to access but as there use is not so common as the 5 ones mentioned below, I've omited 'em. If you're interested to know the complete list of Cloud Providers providing Cloud Services check here.

6. Install Ruby GEMs RHC tools collection

If you have to work with Redhat Cloud Storage / OpenShift you will perhaps want to install also (RHC) Redhat Collection Tools.

Assuming that the Linux system is running an up2date version of ruby programming language do run:

root@jeremiah:~# gem install rhc
Fetching: net-ssh-5.0.2.gem (100%)
Successfully installed net-ssh-5.0.2
Fetching: net-ssh-gateway-2.0.0.gem (100%)
Successfully installed net-ssh-gateway-2.0.0
Fetching: net-ssh-multi-1.2.1.gem (100%)
Successfully installed net-ssh-multi-1.2.1
Fetching: minitar-0.7.gem (100%)
The `minitar` executable is no longer bundled with `minitar`. If you are
expecting this executable, make sure you also install `minitar-cli`.
Successfully installed minitar-0.7
Fetching: hashie-3.6.0.gem (100%)
Successfully installed hashie-3.6.0
Fetching: powerbar-1.0.18.gem (100%)
Successfully installed powerbar-1.0.18
Fetching: minitar-cli-0.7.gem (100%)
Successfully installed minitar-cli-0.7
Fetching: archive-tar-minitar-0.6.1.gem (100%)
'archive-tar-minitar' has been deprecated; just install 'minitar'.
Successfully installed archive-tar-minitar-0.6.1
Fetching: highline-1.6.21.gem (100%)
Successfully installed highline-1.6.21
Fetching: commander-4.2.1.gem (100%)
Successfully installed commander-4.2.1
Fetching: httpclient-2.6.0.1.gem (100%)
Successfully installed httpclient-2.6.0.1
Fetching: open4-1.3.4.gem (100%)
Successfully installed open4-1.3.4
Fetching: rhc-1.38.7.gem (100%)
===========================================================================

If this is your first time installing the RHC tools, please run 'rhc setup'

===========================================================================
Successfully installed rhc-1.38.7
Parsing documentation for net-ssh-5.0.2
Installing ri documentation for net-ssh-5.0.2
Parsing documentation for net-ssh-gateway-2.0.0
Installing ri documentation for net-ssh-gateway-2.0.0
Parsing documentation for net-ssh-multi-1.2.1
Installing ri documentation for net-ssh-multi-1.2.1
Parsing documentation for minitar-0.7
Installing ri documentation for minitar-0.7
Parsing documentation for hashie-3.6.0
Installing ri documentation for hashie-3.6.0
Parsing documentation for powerbar-1.0.18
Installing ri documentation for powerbar-1.0.18
Parsing documentation for minitar-cli-0.7
Installing ri documentation for minitar-cli-0.7
Parsing documentation for archive-tar-minitar-0.6.1
Installing ri documentation for archive-tar-minitar-0.6.1
Parsing documentation for highline-1.6.21
Installing ri documentation for highline-1.6.21
Parsing documentation for commander-4.2.1
Installing ri documentation for commander-4.2.1
Parsing documentation for httpclient-2.6.0.1
Installing ri documentation for httpclient-2.6.0.1
Parsing documentation for open4-1.3.4
Installing ri documentation for open4-1.3.4
Parsing documentation for rhc-1.38.7
Installing ri documentation for rhc-1.38.7
Done installing documentation for net-ssh, net-ssh-gateway, net-ssh-multi, minitar, hashie, powerbar, minitar-cli, archive-tar-minitar, highline, commander, httpclient, open4, rhc after 10 seconds
13 gems installed
root@jeremiah:~#

To start with rhc next do:

rhc setup
rhc app create my-app diy-0.1

and play with it to install software create services on the Redhat cloud.

Closure

This are just of the few of the numerous tools available and I definitely understand there is much more to be said on the topic.
If you can remember other tools tor interesting cloud starting up tips about stuff to do on a fresh installed Linux PC to make life easier with Cloud / PaaS / SaaS / DevOps engineer please drop a comment.

Tags: apt-get, AWS, az, cf, Cloud, cloud tools, com, docs, gcloud, google, Install, linux?, list, make cloud access from cli tools, oc, packages, sudo, work

Tags: apt-get, AWS, az, cf, Cloud, cloud tools, com, docs, gcloud, google, Install, linux?, list, make cloud access from cli tools, oc, packages, sudo, work
Posted in Cloud services, Linux, System Administration | No Comments »

FreeBSD post install configuration steps to make on fresh FreeBSD install to make ready for server and Desktop use

Saturday, October 28th, 2017

1. Update binary packages

First thing to do just like on any new operating system install is to update / patch the server

# freebsd-update fetch
# freebsd-update install

2. Update FreeBSD port packages

As a FreeBSD administrator you will need ports every now and then so make sure you have them at their latest release for your FBSD release

# pkg update
# pkg upgrade

3. Install editors and bash

# pkg install nano vim joe bash bash_completion

4. Install sudo

To be able to run commands without becoming superuser root just like on any Linux you will probably want to have sudo package installed

# pkg install sudo

Sudo config file is under /usr/local/etc/sudoers

To edit it with syntax check enabled use visudo

# visudo

…

# sudo pkg update

If you want a regular account to have root superuser edit / modify and do things permissions

# pw groupmod wheel -M your_user_name

Then to make the wheel permissions work add to sudoers:

%wheel ALL=(ALL=ALL) ALL

5. FreeBSD modify personal information for account

# chpass your_user_name

To change your account and others to use bash instead of default freebsd csh

# csh -s /bin/bash your_user_name

7. Set a Static IP address for a FreeBSD server and configure DNS

Edit /etc/rc.local to look something like so

#ifconfig_em0="DHCP"
ifconfig_em0="inet 192.168.1.100 netmask 255.255.255.0"
# default gateway
defaultrouter="192.168.1.1"

/etc/rc.conf is also the file where you can easily enable / disable freebsd startup scripts

To restart network interafaces just like Debian Linux's /etc/init.d/networking restart type

# service netif restart
# service routing restart

To set Google DNS in FreeBSD just like in Linux add the IPs with nameserver prefix to /etc/resolv.conf

# echo 'nameserver 8.8.8.8' >> /etc/resolv.conf
# echo 'nameserver 8.8.8.8' >> /etc/resolv.conf
# echo 'search your-domain-name' >> /etc/resolv.conf

– If you need to change the hostname of the FreeBSD server change in /etc/rc.conf

hostname="your-freebsdhostname"

– To add multiple IP addresses to a network interface on FBSD add line like below to /etc/rc.conf

ifconfig_em0_alias0="192.168.1.5 netmask 255.255.255.255"
ifconfig_em0_alias1="192.168.1.6 netmask 255.255.255.255"
…

To apply changes and bring up the newly set multiple IPs

# service netif restart

8. Setting up proper timezone

If for some reason the Time zone is improperly set during FreeBSD install, you can later set that with

# tzsetup

9. Set up ntp time server synchronization daemon

# vim /etc/rc.conf

ntpd_enable="YES"
ntpd_sync_on_start="YES"

First command will bring up NTP server at start up and second make it synchroniza with Internet NTP servers, to restart ntp so it set proper time
immediately

# service ntpd start

10. Add additional SWAP space to FreeBSD server after install

– First we need to create the swap file with command and then set up proper permissions for it

# truncate -S 3G /swapf
# chmod 0600 /swapf

– Then to make the swapf being used on boot we need to add it to /etc/fstab

# echo "md99 none swap sw,file=/swapf,late 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

To immediately apply the new added swap to be used by the system run:

# swapon -aqL

To check various things on how swap is configured use

# swapinfo -g

11. Configure Firewall in FreeBSD

# vim /etc/rc.conf

firewall_enable="YES"
firewall_script="/usr/local/etc/ipfw.rules"

A very basic firewall to add to ipfw.rules file would be something like so:

    $IPF 70 allow all from any to any out keep-state
    $IPF 80 allow icmp from any to any
    # open port ftp

    $IPF 110 allow tcp from any to any 21 in
    $IPF 120 allow tcp from any to any 21 out

    # 22 for ssh
    $IPF 130 allow tcp from any to any 22 in
    $IPF 140 allow tcp from any to any 22 out

    # mail port 25

    $IPF 150 allow tcp from any to any 25 in
    $IPF 160 allow tcp from any to any 25 out

    # dns (53) udp and tcp in
    $IPF 170 allow udp from any to any 53 in
    $IPF 175 allow tcp from any to any 53 in

    # dns (53) udp and tcp out
    $IPF 180 allow udp from any to any 53 out
    $IPF 185 allow tcp from any to any 53 out

    # http (80),
    $IPF 200 allow tcp from any to any 80 in
    $IPF 210 allow tcp from any to any 80 out
    # deny and log everything
    $IPF 500 deny log all from any to any

To launch the firewall

# service ipfw start

To list current FreeBSD Firewall rules use

# ipfw list

Finally if you need to check your connections to the server just like Linux's netstat you might consider using sockstat comand

# sockstat -4 -6
…

– 4 -6 will list you network connections for ipv4 and ipv6 both tcp and udp

Tags: chpass, freebsd, fresh install, howto, ifconfig, Networking, ntp, pkg, routing, server, sudo

Tags: chpass, freebsd, fresh install, howto, ifconfig, Networking, ntp, pkg, routing, server, sudo
Posted in Everyday Life, FreeBSD, System Administration, Various | No Comments »

How to install Winrar on Mac OS X on Console and Graphical Interface – IZIP and Keka Free archivers short review

Friday, February 19th, 2016

howto-install-winrar-free-gui-program-for-mac-osx-notebook-pc

If you're looking for just Mac OS X, console version of rar and unrar then standard WinRar website binaries for Mac should be perfect for you.
If you're an advanced Mac OS X user with UNIX background and you've already installed Mac Ports or Brew – The Missing package manager for Mac OS X
To install WinRar on Mac (with brew) with:

macosx# brew install unrar

If you're using MacPorts instead:

macosx:/home$ sudo port install unrar

However console version isn't the best choice for my wife which is not a console ninja, so I had to look and install some oher Graphic Interface program 🙂
As I don't like using AppleStore (I can't even properly register for an Apple Store ID,as I'm required to fill in my credit card … )
Hence I looked online on some WinRar dearchiver GUIs and found IZip which is natively a ZIP archiver but also supports .RAR Archives.
Though IZIp website give the impression IZip is a great tiny prog, once installing the .DMG downloaded from the website and installing into Applications it turned out IZip is currently crashing on the Mac Book Air with Mac OS X 10.8.5 – Mountain Lion …

If you want a simplistic interface program you would probably want to check out UnrarX though I personally didin't liked that one because it is not properly handing UTF-8 and CP-1251 filenames written in Russian, Bulgarian Cyrillic and probably also Chineese, Viatnamese and other exotic language encodings.
After few more minutes of searching I finally got KEKA – The Free Mac OSX file archiver.

Though the program Logo is a little scary, Keka turned to be very nice tiny, easy to install WinRAR GUI interfaced program for Mac OS X and the installation comes to standard download and run of .DMG file and moving it to the Finder Applications.

Once installed, if you turn to have a .rar file association issues (by default in my case) files were opened with VLC. To change the file type association of a certain file on the Mac I've had to press Command (button) + I over the .rar extensioned file, e.g:

Command + I
Click to expand the “Open with” section within that files info screen
From the pull down menu, select the application you want to open this specific file with
Close the Get Info window

change-mac-file-association-to-rar-kaka-free-winrar-winzip-archive-dearchive-macosx

Tags: association, best choice, DMG, file, How to, program, rar, sudo, turn, version

Tags: association, best choice, DMG, file, How to, program, rar, sudo, turn, version
Posted in Everyday Life, Mac OS X, Various | 1 Comment »

Fix “tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors” and its cause and solution

Monday, August 18th, 2014

fix-solve-tar-error-delayed-exit-from-previous-errors-tarball-error

tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

error is a very common error encountered when creating archives (or backing up server configurations / websites / sql binary data). The error is quite unexplanatory and whenever creating files verbose in order to see the files added to archve in "real time" with lets say:

tar -czvf /tmp/filename_backup_date-of-backup.tar.gz /home/websites /home/sql

its pretty hard to track on exactly which file is the backup producing the Error exit delayed from previous errors, this is especially the case whenever adding to archive directories containing millions of tiny few kilobyte sized files. Many novice on uncautious Linux admins , might simply ignore the warning if they're in a hurry / are having excessive work to be done as there will be .tar.gz backup produced and whenever uncompressed most of the files are there and the backup error would seem not of a big issue.

However as backuping files is vital stuff, especially when moving the files from a server to be decomissioned you have to be extra careful and make the backup properly, e.g. figure out the cause of the error, to do so log the full output of tar operations with tee command, like so:

tar -czvf /tmp/filename_backup_date-of-backup.tar.gz /home/websites/ /home/sql | tee /tmp/backup_tar_full_output.log

Then you will have to review the file and lookup for errors with less search string – / (slash) – look for "error" and "permission den" keywords and this should point you to what is causing the error. In cases when millions of files are to be archived, the log might grow really big and hard to process, therefore a much quicker way to understand what's happening is to only log and show in shell standard output last file error with > (shell redirect):

tar -czvf /tmp/filename_backup_date-of-backup.tar.gz /home/websites /home/sql > /tmp/backup_failure-cause.log

tar: www.ur-website.com-http/2.0.63/conf/tnsnames.ora.20080918: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names

The error indicates clearly the cause of error is lack of Permissions to read the file tnsnames.ora.20080918 so solution is to either grant permissions to non-root user with (chmod / chown) cmds, in my case grant perms to user hipo with which tar is ran, or run again the website backup with superuser, I usually just run with root user to prevent tampering with original permissions, e.g. to solve the error, either:

$ su root
# tar -czvf /tmp/filename_backup_date-of-backup.tar.gz /home/websites /home/sql

Or even better if sudo is installed and user is added to /etc/sudoers file

$ sudo tar -czvf /tmp/filename_backup_date-of-backup.tar.gz /home/websites /home/sql

Though permission errors is the most often reason for:

tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors, you should keep in mind that in some cases the error might be caused due to failing RAID membered disk drive or single hdd failure on systems that are not in some RAID array

Tags: Cannot, cause and solution, file, gz, home, log, root user, server, sudo, tar

Tags: Cannot, cause and solution, file, gz, home, log, root user, server, sudo, tar
Posted in Linux, Linux Backup tools, Remote System Administration, System Administration | No Comments »

Run 2 and more Skypes simultaneously on Mac OS X – Run multiple Skype acccounts on same Mac

Saturday, June 21st, 2014

run-2-and-more-skypes-simultaneously-on-mac-os-x-multiple-skype-account-login-on-mac
For people running Mac OS X, the question of how is it possible to use 2 skype accounts in parallel on Mac probably makes good sense?

I don't own a Mac notebook and thefore I'm a Mac newbie, however, I'm into situation where I and my wife Svetlana went (for 3 days) to my hometown Dobrich and we have with us only her Mac OS X powered Mac Book air.

One user is already logged in Skype, (my wife) is expecting some relatives and friends to contact us and same time I had to login to check few servers via ssh and discuss some server downtime issues from yesterday in Skype .
Thus we need 2 skype instances to run separately on her Macbook air powered PC with Mac OS X Leopard

Earlier I've blogged how to make 2 and more Skype accounts work simultaneously on one Windows PC because I had to set it up for a company, in this short article I will explain how is possible to run many skype clients on Mac OS X.

1. Open Mac Terminal from Finder

finder-terminal-screenshot-mac-os-x-leopard-run-many-skypes-mac-os

2. In Terminal run the first Skype Instance

Type in Terminal:

open /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype

3. Run Second Skype instance

In older Skype Mac OS versions, I read the

/secondary

Skype command option was there and could be used to run a second parallel skype instance on Mac, however in newer releases this option was removed and if you try to invoke it warning window pops up saying an instance is already running.

mac-os-x-you-have-another-copy-of-skype-running-screenshot

To get around the issue and run the second Skype, quickest way is to run another Skype client under privileged user through sudo command (this is unsecure – but anyways as Mac OS is proprietary and we don't have access to code and probably there are tons of spy and report software integrated into the OS, it doesn't really matter.)

mac-os-x-skype-run-screenshot-pic

To get around the issue and run the second Skype, quickest way is to run another Skype client under privileged user through sudo command (this is unsecure – but anyways as Mac OS is proprietary and we don't have access to code and probably there are tons of spy and report software integrated into the OS, it doesn't really matter.)

4. Script it into 2nd_skype.sh for later use

To run and use two parallel skypes regularly it might be useful to make shell script out of it and place it somewhere, 2nd_skype.sh script should be something like:

#!/bin/bash open /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype sudo /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype

Then make the script executable with:

chmod a+x 2nd_skype.sh

5. Run more than 2 Skypes (Run multiple Skypes on same Mac PC hack)

There is another "hack" method with deleting the Skype.pid (Process ID). Skype recognize where it is running by checking its Skype.pid on start up.

Deleting the pid after each next Skype client launch, allow the user to run as many Skypes as you want on Mac OS X but it is not clear for how long it time it will work.

rm -f ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/Skype.pid

Then launch again Skype in background from Mac Terminal

open -nW '/Application/Skype.app' &

In case if you wonder why the open command is used, since above line could be run also directly and Skype will pop-up, by using open command you instruct the program to detach itself from Terminal from which it run, so later if Terminal is closed Skype app. will not terminate.

Another approach is to create, a many users lets say 5 users and use the Skype sudo run method each client with a separate user.

sudo user1 /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype
sudo user2 /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype
sudo user3 /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype
sudo user4 /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype
sudo user5 /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype

I enclose the script with the custom icon (Skype) ready to be launched and Voila, on script launch Skype multiple login prompts pops up.

For the lazy ones who don't want to tamper with writting scripts or doing hacks to run Skype multiple times on Mac there is even a Multi Skype Launcher app for Mac.

Tags: Applications Skype, check, code, command, contact, Deleting, good, Mac Book, make, OS, pops, question, run, sense, shell script, software, sudo, yesterday

Tags: Applications Skype, check, code, command, contact, Deleting, good, Mac Book, make, OS, pops, question, run, sense, shell script, software, sudo, yesterday
Posted in Curious Facts, Everyday Life, Mac OS X, Various | 3 Comments »

Play Dune2 on Debian Linux with dosbox – Dune 2 Mother of all Real Time Strategy games

Saturday, March 1st, 2014

Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (known also as Dune II: Battle for Arrakis in Europe is a game that my generation will never forget. Dune 2 is the "first" computer Real Time Strategy (RTE) game of the genre of the Warcraft I and Warcraft II / III and later Command and Conquer – Red Aleart, Age of Empires I / II and Starcraft …

I've grown up with Dune2 and the little computer geek community in my school was absolutely crazy about playing it. Though not historically being the first Real Time Strategy game, this Lucas Inc.
game give standards that for the whole RTE genre for years and will stay in history of Computer Games as one of best games of all times.

I've spend big part of my teenager years with my best friends playing Dune2 and the possibility nowadays to resurrect the memories of these young careless years is a blessing. Younger computer enthusiasts and gamers probably never heard of Dune 2 and this is why I decided to place a little post here about this legendary game.

dune-2-tank-vehicle - one of best games computer games ever

Its worthy out of curiosity or for fun to play Dune 2 on modern OS be it Windows or Linux. Since Dune is DOS game, it is necessary to play it via DOS emulator i.e. – (DosBox).
Here is how I run dune2 on my Debian Linux:

1. Install dosbox DOS emulator

apt-get install --yes dosbox

2. Download Dune2 game executable

You can download my mirror of dune2 here

Note that you will need unzip to uanrchive it, if you don't have it installed do so:

apt-get install --yes unzip

cd ~/Downloads/ wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/dune-2.zip

3. Unzip archive and create directory to mount it emulating 'C:\' drive

mkdir -p ~/.dos/Dune2 cd ~/.dos/Dune2
unzip ~/Downloads/dune-2.zip

4. Start dosbox and create permanent config for C: drive auto mount

dosbox

To make C:\ virtual drive automatically mounted you have to write a dosbox config from inside dbox console

config -writeconf /home/hipo/.dosbox.conf
My home dir is in /home/hipo, change this with your username /home/username

Then exit dosbox console with 'exit' command

To make dune2 game automatically mapped on Virtual C: drive:

echo "mount c /home/hipo/.dos" >> ~/.dosbox.conf
Further to make dosbox start each time with ~/.dosbox.conf add alias to your ~/.bashrc

vim ~/.bashrc echo "alias dosbox='dosbox -conf /home/hipo/.dosbox.conf'" >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc
Then to run DUNE2 launch dosbox:

dosbox

and inside console type:

c: cd Dune2 Dune2.exe

dune2-first-real-time-strategy-game-harkonen-screenshot

For the lazy ones who would like to test dune you can play dune 2 online on this website

Tags: alias, bashrc, best games, Computer Games, computer geek, config, debian linux, directory, DoS, dosbox, Download Dune2, drive, echo, exit, game, games, history, home, Install, Linux, Lucas Inc, OS, Play, Real Time Strategy, RTE, Start, sudo, unzip, Windows, zip

Non-free packages to install to make Ubuntu Linux Multimedia ready / Post install packages for new Ubuntu installations

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

1. Add Medibuntu package repository

root@ubuntu:~# wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list \ http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list \ && apt-get --quiet update \ && apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring \ && apt-get --quiet update
2. Enable Ubuntu to play Restricted DVD
root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install --yes libdvdread4 ... root@ubuntu:~# /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

After that VLC will be ready to play DVDs for some programs which was compiled without DVD, source rebuilt is required.

If DVDs hang you might need to set a Region Code with regionset:

# regionset

3. Install non-free codecs

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install non-free-codecs

4. Install Chromium ffmpeg nonfree codecs

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install chromium root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-nonfree

5. Install w32codecs / w64codecs

Depending on the Ubuntu Linux installation architecture 32/64 bit install w32codecs or w64codecs

For 32 bit (x86) Ubuntu install w32codecs:

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install w32codecs

For 64 bit arch Ubuntu:

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install w64codecs

6. Install ubuntu-restricted-extras meta package

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

7. Install cheese for webcam picture/video snapshotting

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install cheese

8. Install GIMP, Inkscape, xsane,sane, shotwell etc.

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get --yes install sane xsane gimp inkscape gimp-data-extras gimp-plugin-registry \ blender gcolor2 showtwell bluefish kompozer

9. Install multimedia Sound & Video utilities

Install Subtitle editor, video editiking , sound editing, mp3 player, iso mounters, DVD/CD Burners

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install rhythmbox banshee smplayer mplayer \ realplayer audacity brasero jokosher istanbuk gtk-recordMyDesktop \acetoneisohexedit furiusisomount winff fala audacious dvdstyler lives hydrogen subtitleeditor gnome-subtitles electricsheep k3b

10. Install CD / DVD RIP tools

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install acidrip sound-juicer ogmrip thoggen
11. Install chat messanger programs, Browsers, mail pop3 clients, torrent, emulators, ftp clients etc.

apt-get install seamonkey thunderbird transmission transmission-gtk gbgoffice kbedic \ pidgin openoffice.org gxine mozilla-plugin-vlc wine dosbox samba filezilla amsn ntp \epiphany-browser ntpdate desktop-webmail alltray chmsee gftp xchat-gnome ghex \gnome-genius bleachbit arista

12. Install Non-Free Flash Player

Unfortunately Gnash is not yet production ready and crashes in many websites …

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound swfdec-gnome

13. Install Archive / Unarchive management programs

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install unace unrar zip unzip p7zip-full p7zip-rar sharutils rar uudeview \ mpack lha arj cabextract file-roller

15. Install VirtualBox and QEmu

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install qemu-launcher qemu-kvm-extras virtualbox virtualbox-ose \ virtualbox-ose-guest-dkms virtualbox-ose-guest-dkms

This should be enough to use Ubuntu normally for multimedia Desktop just as MS Windows for most of the daily activities.
Am I missing some important program?

Tags: amp, architecture, audacity, Auto, banshee, bit, blender, bluefish, cd burners, Chromium, Draft, editing, editing mp3, ffmpeg, free codecs, gcolor, inkscape, Install, installation, ISO, libdvdread, Linux, linux multimedia, list, lsb, Medibuntu, meta package, org, output document, package, player, plugin registry, regionset, repository, root, sane, shafter, shotwell, showtwell, smplayer, Sound, sound editing, Sound Video, subtitle editor, sudo, Ubuntu, ubuntu linux, Ubuntu Linux Multimedia, video, video utilities, VirtualBox, VLC, wget, WinFF, x86

How to fix multiple instance music streams with sound card (Intel 82801I ICH9 Family) alsa sound problems on Ubuntu 11.04 GNU / Linux

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Ubuntu Logo Sound / Pulseaudio multiple sound channel issues

The Ubuntu Linux installed previously on Acer ASPIRE 5736Z on my sisters notebook works quite fine. However today she complained about an issue with her sound. The explanation of the problem she faced is:

When she plays a movie file and pauses it and then switches to a music player, suddenly the notebook sound disappears completely until she restarts all the running programs using the sound server. The Acer Aspire is used with a GNOME Desktop, hence my bet was the issues are most probably caused by some kind of mess happening inside Pulseaudio or the way Alsa loaded kernel drivers handles the multiple sound channel streams.

I’m using GNU / Linux for more than 11 years now and I have faced the same sound issues so many times, so when I heard about the problem I thought its pretty normal.
Anyways, what was really irritating in these situation is that when her laptop sound disappears a video or sound files which are to be played by Mozilla Firefox Browser or Chrome are also loosing the sound.
This causes big issues, especially taking in consideration the fact that she had no idea about computers and is a GUI Desktop user, who have no idea how to restart the pulseaudio server to fix the problem etc.

As a good brother, I took the time to check about the issues related to the specific model of Audio Module Hardware / Sound Card, first I checked the exact model of audio the Acer Aspire 5736Z is equipped with:

stanimiraaaa@Ubuntu-Aspire-5736Z:~$ lspci |grep -i audio 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)

I checked about any reported other users issues on the net and I found a user somewhere (lost the link), complaining he is experiencing the same sound oddities on his Acer ASPIRE

The fix he suggested is actually quite simple and comes to adding a simple line to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf :

stanimiraaaa@Ubuntu-Aspire-5736Z:~$ sudo su - [sudo] password for stanimiraaaa: root@Ubuntu-Aspire-5736Z:~# echo 'options snd_hda_intel model=auto' >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Next I restartarted to make the new settings take effect. Its also possible to do it without restart, by unloading and loading the alsa module but I’m a lazy kind of person and the machine is notablyunimportant so why should I bother 😉

One important note here is that I removed also an .asoundrc file, that I created some long time ago and this file might have been creating also some sound issues, the content of ~/.asoundrc, before I delete it in her home user, was like so:

stanimiraaaa@Ubuntu-Aspire-5736Z:~$ cat ~/.asoundrc pcm.!default { type hw card 1 device 0 } ctl.!default {type hw card 1 device 0 } stanimiraaaa@Ubuntu-Aspire-5736Z:~$ rm -f .asoundrc

Doing this minor changes to the Ubuntu system erradicated the sound problems and now the sound with simultaneous sound channel streams works just perfect! Thx God 😉

Tags: alsa, asoundrc, audio controller, bet, card, Chrome, consideration, Desktop, desktop user, exact model, explanation, file, firefox browser, Gnome, gnome desktop, gnu linux, hardware sound, hd, instance, intel corporation, kernel drivers, laptop, mess, modprobe, Module, movie file, Mozilla, music player, music streams, notebook, oddities, player, running programs, sound card, sound files, sound server, sudo, time, type, video

☩ Walking in Light with Christ – Faith, Computing, Diary

Posts Tagged ‘sudo’

FreeBSD post install configuration steps to make on fresh FreeBSD install to make ready for server and Desktop use

How to install Winrar on Mac OS X on Console and Graphical Interface – IZIP and Keka Free archivers short review

Run 2 and more Skypes simultaneously on Mac OS X – Run multiple Skype acccounts on same Mac

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