Posts Tagged ‘use’

Switching from PasswordSafe to Keepass database, migrating .psafe3 to .kdbx format howto

Thursday, February 23rd, 2023

passwordsafe-to-keepass-migration-logo

I have been using PasswordSafe for many years within my job location as system administrator on the Windows computers I do use as dumb hosts to administrate remotely via ssh servers, develop code in bash / perl or just store different SysAdmin management tools and interfaces passwords. The reason behind was simply that I come out from a Linux background as I've used for daily Sysadmin job for many years GNU / Linux and there I always prefer GNOME (gnome GTK interface) in favour of KDE's (QT Library), and whence I came to work for the "Evil" Windows oriented world of corporations  for the sake of Outlook use and Office 365 as well as Citrix accessibility i've become forced by the circumstances to use Windows. 
Hence for a PasswordManager for Windows back in the years, I preferred the simplicity of interface of PasswordSafe instead of Keepass which always reminded me of the nasty KDE.
PasswordSafe is really cool and a handy program and it works well, but recetnly when I had to store many many passwords and easily navigate through each of it I realized, by observing colleagues, that KeePass as of time of writting this article is much more Powerful and easy to use, as I can see all records of a searched passwords on a Single screen, instead of scrolling like crazy with PasswordSafe through the passowrds.

I didn’t really feel like cutting and pasting every field for all my passwords (plus I started experiencing some PasswordSafe copy / paste passwords issues – maybe not related to PasswordSafe itself so this was the turning point I decided to migrate to Keepass.

For that, started looking at the import export functions for each program. 

After a quick search, I found few articles online explaining on how the migration of PasswordSafe to KeePass can be easily handled as the versions of Keepass and Password safe are moving all the time, of course usually some of the guides to be found online are never competely upto date, so I had to slightly modify one of the articles and come up with this one 🙂 .
 

  •  My PasswordSafe program that keeps my account password records and notes is version is
    V 3.59 built on May 28 2022 and is running on my Windows 10 OS 64 bit release
  • The installed KeePass version to where I have migrated the Pwsafe password database Successfully is 2.48 64 Bit
     
  1. Use the Password Safe function to export to XML file Format
    (File -> Export To -> XML Format )

     

    pwsafe.screenshot-export-password-psafe3
     

  2. Import the text file into KeePass
    (File->Import From-> Password Safe XML file)

     

    import-file-data-keepass-screenshot

This process worked quite fine. All of the passwords were imported .
Despite the importing (expected small glitches – please recheck that all was imported fine, before joy), the process is quicker than copy/pasting every field for each entry.

For those of you who are more worried about security than I am, you know this is a very insecure method to transfer passwords. For others, you may wish to export the (unencrypted) text file to a Veracrypt – that is a Truecypt fork (as nowadays obsolete unmaintaned and probably insecury) – a Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software to prepare  Veracrypt  partition and / or use Eraser on the text file once you’re finished with it or use another of the free Veracrypt open-source (free software) alternatives such DiskCryptor or even the proprietary Windows BitLocker / CipherShed / Axcrypt or some other encryption alternative software for Windows XP / 2000 / 7 10 that is out there.

NB! Please  don’t do this on a public computer or a PC that you don't administrate.
You never know who might find your passwords or might be sniffing on your OS, as today there are so many devices that perhaps are hacked and listening and collecting password datas  🙂

That's it now I enjoy my KeePass but I'm thankful to PasswordSafe developers, who have easified my password management Virtual life for years 🙂
Any hints on how you migrated PasswordSafe to Keepass are mostly welcome. Also will be nice to hear of hard-core PasswordSafe hints or plugins that can power-up the password storage, maybe I can get convinced back to return back to PasswordSafe 🙂
 

iSH, the best free SSH / Telnet client for iOS iPhone, iPad equivallent of MobaXterm and fully functional Alpine Linux emulator

Wednesday, February 8th, 2023

ish-linux-terminal-emulator-for-iphone-ipad-ios-logo-screenshoticon

Since few months I've switched my old BLU r1 HD Phone (a great old low budget phone for its price) to a friend's iPhone 10 ( X ) who gifted it for me. Coming from Android world, everyone who has experience with it is a pain in the ass as some of the Apps, which are into Google's play store does not have the same equivalent into Apple's install Package manager tool AppStore. Some of the crucial tools which I was interested as a freshly new migrated user from Android to iPhone was to have a decent SSH / Telnet client and Terminal, with which I can easily connect to my Linux servers both home and work. 

As Android Phone user, to connect and manage my SSH sessions I used most often some of the most popular Connectbot / SSHDroid / JuiceSSH.
On Android I've usually installed all of these tools but most frequently used Connectbot, which quickly become my favourite SSH client for Android over time.

The reasons why I really loved Connectbot and used it on Android OS in short:

  • It is Completely free
  • Ad-free
  • Open-source (too bad not Free software but still step better)
  • Copy and paste text between Applications
  • Customizable interface (i.e. font size, keyboard layout, SSH auth agent, etc.)


connectbot-android-ssh-remote-connect-client-screenshot

I've seen some people used and preferred Termius but never myself really liked this client, as it was including some Advertisements or for don't remember why reason.
Switching to iOS mobile operating system, of course was quite a shock especially the moment I found out the standard loved SSH Remote Client programs are used are not available or have only a paid version. Thus it took me quite a while of a research and googling until I found some decent stuff.

termius-ssh-telnet-client-ios-screenshot

Tried for a time with Termius as well but again, its Ads and lack of some functionality pissed me off, so I've moved on to Shelly.

shelly-iphone-ssh-telnet-client-ios-screenshot

Shelly is really not a bad tool but has limitation over the SSH sessions you can add and other limitations, which can only be unlocked with an "Upgrade", to its paid version, thus I decided after few weeks of attempts to make it my remote server management mobile tool for iPhone, I've dropped it off as well.

Then I found the Blink Shell App – Blink Shell is a professional, desktop grade terminal for iOS. As overall the tool is really great and is easy to use but again to have it used in its full power you need the paid version and until you pay for it every now and then you got interruption of your shell for some really annoying ads.
Thus even though I used it for a times this few tools with whom basicly you can do basic remote ssh / telnet session operations eventually,  started looking for a better SSH Client Free alternative for iPhone Users.

Then came a friend at home for a dinner my dear friend Milen (Static) and he show me iOS.
The moment I saw this tool I totally loved it, for its simplicity and its resemblance to a classical TTY Physical old Linux console I used back in the days and its ability to resemble easily any improved functionaltiy through simple screen (multiple session management) command tool or tmux.

Wait, what's iSH ? And why it is the Best SSH / Telnet client to manage your servers remotely on iOS Mobiles (iPhone and IPads) ? 

iSH is a project to get a Linux shell environment running locally on your iOS device, using a usermode x86 emulator.


In other wors iSH is Linux emulator with busybox and a package ports for many of the standard Linux tools you get by simple apt-get / yum or if I have to compare you get via the MobaXterm's advanced apt-cyg (Cygwin packages) tool capabilities.

Once iSH is installed it comes with pre-installed apk command line package management tool, with which you can install stuff like openssh-client / screen / tmux / mc (midnight commander) etc. apk, is an apt like command like tool which uses as a basis for installing its packages Alpine Linux repositories.
Alpine Linux is perhaps little known as it is not one of these main stream disributions, such as Fedora or Ubuntu, but for those more concerned about security  Alpine Linux is well known as it is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox. What makes the Linux even more attractive and perhaps the reason why the iSH developers decided to use it as a basis for their iSH emulator is it being actively developed and its tightened security makes it a good compliment to the quite closed and security focused mobile platform iOS.

iSH is available straight from AppStore , so to use it install it and run it (it is really a great news that iOS does not require iphone to be jailbreak – ed, and it is an ordinary installable software straight from AppStore):
iSH, already comes with some of the standard programs you would expect in a Linux environment such as Vi, wget, zip / unzip, and tar.
However to fit it better for my use over ssh and improve its capabilities, as well as support and use multiple Virtual windows ssh, just like you do on a Linux xterm
run from ish shell: 

# apk add openssh-client
# apk add screen
# apk add vim
# apk add mc


ish-screenshot-terminal3-linux-emulator-iphone-alpine

ish-screenshot-terminal2-linux-emulator-iphone-alpine

ish-screenshot-terminal1-linux-emulator-iphone-alpine-linux

I also like to have a Midnight Commander and VIM Text editor installed out of the box to be able to move around in Ncurses interface through my iPhone.

ish-iphone-keyboard-key-shortcuts

Note that, just like most GNU / Linux distributions, iOS shell will run a normal bash shell.
From there on to use iSH as my default SSH client and enable my just installed GNU screen some Windowing beauty for readability whence I use the screen with multiple ssh logins to different servers as well make the screen Virtual consoles to have ability for scroll back and scroll up of console text to work, I do set up the following .screenrc inside my /home/iPhoneuser

The .screenrc to setup on the iSH to easify your work with screen is as follows:
 

# An alternative hardstatus to display a bar at the bottom listing the
# windownames and highlighting the current windowname in blue. (This is only
# enabled if there is no hardstatus setting for your terminal)
hardstatus on
hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string "%{.bW}%-w%{.rW}%n %t%{-}%+w %=%{..G} %H %{..Y} %m/%d %C%a "
# Enable scrolling fix the annoying screen scrolling problem
termcapinfo xterm* ti@:te@
# Scroll up
bindkey -d "^[[5S" eval copy "stuff 5\025"
bindkey -m "^[[5S" stuff 5\025

# Scroll down
bindkey -d "^[[5T" eval copy "stuff 5\004"
bindkey -m "^[[5T" stuff 5\004

# Scroll up more
bindkey -d "^[[25S" eval copy "stuff \025"
bindkey -m "^[[25S" stuff \025

# Scroll down more
bindkey -d "^[[25T" eval copy "stuff \004"
bindkey -m "^[[25T" stuff \004

You can download the same .screenrc file from here straight with wget from the console:

# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/.screenrc


Run GNU screen manager

 

 # screen

You will end up with a screen session, to open a new session for Virtual Terminal use virtual keyboard from ISH and Press

CTRL + A + C

To open other Virtual Windows inside screen just press CTRL + A + C as many times as you need it, each session will appear ina small window on the down corner as you can see in screenshot

ish-terminal-with-screen-multiple-virtual-terminals-screenshot-iphone-ios

To move across the Screen unnamed 3 Virtual Windows 0 ash 1 ash and 2 ash use the Virtual keyboard

for next WIndow use key combination:
 

CTRL + A + N (where + is just to indicate you have to press them once after another and not actually press the + 🙂 )


For Previous Window use:

CTRL + A + P

Or use CTRL + A and type 

:number 3 (where number is the number of window)

The available iSH commands without adding any further packages which are part of the busybox install are as follows:

Available /bin/ directory commands:

arch  ash  base64  bbconfig  busybox  cat  chgrp  chmod  chown  conspy  cp  date  dd  df  dmesg  dnsdomainname  dumpkmap  echo  ed  egrep  false  fatattr  fdflush  fgrep  fsync  getopt  grep  gunzip  gzip  hostname  ionice  iostat  ipcalc  kbd_mode  kill  link  linux32  linux64  ln  login  ls  lzop  makemime  mkdir  mknod  mktemp  more  mount  mountpoint  mpstat  mv  netstat  nice  pidof  ping  ping6  pipe_progress  printenv  ps  pwd  reformime  rev  rm  rmdir  run-parts  sed  setpriv  setserial  sh  sleep  stty  su  sync  tar  touch  true  umount  uname  usleep  watch  zcat  


Available /usr/bin/ commands:    

awk  basename  beep  blkdiscard  bunzip2  bzcat  bzip2  cal  chvt  cksum  clear  cmp  comm  cpio  crontab  cryptpw  cut  dc  deallocvt  diff  dirname  dos2unix  du  dumpleases  eject  env  expand  expr  factor  fallocate  find  flock  fold  free  fuser  getconf  getent  groups  hd  head  hexdump  hostid  iconv  id  install  ipcrm  ipcs  killall  ldd  less  logger  lsof  lsusb  lzcat  lzma  lzopcat  md5sum  mesg  microcom  mkfifo  mkpasswd  nc  nl  nmeter  nohup  nproc  nsenter  nslookup  od  passwd  paste  patch  pgrep  pkill  pmap  printf  pscan  pstree  pwdx  readlink  realpath  renice  reset  resize  scanelf  seq  setkeycodes  setsid  sha1sum  sha256sum  sha3sum  sha512sum  showkey  shred  shuf  smemcap  sort  split  ssl_client  strings  sum  tac  tail  tee  test  time  timeout  top  tr  traceroute  traceroute6  truncate  tty  ttysize  udhcpc6  unexpand  uniq  unix2dos  unlink  unlzma  unlzop  unshare  unxz  unzip  uptime  uudecode  uuencode  vi  vlock  volname  wc  wget  which  whoami  whois  xargs  xxd  xzcat  yes  


If you're a maniac developer you can even use iSH, to do some programs development with vim with Python / Perl or PHP as these are available from the Alpine repositories and installable via a simple apk add packagename for security experts nmap and some security tools are also available but unfortunately not everything is still working as this project is in active development and iOS has some security limitations if OS is not ROOTED 🙂

Hence some of the packages you can install via apk manager will be failing actually.
There is a list of What works and what doesn't still on iSH on the project github wiki check it out here.

There is much more funny stuff you can do with it, and actually my quick research on how people use iSH on their phones lead me to some Videos talking about iOS and Ethical hacking etc, but I'll stop here as I dont have the time to dig deeper to it. 
If you know or have some good use of iSH or some other goody you are using as a hack please share in comments.

Enjoy ! 🙂

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

Tuesday, October 4th, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1.2. Resolve the required Viber .deb package dependecies

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

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

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

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

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

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


viber-appearance-menu-screenshot-linux


2. Install Viber in separated isolated sandbox from wider system

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

2.1. Install flatpak 

# sudo apt install flatpak


flatpak-viber-installation-linux-screenshot
 

2.2. Add flathub install repository

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

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

2.3. Install Flatpak-ed Viber 

#sudo flatpak install flathub com.viber.Viber

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

Log rsyslog script incoming tagged string message to separate external file to prevent /var/log/message from string flood

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021

rsyslog_logo-log-external-tag-scripped-messages-to-external-file-linux-howto

If you're using some external bash script to log messages via rsyslogd to some of the multiple rsyslog understood data tubes (called in rsyslog language facility levels) and you want Rsyslog to move message string to external log file, then you had the same task as me few days ago.

For example you have a bash shell script that is writting a message to rsyslog daemon to some of the predefined facility levels be it:
 

kern,user,cron, auth etc. or some local

and your logged script data ends under the wrong file location /var/log/messages , /var/log/secure , var/log/cron etc. However  you need to log everything coming from that service to a separate file based on the localX (fac. level) the usual way to do it is via some config like, as you would usually do it with rsyslog variables as:
 

local1.info                                            /var/log/custom-log.log

# Don't log private authentication messages!
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none;local0.none;local1.none        /var/log/messages


Note the local1.none is instructing the rsyslog not to log anything from local1 facility towards /var/log/message. 
But what if this due to some weirdness in configuration of rsyslog on the server or even due to some weird misconfiguration in

/etc/systemd/journald.conf such as:

[Journal]
Storage=persistent
RateLimitInterval=0s
RateLimitBurst=0
SystemMaxUse=128M
SystemMaxFileSize=32M
MaxRetentionSec=1month
MaxFileSec=1week
ForwardToSyslog=yes
SplitFiles=none

Due to that config and especially the FowardToSyslog=yes, the messages sent via the logger tool to local1 still end up inside /var/log/messages, not nice huh ..

The result out of that is anything being sent with a predefined TAGGED string via the whatever.sh script which uses the logger command  (if you never use it check man logger) to enter message into rsyslog with cmd like:
 

# logger -p local1.info -t TAG_STRING

# logger -p local2.warn test
# tail -2 /var/log/messages
Dec 22 18:58:23 pcfreak rsyslogd: — MARK —
Dec 22 19:07:12 pcfreak hipo: test


was nevertheless logged to /var/log/message.
Of course /var/log/message becomes so overfilled with "junk" shell script data not related to real basic Operating system adminsitration, so this prevented any critical or important messages that usually should come under /var/log/message / /var/log/syslog to be lost among the big quantities of other tagged tata reaching the log.

After many attempts to resolve the issue by modifying /etc/rsyslog.conf as well as the messed /etc/systemd/journald.conf (which by the way was generated with this strange values with an OS install time automation ansible stuff). It took me a while until I found the solution on how to tell rsyslog to log the tagged message strings into an external separate file. From my 20 minutes of research online I have seen multitudes of people in different Linux OS versions to experience the same or similar issues due to whatever, thus this triggered me to write this small article on the solution to rsyslog.

The solution turned to be pretty easy but requires some further digging into rsyslog, Redhat's basic configuration on rsyslog documentation is a very nice reading for starters, in my case I've used one of the Propery-based compare-operations variable contains used to select my tagged message string.
 

1. Add msg contains compare-operations to output log file and discard the messages

[root@centos bin]# vi /etc/rsyslog.conf

# config to log everything logged to rsyslog to a separate file
:msg, contains, "tag_string:/"         /var/log/custom-script-log.log
:msg, contains, "tag_string:/"    ~

Substitute quoted tag_string:/ to whatever your tag is and mind that it is better this config is better to be placed somewhere near the beginning of /etc/rsyslog.conf and touch the file /var/log/custom-script-log.log and give it some decent permissions such as 755, i.e.
 

1.1 Discarding a message


The tilda sign –  

as placed to the end of the msg, contains is the actual one to tell the string to be discarded so it did not end in /var/log/messages.

Alternative rsyslog config to do discard the unwanted message once you have it logged is with the
rawmsg variable, like so:

 

# config to log everything logged to rsyslog to a separate file
:msg, contains, "tag_string:/"         /var/log/custom-script-log.log
:rawmsg, isequal, "tag_string:/" stop

Other way to stop logging immediately after log is written to custom file across some older versions of rsyslog is via the &stop

:msg, contains, "tag_string:/"         /var/log/custom-script-log.log
& stop

I don't know about other versions but Unfortunately the &stop does not work on RHEL 7.9 with installed rpm package rsyslog-8.24.0-57.el7_9.1.x86_64.

1.2 More with property based filters basic exclusion of string 

Property based filters can do much more, you can for example, do regular expression based matches of strings coming to rsyslog and forward to somewhere.

To select syslog messages which do not contain any mention of the words fatal and error with any or no text between them (for example, fatal lib error), type:

:msg, !regex, "fatal .* error"

 

2. Create file where tagged data should be logged and set proper permissions
 

[root@centos bin]# touch /var/log/custom-script-log.log
[root@centos bin]# chmod 755 /var/log/custom-script-log.log


3. Test rsyslogd configuration for errors and reload rsyslog

[root@centos ]# rsyslogd -N1
rsyslogd: version 8.24.0-57.el7_9.1, config validation run (level 1), master config /etc/rsyslog.conf
rsyslogd: End of config validation run. Bye.

[root@centos ]# systemctl restart rsyslog
[root@centos ]#  systemctl status rsyslog 
● rsyslog.service – System Logging Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rsyslog.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2021-12-22 13:40:11 CET; 3h 5min ago
     Docs: man:rsyslogd(8)
           http://www.rsyslog.com/doc/
 Main PID: 108600 (rsyslogd)
   CGroup: /system.slice/rsyslog.service
           └─108600 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n

 

4. Property-based compare-operations supported by rsyslog table
 

Compare-operation Description
contains Checks whether the provided string matches any part of the text provided by the property. To perform case-insensitive comparisons, use  contains_i .
isequal Compares the provided string against all of the text provided by the property. These two values must be exactly equal to match.
startswith Checks whether the provided string is found exactly at the beginning of the text provided by the property. To perform case-insensitive comparisons, use  startswith_i .
regex Compares the provided POSIX BRE (Basic Regular Expression) against the text provided by the property.
ereregex Compares the provided POSIX ERE (Extended Regular Expression) regular expression against the text provided by the property.
isempty Checks if the property is empty. The value is discarded. This is especially useful when working with normalized data, where some fields may be populated based on normalization result.

 


5. Rsyslog understanding Facility levels

Here is a list of facility levels that can be used.

Note: The mapping between Facility Number and Keyword is not uniform over different operating systems and different syslog implementations, so among separate Linuxes there might be diference in the naming and numbering.

Facility Number Keyword Facility Description
0 kern kernel messages
1 user user-level messages
2 mail mail system
3 daemon system daemons
4 auth security/authorization messages
5 syslog messages generated internally by syslogd
6 lpr line printer subsystem
7 news network news subsystem
8 uucp UUCP subsystem
9   clock daemon
10 authpriv security/authorization messages
11 ftp FTP daemon
12 NTP subsystem
13 log audit
14 log alert
15 cron clock daemon
16 local0 local use 0 (local0)
17 local1 local use 1 (local1)
18 local2 local use 2 (local2)
19 local3 local use 3 (local3)
20 local4 local use 4 (local4)
21 local5 local use 5 (local5)
22 local6 local use 6 (local6)
23 local7 local use 7 (local7)


6. rsyslog Severity levels (sublevels) accepted by facility level

As defined in RFC 5424, there are eight severity levels as of year 2021:

Code Severity Keyword Description General Description
0 Emergency emerg (panic) System is unusable. A "panic" condition usually affecting multiple apps/servers/sites. At this level it would usually notify all tech staff on call.
1 Alert alert Action must be taken immediately. Should be corrected immediately, therefore notify staff who can fix the problem. An example would be the loss of a primary ISP connection.
2 Critical crit Critical conditions. Should be corrected immediately, but indicates failure in a primary system, an example is a loss of a backup ISP connection.
3 Error err (error) Error conditions. Non-urgent failures, these should be relayed to developers or admins; each item must be resolved within a given time.
4 Warning warning (warn) Warning conditions. Warning messages, not an error, but indication that an error will occur if action is not taken, e.g. file system 85% full – each item must be resolved within a given time.
5 Notice notice Normal but significant condition. Events that are unusual but not error conditions – might be summarized in an email to developers or admins to spot potential problems – no immediate action required.
6 Informational info Informational messages. Normal operational messages – may be harvested for reporting, measuring throughput, etc. – no action required.
7 Debug debug Debug-level messages. Info useful to developers for debugging the application, not useful during operations.


7. Sample well tuned configuration using severity and facility levels and immark, imuxsock, impstats
 

Below is sample config using severity and facility levels
 

# Don't log private authentication messages!
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none;local0.none;local1.none        /var/log/messages


Note the local0.none; local1.none tells rsyslog to not log from that facility level to /var/log/messages.

If you need a complete set of rsyslog configuration fine tuned to have a proper logging with increased queues and included configuration for loggint to remote log aggegator service as well as other measures to prevent the system disk from being filled in case if something goes wild with a logging service leading to a repeatedly messages you might always contact me and I can help 🙂
 Other from that sysadmins might benefit from a sample set of configuration prepared with the Automated rsyslog config builder  or use some fine tuned config  for rsyslog-8.24.0-57.el7_9.1.x86_64 on Redhat 7.9 (Maipo)   rsyslog_config_redhat-2021.tar.gz.

To sum it up rsyslog though looks simple and not an important thing to pre

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

Wednesday, December 8th, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


2. Prepare Rkhunter Template, Triggers and Items


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


2.1 Create Rkhunter Items
 

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

rkhunter-items-zabbix-screenshot.png

  • rkhunter.suspected Item configuration


rkhunter-suspected-files

  • rkhunter.warning Zabbix Item config

rkhunter-warning-found-check-zabbix

  • rkhunter.rootkits Zabbix Item config

     

     

    rkhunter-zabbix-possible-rootkits-item1

    2.2 Create Triggers
     

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

zabbix-rkhunter-all-triggers-screenshot
 

  • rkhunter.rootkits Trigger config

rkhunter-rootkits-trigger-zabbix1

  • rkhunter.suspected Trigger cfg

rkhunter-suspected-trigger-zabbix1

  • rkhunter warning Trigger cfg

rkhunter-warning-trigger1

3. Reload zabbix-agent and test the keys


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

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


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

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

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


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

How to move transfer binary files encoded with base64 on Linux with Copy Paste of text ASCII encoded string

Monday, October 25th, 2021

base64-encode-decode-binary-files-to-transfer-between-servers-base64-artistic-logo

If you have to work on servers in a protected environments that are accessed via multiple VPNs, Jump hosts or Web Citrix and you have no mean to copy binary files to your computer or from your computer because you have all kind of FTP / SFTP or whatever Data Copy clients disabled on remote jump host side or CITRIX server and you still are looking for a way to copy files between your PC and the Remote server Side.
Or for example if you have 2 or more servers that are in a special Demilitarized Network Zones ( DMZ ) and the machines does not have SFTP / FTP / WebServer or other kind of copy protocol service that can be used to copy files between the hosts and you still need to copy some files between the 2 or more machines in a slow but still functional way, then you might not know of one old school hackers trick you can employee to complete the copy of files between DMZ-ed Server Host A lets say with IP address (192.168.50.5) -> Server Host B (192.168.30.7). The way to complete the binary file copy is to Encode the binary on Server Host A and then, use cat  command to display the encoded string and copy whole encoded cat command output  to your (local PC buffer from where you access the remote side via SSH via the CITRIX or Jump host.). Then decode the encoded file with an encoding tool such as base64 or uuencode. In this article, I'll show how this is done with base64 and uuencode. Base64 binary is pretty standard in most Linux / Unix OS-es today on most Linux distributions it is part of the coreutils package.
The main use of base64 encoding to encode non-text Attachment files to Electronic Mail, but for our case it fits perfectly.
Keep in mind, that this hack to copy the binary from Machine A to Machine B of course depends on the Copy / Paste buffer being enabled both on remote Jump host or Citrix from where you reach the servers as well as your own PC laptop from where you access the remote side.

base64-character-encoding-string-table

Base64 Encoding and Decoding text strings legend

The file copy process to the highly secured PCI host goes like this:
 

1. On Server Host A encode with md5sum command

[root@serverA ~]:# md5sum -b /tmp/inputbinfile-to-encode
66c4d7b03ed6df9df5305ae535e40b7d *inputbinfile-to-encode

 

As you see one good location to encode the file would be /tmp as this is a temporary home or you can use alternatively your HOME dir

but you have to be quite careful to not run out of space if you produce it anywhere 🙂

 

2. Encode the binary file with base64 encoding

 [root@serverB ~]:# base64 -w0 inputbinfile-to-encode > outputbin-file.base64

The -w0 option is given to disable line wrapping. Line wrapping is perhaps not needed if you will copy paste the data.

base64-encoded-binary-file-text-string-linux-screenshot

Base64 Encoded string chunk with line wrapping

For a complete list of possible accepted arguments check here.

3. Cat the inputbinfile-to-encode just generated to display the text encoded file in your SecureCRT / Putty / SuperPutty etc. remote ssh access client

[root@serverA ~]:# cat /tmp/inputbinfile-to-encode
f0VMRgIBAQAAAAAAAAAAAAMAPgABAAAAMGEAAAAAAABAAAAAAAAAACgXAgAAAAAAAAAAA
EAAOAALAEAAHQAcAAYAAAAEAAA ……………………………………………………………… cTD6lC+ViQfUCPn9bs

 

4. Select the cat-ted string and copy it to your PC Copy / Paste buffer


If the bin file is not few kilobytes, but few megabytes copying the file might be tricky as the string produced from cat command would be really long, so make sure the SSH client you're using is configured to have a large buffer to scroll up enough and be able to select the whole encoded string until the end of the cat command and copy it to Copy / Paste buffer.

 

5. On Server Host B paste the bas64 encoded binary inside a newly created file

Open with a text editor vim / mc or whatever is available

[root@serverB ~]:# vi inputbinfile-to-encode

Some very paranoid Linux / UNIX systems might not have even a normal text editor like 'vi' if you happen to need to copy files on such one a useful thing is to use a simple cat on the remote side to open a new File Descriptor buffer, like this:

[root@server2 ~]:# cat >> inputbinfile-to-encode <<'EOF'
Paste the string here

 

6. Decode the encoded binary with base64 cmd again

[root@serverB ~]:# base64 –decode outputbin-file.base64 > inputbinfile-to-encode

 

7. Set proper file permissions (the same as on Host A)

[root@serverB ~]:#  chmod +x inputbinfile-to-encode

 

8. Check again the binary file checksum on Host B is identical as on Host A

[root@serverB ~]:# md5sum -b inputbinfile-to-encode
66c4d7b03ed6df9df5305ae535e40b7d *inputbinfile-to-encode

As you can md5sum match on both sides so file should be OK.

 

9. Encoding and decoding files with uuencode


If you are lucky and you have uuencode installed (sharutils) package is present on remote machine to encode lets say an archived set of binary files in .tar.gz format do:

Prepare the archive of all the files you want to copy with tar on Host A:

[root@Machine1 ~]:#  tar -czvf /bin/whatever /usr/local/bin/htop /usr/local/bin/samhain /etc/hosts archived-binaries-and-configs.tar.gz

[root@Machine1 ~]:# uuencode archived-binaries-and-configs.tar.gz archived-binaries-and-configs.uu

Cat / Copy / paste the encoded content as usual to a file on Host B:

Then on Machine 2 decode:

[root@Machine2 ~]:# uuencode -c < archived-binaries-and-configs.tar.gz.uu

 

Conclusion


In this short method I've shown you a hack that is used often by script kiddies to copy over files between pwn3d machines, a method which however is very precious and useful for sysadmins like me who has to admin a paranoid secured servers that are placed in a very hard to access environments.

With the same method you can encode or decode not only binary file but also any standard input/output file content. base64 encoding is quite useful stuff to use also in bash scripts or perl where you want to have the script copy file in a plain text format . Datas are encoded and decoded to make the data transmission and storing process easier. You have to keep in mind always that Encoding and Decoding are not similar to encryption and decryption as encr. deprytion gives a special security layers to the encoded that. Encoded data can be easily revealed by decoding, so if you need to copy between the servers very sensitive data like SSL certificates Private RSA / DSA key, this command line utility tool better to be not used for sesitive data copying.

 

 

Install and enable Sysstats IO / DIsk / CPU / Network monitoring console suite on Redhat 8.3, Few sar useful command examples

Tuesday, September 28th, 2021

linux-sysstat-monitoring-logo

 

Why to monitoring CPU, Memory, Hard Disk, Network usage etc. with sysstats tools?
 

Using system monitoring tools such as Zabbix, Nagios Monit is a good approach, however sometimes due to zabbix server interruptions you might not be able to track certain aspects of system performance on time. Thus it is always a good idea to 
Gain more insights on system peroformance from command line. Of course there is cmd tools such as iostat and top, free, vnstat that provides plenty of useful info on system performance issues or bottlenecks. However from my experience to have a better historical data that is systimized and all the time accessible from console it is a great thing to have sysstat package at place. Since many years mostly on every server I administer, I've been using sysstats to monitor what is going on servers over a short time frames and I'm quite happy with it. In current company we're using Redhats and CentOS-es and I had to install sysstats on Redhat 8.3. I've earlier done it multiple times on Debian / Ubuntu Linux and while I've faced on some .deb distributions complications of making sysstat collect statistics I've come with an article on Howto fix sysstat Cannot open /var/log/sysstat/sa no such file or directory” on Debian / Ubuntu Linux
 

Sysstat contains the following tools related to collecting I/O and CPU statistics:
iostat
Displays an overview of CPU utilization, along with I/O statistics for one or more disk drives.
mpstat
Displays more in-depth CPU statistics.
Sysstat also contains tools that collect system resource utilization data and create daily reports based on that data. These tools are:
sadc
Known as the system activity data collector, sadc collects system resource utilization information and writes it to a file.
sar
Producing reports from the files created by sadc, sar reports can be generated interactively or written to a file for more intensive analysis.

My experience with CentOS 7 and Fedora to install sysstat it was pretty straight forward, I just had to install it via yum install sysstat wait for some time and use sar (System Activity Reporter) tool to report collected system activity info stats over time.
Unfortunately it seems on RedHat 8.3 as well as on CentOS 8.XX instaling sysstats does not work out of the box.

To complete a successful installation of it on RHEL 8.3, I had to:

[root@server ~]# yum install -y sysstat


To make sysstat enabled on the system and make it run, I've enabled it in sysstat

[root@server ~]# systemctl enable sysstat


Running immediately sar command, I've faced the shitty error:


Cannot open /var/log/sysstat/sa18:
No such file or directory. Please check if data collecting is enabled”

 

Once installed I've waited for about 5 minutes hoping, that somehow automatically sysstat would manage it but it didn't.

To solve it, I've had to create additionally file /etc/cron.d/sysstat (weirdly RPM's post install instructions does not tell it to automatically create it)

[root@server ~]# vim /etc/cron.d/sysstat

# run system activity accounting tool every 10 minutes
0 * * * * root /usr/lib64/sa/sa1 60 59 &
# generate a daily summary of process accounting at 23:53
53 23 * * * root /usr/lib64/sa/sa2 -A &

 

  • /usr/local/lib/sa1 is a shell script that we can use for scheduling cron which will create daily binary log file.
  • /usr/local/lib/sa2 is a shell script will change binary log file to human-readable form.

 

[root@server ~]# chmod 600 /etc/cron.d/sysstat

[root@server ~]# systemctl restart sysstat


In a while if sysstat is working correctly you should get produced its data history logs inside /var/log/sa

[root@server ~]# ls -al /var/log/sa 


Note that the standard sysstat history files on Debian and other modern .deb based distros such as Debian 10 (in  y.2021) is stored under /var/log/sysstat

Here is few useful uses of sysstat cmds


1. Check with sysstat machine history SWAP and RAM Memory use


To lets say check last 10 minutes SWAP memory use:

[hipo@server yum.repos.d] $ sar -W  |last -n 10
 

Linux 4.18.0-240.el8.x86_64 (server)       09/28/2021      _x86_64_        (8 CPU)

12:00:00 AM  pswpin/s pswpout/s
12:00:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:01:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:02:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:03:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:04:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:05:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:06:01 AM      0.00      0.00

[root@ccnrlb01 ~]# sar -r | tail -n 10
14:00:01        93008   1788832     95.06         0   1357700    725740      9.02    795168    683484        32
14:10:01        78756   1803084     95.81         0   1358780    725740      9.02    827660    652248        16
14:20:01        92844   1788996     95.07         0   1344332    725740      9.02    813912    651620        28
14:30:01        92408   1789432     95.09         0   1344612    725740      9.02    816392    649544        24
14:40:01        91740   1790100     95.12         0   1344876    725740      9.02    816948    649436        36
14:50:01        91688   1790152     95.13         0   1345144    725740      9.02    817136    649448        36
15:00:02        91544   1790296     95.14         0   1345448    725740      9.02    817472    649448        36
15:10:01        91108   1790732     95.16         0   1345724    725740      9.02    817732    649340        36
15:20:01        90844   1790996     95.17         0   1346000    725740      9.02    818016    649332        28
Average:        93473   1788367     95.03         0   1369583    725074      9.02    800965    671266        29

 

2. Check system load? Are my processes waiting too long to run on the CPU?

[root@server ~ ]# sar -q |head -n 10
Linux 4.18.0-240.el8.x86_64 (server)       09/28/2021      _x86_64_        (8 CPU)

12:00:00 AM   runq-sz  plist-sz   ldavg-1   ldavg-5  ldavg-15   blocked
12:00:01 AM         0       272      0.00      0.02      0.00         0
12:01:01 AM         1       271      0.00      0.02      0.00         0
12:02:01 AM         0       268      0.00      0.01      0.00         0
12:03:01 AM         0       268      0.00      0.00      0.00         0
12:04:01 AM         1       271      0.00      0.00      0.00         0
12:05:01 AM         1       271      0.00      0.00      0.00         0
12:06:01 AM         1       265      0.00      0.00      0.00         0


3. Show various CPU statistics per CPU use
 

On a multiprocessor, multi core server sometimes for scripting it is useful to fetch processor per use historic data, 
this can be attained with:

 

[hipo@server ~ ] $ mpstat -P ALL
Linux 4.18.0-240.el8.x86_64 (server)       09/28/2021      _x86_64_        (8 CPU)

06:08:38 PM  CPU    %usr   %nice    %sys %iowait    %irq   %soft  %steal  %guest  %gnice   %idle
06:08:38 PM  all    0.17    0.02    0.25    0.00    0.05    0.02    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.49
06:08:38 PM    0    0.22    0.02    0.28    0.00    0.06    0.03    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.39
06:08:38 PM    1    0.28    0.02    0.36    0.00    0.08    0.02    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.23
06:08:38 PM    2    0.27    0.02    0.31    0.00    0.06    0.01    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.33
06:08:38 PM    3    0.15    0.02    0.22    0.00    0.03    0.01    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.57
06:08:38 PM    4    0.13    0.02    0.20    0.01    0.03    0.01    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.60
06:08:38 PM    5    0.14    0.02    0.27    0.00    0.04    0.06    0.01    0.00    0.00   99.47
06:08:38 PM    6    0.10    0.02    0.17    0.00    0.04    0.02    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.65
06:08:38 PM    7    0.09    0.02    0.15    0.00    0.02    0.01    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.70


 

sar-sysstat-cpu-statistics-screenshot

Monitor processes and threads currently being managed by the Linux kernel.

[hipo@server ~ ] $ pidstat

pidstat-various-random-process-statistics

[hipo@server ~ ] $ pidstat -d 2


pidstat-show-processes-with-most-io-activities-linux-screenshot

This report tells us that there is few processes with heave I/O use Filesystem system journalling daemon jbd2, apache, mysqld and supervise, in 3rd column you see their respective PID IDs.

To show threads used inside a process (like if you press SHIFT + H) inside Linux top command:

[hipo@server ~ ] $ pidstat -t -p 10765 1 3

Linux 4.19.0-14-amd64 (server)     28.09.2021     _x86_64_    (10 CPU)

21:41:22      UID      TGID       TID    %usr %system  %guest   %wait    %CPU   CPU  Command
21:41:23      108     10765         –    1,98    0,99    0,00    0,00    2,97     1  mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10765    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     1  |__mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10768    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     0  |__mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10771    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     5  |__mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10784    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     7  |__mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10785    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     6  |__mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10786    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     2  |__mysqld

10765 – is the Process ID whose threads you would like to list

With pidstat, you can further monitor processes for memory leaks with:

[hipo@server ~ ] $ pidstat -r 2

 

4. Report paging statistics for some old period

 

[root@server ~ ]# sar -B -f /var/log/sa/sa27 |head -n 10
Linux 4.18.0-240.el8.x86_64 (server)       09/27/2021      _x86_64_        (8 CPU)

15:42:26     LINUX RESTART      (8 CPU)

15:55:30     LINUX RESTART      (8 CPU)

04:00:01 PM  pgpgin/s pgpgout/s   fault/s  majflt/s  pgfree/s pgscank/s pgscand/s pgsteal/s    %vmeff
04:01:01 PM      0.00     14.47    629.17      0.00    502.53      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
04:02:01 PM      0.00     13.07    553.75      0.00    419.98      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
04:03:01 PM      0.00     11.67    548.13      0.00    411.80      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00

 

5.  Monitor Received RX and Transmitted TX network traffic perl Network interface real time
 

To print out Received and Send traffic per network interface 4 times in a raw

sar-sysstats-network-traffic-statistics-screenshot
 

[hipo@server ~ ] $ sar -n DEV 1 4


To continusly monitor all network interfaces I/O traffic

[hipo@server ~ ] $ sar -n DEV 1


To only monitor a certain network interface lets say loopback interface (127.0.0.1) received / transmitted bytes

[hipo@server yum.repos.d] $  sar -n DEV 1 2|grep -i lo
06:29:53 PM        lo      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
06:29:54 PM        lo      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
Average:           lo      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00


6. Monitor block devices use
 

To check block devices use 3 times in a raw
 

[hipo@server yum.repos.d] $ sar -d 1 3


sar-sysstats-blockdevice-statistics-screenshot
 

7. Output server monitoring data in CSV database structured format


For preparing a nice graphs with Excel from CSV strucuted file format, you can dump the collected data as so:

 [root@server yum.repos.d]# sadf -d /var/log/sa/sa27 — -n DEV | grep -v lo|head -n 10
server-name-fqdn;-1;2021-09-27 13:42:26 UTC;LINUX-RESTART    (8 CPU)
# hostname;interval;timestamp;IFACE;rxpck/s;txpck/s;rxkB/s;txkB/s;rxcmp/s;txcmp/s;rxmcst/s;%ifutil
server-name-fqdn;-1;2021-09-27 13:55:30 UTC;LINUX-RESTART    (8 CPU)
# hostname;interval;timestamp;IFACE;rxpck/s;txpck/s;rxkB/s;txkB/s;rxcmp/s;txcmp/s;rxmcst/s;%ifutil
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:01:01 UTC;eth1;19.42;16.12;1.94;1.68;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:01:01 UTC;eth0;7.18;9.65;0.55;0.78;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:01:01 UTC;eth2;5.65;5.13;0.42;0.39;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:02:01 UTC;eth1;18.90;15.55;1.89;1.60;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:02:01 UTC;eth0;7.15;9.63;0.55;0.74;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:02:01 UTC;eth2;5.67;5.15;0.42;0.39;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00

To graph the output data you can use Excel / LibreOffice's Excel equivalent Calc or if you need to dump a CSV sar output and generate it on the fly from a script  use gnuplot 


What we've learned?


How to install and enable on cron sysstats on Redhat and CentOS 8 Linux ? 
How to continuously monitor CPU / Disk and Network, block devices, paging use and processes and threads used by the kernel per process ?  
As well as how to export previously collected data to CSV to import to database or for later use inrder to generate graphic presentation of data.
Cheers ! 🙂

 

How to redirect TCP port traffic from Internet Public IP host to remote local LAN server, Redirect traffic for Apache Webserver, MySQL, or other TCP service to remote host

Thursday, September 23rd, 2021

 

 

Linux-redirect-forward-tcp-ip-port-traffic-from-internet-to-remote-internet-LAN-IP-server-rinetd-iptables-redir

 

 

1. Use the good old times rinetd – internet “redirection server” service


Perhaps, many people who are younger wouldn't remember rinetd's use was pretty common on old Linuxes in the age where iptables was not on the scene and its predecessor ipchains was so common.
In the raise of mass internet rinetd started loosing its popularity because the service was exposed to the outer world and due to security holes and many exploits circulating the script kiddie communities
many servers get hacked "pwned" in the jargon of the script kiddies.

rinetd is still available even in modern Linuxes and over the last years I did not heard any severe security concerns regarding it, but the old paranoia perhaps and the set to oblivion makes it still unpopular soluttion for port redirect today in year 2021.
However for a local secured DMZ lans I can tell you that its use is mostly useful and I chooes to use it myself, everynow and then due to its simplicity to configure and use.
rinetd is pretty standard among unixes and is also available in old Sun OS / Solaris and BSD-es and pretty much everything on the Unix scene.

Below is excerpt from 'man rinetd':

 

DESCRIPTION
     rinetd redirects TCP connections from one IP address and port to another. rinetd is a single-process server which handles any number of connections to the address/port pairs
     specified in the file /etc/rinetd.conf.  Since rinetd runs as a single process using nonblocking I/O, it is able to redirect a large number of connections without a severe im‐
     pact on the machine. This makes it practical to run TCP services on machines inside an IP masquerading firewall. rinetd does not redirect FTP, because FTP requires more than
     one socket.
     rinetd is typically launched at boot time, using the following syntax:      /usr/sbin/rinetd      The configuration file is found in the file /etc/rinetd.conf, unless another file is specified using the -c command line option.

To use rinetd on any LInux distro you have to install and enable it with apt or yum as usual. For example on my Debian GNU / Linux home machine to use it I had to install .deb package, enable and start it it via systemd :

 

server:~# apt install –yes rinetd

server:~#  systemctl enable rinetd


server:~#  systemctl start rinetd


server:~#  systemctl status rinetd
● rinetd.service
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/rinetd; generated)
   Active: active (running) since Tue 2021-09-21 10:48:20 EEST; 2 days ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
    Tasks: 1 (limit: 4915)
   Memory: 892.0K
   CGroup: /system.slice/rinetd.service
           └─1364 /usr/sbin/rinetd


rinetd is doing the traffic redirect via a separate process daemon, in order for it to function once you have service up check daemon is up as well.

root@server:/home/hipo# ps -ef|grep -i rinet
root       359     1  0 16:10 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/rinetd
root       824 26430  0 16:10 pts/0    00:00:00 grep -i rinet

+ Configuring a new port redirect with rinetd

 

Is pretty straight forward everything is handled via one single configuration – /etc/rinetd.conf

The format (syntax) of a forwarding rule is as follows:

     [bindaddress] [bindport] [connectaddress] [connectport]


Besides that rinetd , could be used as a primitive firewall substitute to iptables, general syntax of allow deny an IP address is done with (allow, deny) keywords:
 

allow 192.168.2.*
deny 192.168.2.1?


To enable logging to external file ,you'll have to include in the configuration:

# logging information
logfile /var/log/rinetd.log

Here is an example rinetd.conf configuration, redirecting tcp mysql 3306, nginx on port 80 and a second web service frontend for ILO to server reachable via port 8888 and a redirect from External IP to local IP SMTP server.

 

#
# this is the configuration file for rinetd, the internet redirection server
#
# you may specify global allow and deny rules here
# only ip addresses are matched, hostnames cannot be specified here
# the wildcards you may use are * and ?
#
# allow 192.168.2.*
# deny 192.168.2.1?


#
# forwarding rules come here
#
# you may specify allow and deny rules after a specific forwarding rule
# to apply to only that forwarding rule
#
# bindadress    bindport  connectaddress  connectport


# logging information
logfile /var/log/rinetd.log
83.228.93.76        80            192.168.0.20       80
192.168.0.2        3306            192.168.0.19        3306
83.228.93.76        443            192.168.0.20       443
# enable for access to ILO
83.228.93.76        8888            192.168.1.25 443

127.0.0.1    25    192.168.0.19    25


83.228.93.76 is my external ( Public )  IP internet address where 192.168.0.20, 192.168.0.19, 192.168.0.20 (are the DMZ-ed Lan internal IPs) with various services.

To identify the services for which rinetd is properly configured to redirect / forward traffic you can see it with netstat or the newer ss command
 

root@server:/home/hipo# netstat -tap|grep -i rinet
tcp        0      0 www.pc-freak.net:8888   0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      13511/rinetd      
tcp        0      0 www.pc-freak.n:http-alt 0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      21176/rinetd        
tcp        0      0 www.pc-freak.net:443   0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      21176/rinetd      

 

+ Using rinetd to redirect External interface IP to loopback's port (127.0.0.1)

 

If you have the need to redirect an External connectable living service be it apache mysql / privoxy / squid or whatever rinetd is perhaps the tool of choice (especially since there is no way to do it with iptables.

If you want to redirect all traffic which is accessed via Linux's loopback interface (localhost) to be reaching a remote host 11.5.8.1 on TCP port 1083 and 1888, use below config

# bindadress    bindport  connectaddress  connectport
11.5.8.1        1083            127.0.0.1       1083
11.5.8.1        1888            127.0.0.1       1888

 

For a quick and dirty solution to redirect traffic rinetd is very useful, however you'll have to keep in mind that if you want to redirect traffic for tens of thousands of connections constantly originating from the internet you might end up with some disconnects as well as notice a increased use of rinetd CPU use with the incrased number of forwarded connections.

 

2. Redirect TCP / IP port using DNAT iptables firewall rules

 

Lets say you have some proxy, webservice or whatever service running on port 5900 to be redirected with iptables.
The easeiest legacy way is to simply add the redirection rules to /etc/rc.local​. In newer Linuxes rc.local so if you decide to use,
you'll have to enable rc.local , I've written earlier a short article on how to enable rc.local on newer Debian, Fedora, CentOS

 

# redirect 5900 TCP service 
sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.route_localnet=1
iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp –dport 5900 -j REDIRECT –to-ports 5900
iptables -t nat -I OUTPUT -p tcp -o lo –dport 5900 -j REDIRECT –to-ports 5900
iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -o lo -d 127.0.0.1 -p tcp –dport 5900 -j DNAT  –to-destination 192.168.1.8:5900
iptables -t nat -I OUTPUT –source 0/0 –destination 0/0 -p tcp –dport 5900 -j REDIRECT –to-ports 5900

 

Here is another two example which redirects port 2208 (which has configured a bind listener for SSH on Internal host 192.168.0.209:2208) from External Internet IP address (XXX.YYY.ZZZ.XYZ) 
 

# Port redirect for SSH to VM on openxen internal Local lan server 192.168.0.209 
-A PREROUTING  -p tcp –dport 2208 -j DNAT –to-destination 192.168.0.209:2208
-A POSTROUTING -p tcp –dst 192.168.0.209 –dport 2208 -j SNAT –to-source 83.228.93.76

 

3. Redirect TCP traffic connections with redir tool

 

If you look for an easy straight forward way to redirect TCP traffic, installing and using redir (ready compiled program) might be a good idea.


root@server:~# apt-cache show redir|grep -i desc -A5 -B5
Version: 3.2-1
Installed-Size: 60
Maintainer: Lucas Kanashiro <kanashiro@debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.15)
Description-en: Redirect TCP connections
 It can run under inetd or stand alone (in which case it handles multiple
 connections).  It is 8 bit clean, not limited to line mode, is small and
 light. Supports transparency, FTP redirects, http proxying, NAT and bandwidth
 limiting.
 .
 redir is all you need to redirect traffic across firewalls that authenticate
 based on an IP address etc. No need for the firewall toolkit. The
 functionality of inetd/tcpd and "redir" will allow you to do everything you
 need without screwy telnet/ftp etc gateways. (I assume you are running IP
 Masquerading of course.)

Description-md5: 2089a3403d126a5a0bcf29b22b68406d
Homepage: https://github.com/troglobit/redir
Tag: interface::daemon, network::server, network::service, role::program,
 use::proxying
Section: net
Priority: optional

 

 

server:~# apt-get install –yes redir

Here is a short description taken from its man page 'man redir'

 

DESCRIPTION
     redir redirects TCP connections coming in on a local port, [SRC]:PORT, to a specified address/port combination, [DST]:PORT.  Both the SRC and DST arguments can be left out,
     redir will then use 0.0.0.0.

     redir can be run either from inetd or as a standalone daemon.  In –inetd mode the listening SRC:PORT combo is handled by another process, usually inetd, and a connected
     socket is handed over to redir via stdin.  Hence only [DST]:PORT is required in –inetd mode.  In standalone mode redir can run either in the foreground, -n, or in the back‐
     ground, detached like a proper UNIX daemon.  This is the default.  When running in the foreground log messages are also printed to stderr, unless the -s flag is given.

     Depending on how redir was compiled, not all options may be available.

 

+ Use redir to redirect TCP traffic one time

 

Lets say you have a MySQL running on remote machine on some internal or external IP address, lets say 192.168.0.200 and you want to redirect all traffic from remote host to the machine (192.168.0.50), where you run your Apache Webserver, which you want to configure to use
as MySQL localhost TCP port 3306.

Assuming there are no irewall restrictions between Host A (192.168.0.50) and Host B (192.168.0.200) is already permitting connectivity on TCP/IP port 3306 between the two machines.

To open redirection from localhost on 192.168.0.50 -> 192.168.0.200:

 

server:~# redir –laddr=127.0.0.1 –lport=3306 –caddr=192.168.0.200 –cport=3306

 

If you need other third party hosts to be additionally reaching 192.168.0.200 via 192.168.0.50 TCP 3306.

root@server:~# redir –laddr=192.168.0.50 –lport=3306 –caddr=192.168.0.200 –cport=3306


Of course once you close, the /dev/tty or /dev/vty console the connection redirect will be cancelled.

 

+ Making TCP port forwarding from Host A to Host B permanent


One solution to make the redir setup rules permanent is to use –rinetd option or simply background the process, nevertheless I prefer to use instead GNU Screen.
If you don't know screen is a vVrtual Console Emulation manager with VT100/ANSI terminal emulation to so, if you don't have screen present on the host install it with whatever Linux OS package manager is present and run:

 

root@server:~#screen -dm bash -c 'redir –laddr=127.0.0.1 –lport=3306 –caddr=192.168.0.200 –cport=3306'

 

That would run it into screen session and detach so you can later connect, if you want you can make redir to also log connections via syslog with ( -s) option.

I found also useful to be able to track real time what's going on currently with the opened redirect socket by changing redir log level.

Accepted log level is:

 

  -l, –loglevel=LEVEL
             Set log level: none, err, notice, info, debug.  Default is notice.

 

root@server:/ # screen -dm bash -c 'redir –laddr=127.0.0.1 –lport=3308 –caddr=192.168.0.200 –cport=3306 -l debug'

 

To test connectivity works as expected use telnet:
 

root@server:/ # telnet localhost 3308
Trying 127.0.0.1…
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
g
5.5.5-10.3.29-MariaDB-0+deb10u1-log�+c2nWG>B���o+#ly=bT^]79mysql_native_password

6#HY000Proxy header is not accepted from 192.168.0.19 Connection closed by foreign host.

once you attach to screen session with

 

root@server:/home #  screen -r

 

You will get connectivity attempt from localhost logged : .
 

redir[10640]: listening on 127.0.0.1:3306
redir[10640]: target is 192.168.0.200:3306
redir[10640]: Waiting for client to connect on server socket …
redir[10640]: target is 192.168.0.200:3306
redir[10640]: Waiting for client to connect on server socket …
redir[10793]: peer IP is 127.0.0.1
redir[10793]: peer socket is 25592
redir[10793]: target IP address is 192.168.0.200
redir[10793]: target port is 3306
redir[10793]: Connecting 127.0.0.1:25592 to 127.0.0.1:3306
redir[10793]: Entering copyloop() – timeout is 0
redir[10793]: Disconnect after 1 sec, 165 bytes in, 4 bytes out

The downsides of using redir is redirection is handled by the separate process which is all time hanging in the process list, as well as the connection redirection speed of incoming connections might be about at least 30% slower to if you simply use a software (firewall ) redirect such as iptables. If you use something like kernel IP set ( ipsets ). If you hear of ipset for a first time and you wander whta it is below is short package description.

 

root@server:/root# apt-cache show ipset|grep -i description -A13 -B5
Maintainer: Debian Netfilter Packaging Team <pkg-netfilter-team@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Provides: ipset-6.38
Depends: iptables, libc6 (>= 2.4), libipset11 (>= 6.38-1~)
Breaks: xtables-addons-common (<< 1.41~)
Description-en: administration tool for kernel IP sets
 IP sets are a framework inside the Linux 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernel which can be
 administered by the ipset(8) utility. Depending on the type, currently an
 IP set may store IP addresses, (TCP/UDP) port numbers or IP addresses with
 MAC addresses in a  way which ensures lightning speed when matching an
 entry against a set.
 .
 If you want to
 .
  * store multiple IP addresses or port numbers and match against the
    entire collection using a single iptables rule.
  * dynamically update iptables rules against IP addresses or ports without
    performance penalty.
  * express complex IP address and ports based rulesets with a single
    iptables rule and benefit from the speed of IP sets.

 .
 then IP sets may be the proper tool for you.
Description-md5: d87e199641d9d6fbb0e52a65cf412bde
Homepage: http://ipset.netfilter.org/
Tag: implemented-in::c, role::program
Section: net
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/main/i/ipset/ipset_6.38-1.2_amd64.deb
Size: 50684
MD5sum: 095760c5db23552a9ae180bd58bc8efb
SHA256: 2e2d1c3d494fe32755324bf040ffcb614cf180327736c22168b4ddf51d462522

How to create SD Card DATA dump image to .ISO with dd and mount it with imdisk from command line on Windows CygWin with MobaXterm

Saturday, September 18th, 2021

dd-command-logo
I'm forced to use Windows every now and then and do some ordinary things which I do usually on Linux such as dumping the content of my Android phone SD Card SanDisk, Kingston etc. to .ISO image etc.

On Linux creating and mounting a data copy of a whole SD Card is a relatively simple thing and there are plenty of ways to do it such as using the dd ( command-line utility for Unix and Unix-like operating systems whose primary purpose is to convert and copy files as said in the command manual .- e.g. ''man dd'. ). On Microsoft Windows environment perhaps one of easiest ways is to use WinCDEmu (which is relatively free under LGPL License).
WinCDEmu is capable of doing plenty of things such as:
 

  • One-click mounting of ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, CCD, IMG images.

  • Supports unlimited amount of virtual drives.

  • Runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions from XP to Windows 10.

  • Allows creating ISO images through a context menu in Explorer.

  • Small installer size – less than 2MB!

  • Have a portable version

WinCDEmu is a nice piece of software that perhaps every Win poweruser can enjoy, plus it has a nice Graphical frontend:

wincdemu-graphical-create-iso-and-mount-so-ms-windows-software

But what if you're a console geek, like me and you end up forced to be using Windows on your Work PC and you still need to create .iso dump of your Mobile SD Card or external attached Hard Drive, without the graphical mambo jumbo in the old fashioned way with dd?

Luckily Windows advanced command lined users could massively benefit from Cygwin + Mobaxterm (if you don't know or used MobaXterm and you still use things like Putty / SuperPutty or SecureCRT – perhaps you can reconsider and make your sysadmin life easier with MobaXerm gnome-terminal like SSH tabbed Windows alternative.

Once having mobaxterm + cygwin you have dd installed on the Windows host as it is part of the busybox minimal environment and you can use it in the same manner as your used in Linux environment.

sdcard-sandisk-drive-my-computer-windows-screenshot
 

1. Using dd to copy files on Linux / UNIX OS with a dialog status bar

To use dd the usual syntax on Linux / BSD / Unix is:
 

dd if=/dev/dev-name_ID of=/path/to/directory/dump/location.iso bs=2048

 

As 2048 BS (Bytes) per second is quite a low value usually on Modern operating systems, this bytesize is usually increased to some MBs  ( Megabytes).

For example if the reading from carrier  is Solid State Drive Disk (SSD) supporting 100 MBs per second and the output SD Card is a 32 Bit Kingston Plus+ drive with whose write speed is up to 50 ~ 100 MBs, you can use cmd as:

dd if=/dev/dev-name_ID of=/path/to/directory/dump/location.iso bs=100M


If you need to have a progress on the dd copy (in case if you copy some large SD Card 128 GB or 256GB or a full copy of a hard drive partition that is really big lets say 8 Terabytes of data, dialog and pv comes quite handy.

To use them install them first:

# apt-get install –yes pv dialog


Next to have a beautiful ncurses dialog box with the status (very useful if you're shell scripting), use:
 

(pv -n /dev/sda | dd of=/dev/sdb bs=128M conv=notrunc,noerror) 2>&1 | dialog –gauge "Running dd command (cloning), please wait…" 10 70 0

pv-dialog-dd-command-ncurses-status-screenshot-gnu-linux
 

2. Listing the avaialble copy drives /dev/sda /dev/sdb1 … etc. disk locations on Windows 7 / 10 / 11 OS

[User.T420-89] ➤ for F in /dev/s* ; do echo "$F    $(cygpath -w $F)" ; done

check-drives-loop-on-cygwin-to-be-used-later-with-dd-copy-iso-creating-imageCheck drives device naming on WIndows PC – Screenshot extract from Mobaxterm

As you can see the drive location we've seen in Windows Explorer is located at drive E: above bash for loop reveals us this is located and readable from CygWin / MobaxTerm at /dev/sdb1


3. Create .iso image file on WIndows OS with dd command
 

To create a full data copy dump of to .iso (image file) with dd on Windows , I had to run:

[User.T420-89] ➤ dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=sdcard-blu-r1-hd-sdcard-backup_10092021a.img bs=100M

75+1 records in
75+1 records out
7944011776 bytes (7.4GB) copied, 391.794316 seconds, 19.3MB/s


dd-copy-drive-data-screenshot-100mb-bitesize-windows-mobaxterm


4. Mount the newly create dd Image with imdisk

In order to test the image is properly created, you can attempt to mount it from command line on Linux, mounting it is quite easy and is up to mounting the just created .img file as a loopback (loop) device, like so: 

# mount -o loop file.iso /mnt/dir

Unfortunately cygwin and mobaxterm's embedded mount command on Win OS does not support the loopback device so to have it you have to install and use some additional program  such as the upmentioned WinCDEmu or if you prefer to do it fully from command line and further on automate the process of creating a dump of images of attached drives out of a multiple computers (lets say belonging to a Windows Active Directory domain). You might install and use something like:


imdisk 

imdisk-gui-interface-ms-windows-screenshot

imdisk handy tool is  created by Olof Lagerkvist. It is free and open-source software, which  will let you mount image files of hard drive, cd-rom or floppy, and create one or several ramdisks with various parameters either from a command line or via its Graphical interface.

To use imdisk download it from its home page on sourceforge extract and install it, pretty much as any other software it has both 32 bit version as a legacy for old computers as well as 64 bit exe installer.
The general command line use of it follows a cmd syntax like:

  • Mounting .iso image files from command line on WIndows host with imdisk


[User.T420-89] ➤ ImDisk.exe -a -f "sdcard-blu-r1-hd-sdcard-backup_10092021.img" -m #:

Where:
 

  • #: – is the actual drive you would like to mount to.
     
  • -a option stands for attach to, it will configure and attach a virtual disk with the parameters specified and attach it to the system.
     
  • -f – is self explanatory, provides the iso image file naming 

If you want to attach the newly created image to lets say  L:\ windows new mapped drive

ImDisk.exe -a -f "sdcard-blu-r1-hd-sdcard-backup_10092021.img" -m l:

  • Unmount mounted .img image with imdisk from cmd line

[User.T420-89] ➤ imdisk.exe -l
\Device\ImDisk0
                                                                                                                              ✘

[User.T420-89] ➤ imdisk.exe -D -m l:
Notifying applications…
Flushing file buffers…
Locking volume…
Failed, forcing dismount…
Removing device…
Removing mountpoint…
Done.

imdisk-detach-attached-drive-mobaxterm-windows-screenshot

 

What we learned ?

What we have learned in this article is how to use Mobaxterm embedded dd Data Convert and Copy command to prepare full image backups of SD card or external drives on Windows OS. Also few alternative ways were entions such as using WinCDEmu free  open source alternative to DaemonTools program to create / mount or convert the image for the GUI lovers. Also for hard core sysadmins as me was shown how to list drives devices attached to the Win PC {/dev/sda,/dev/sdb} etc. and how to copy partition data with dd just like one would do on Linux OS. Finally to test the created image, I've shown you how to use the imdisk free software tool to attach and detach image to a mapped local Windows drive.

Hope this article learned you something new.

Remove “Windows 7 PC is out of Support” annoying reoccuring warning popup alert

Friday, September 10th, 2021

Windows-7-End-of-life-pc-is-out-of-support-removal-rip-win-7

Since January 15th 2020, Windows 7 which reached its End of Life (EOL)  and is no longer Supported. Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, and Professional installations will display the message


"Your Windows 7 PC is out of support".

The use of Windows 7, since 2020 is steadily declining but some hard core maniacs, who refuse to be in tune with latest fashion do still roll Windows 7 on dedicated VPS Servers (running on Xen / VMWare etc.).
With the reach of End of Support, people who still run Windows 7 have no longer the usual Operating system provided.

  • No security updates
  • No software updates
  • No tech support

Even though running End of Support system is quite dangerous and you might get hacked easily by autometed bot, still for some custom uses and if the Windows 7 Runs behind a solid firewall it could be considered relatively safe.

Microsoft hence made their Windows (remote controlled system) to have an annoying pop up window with the "YOUR WINDOWS 7 PC IS OUT OF SUPPORT" as shown in below screenshot:

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-annoying-message-screenshot.

For those who don't plan to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 10, this message becomes quickly very annoying especially if you happen to access remotely your Windows 7 VPS and use it for simple things as browsing a few news websites or you're a marketer and you use the Windows for accessing Amazon / Ebay from a different country as many Marketers do to access General Webstores emulating access from a remote location. 


Disable "Your Windows 7 PC is out of support" popup alert
 

Luckily it is possible to disable this annoying Your Windows 7 pop-up alert by setting a value key in Windows Registry
DiscontinueEOS to 1.

To do so launch from Administrator command  line cmd.exe prompt (or start it from Windows start menu):

regedit

1. Open Windows Registry Editor and navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\EOSNotify.

 You will need to set the DWORD DiscontinueEOS value to 1 in the Windows Registry
 

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-eosnotify-dword-registry-03-600x366

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-discontinueEOS-registry-modify

–  In case EOSNotify key is not available, right-click the CurrentVersion key and select New > Key and name it EOSNotify.

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-EOSNotify-create-new-key-600x367

2. Right click anywhere in the right pane and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it DiscontinueEOS.

3. Set Value data to 1 and click OK.

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-edit-dword-32-bit-value-regedit-screenshot.

4. When the new value has been set, Restart the Windows7 computer / Virtual machine, to make sure registry setting take effect.

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-discontninueEOS-reg-dword-0x000000001-600x248

 

To automate the procedure in large environments, you can create a small script using the reg  command load the Registry key or use Windows GPO (Group Policy Object) to enforce the setting across all Active Directory PC members.
 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\EOSNotify]
"DiscontinueEOS"=dword:00000001
custom GPO in Active Directory.

To avoid potential issues using a non supported OS, you should start planning to upgrade your Windows 7 clients to Windows 10.

That's it ! Out of support Windows 7  alert should no longer bug you 🙂