Posts Tagged ‘use’

Analyze disk space usage in Linux / BSD with du / find and filelight /qdirstat / baobab GUI disk usage analyzers to check what takes up your disk space on Unix like OSes

Friday, April 21st, 2023

linux-how-to-find-out-what-files-and-directories-has-occupied-all-your-disk-space-partition-from-console-and-GUI_du-find-filelight-baobab-qdirstat-duff-linux-450x450

If you're a Desktop Linux or BSD UNIX user and your hard disk / external SSD / flash drive etc. space starts to be misteriously disapper due to whatever reaseon such as a crashing applications producing rapidly log error / warning messages leading quickly to filling up the disk or out of a sudden you have some Disk space lost without knowing what kind of data filled up the disk or you're downloading some big sized bittorrent files forgotten in your bittorrent client or complete mirroring a large website and you suddenly get the result of root directory ( / ) getting fully or nearly filled up, then you definitely would want to check out what has disk activity has eaten up your disk space and leaing to OS and Aplication slow responsiveness.

For the Linux regular *nix user finding out what is filling the disk is a trivial task with with find / du -hsc * but as people have different habits to use find and du I'll show you the most common ways I use this two command line tools to identify disk space low issues for the sake of comparison.
Others who have better easier ways to do it are very welcome to share it with me in the comments.
 

1. Finding large files on hard disk with find Linux command tool
 

host:~# find /home -type f -printf "%s\t%p\n" | sort -n | tail -10
2100000000    /home/hipo/Downloads/MameUIfx incl. ROMs/MameUIfx incl. ROMs-6.bin
2100000000    /home/hipo/Downloads/MameUIfx incl. ROMs/MameUIfx incl. ROMs-7.bin
2100000000    /home/hipo/Downloads/MameUIfx incl. ROMs/MameUIfx incl. ROMs-8.bin
2100000000    /home/hipo/Downloads/MameUIfx incl. ROMs/MameUIfx incl. ROMs-9.bin
2815424080    /home/hipo/.thunderbird/h3dasfii.default\
/ImapMail/imap.gmail.com/INBOX
2925584895    /home/hipo/Documents/.git/\
objects/pack/pack-8590b069cad26ac0af7560fb42b51fa9bfe41050.pack
4336918067    /home/hipo/Games/Mames_4GB-compilation-best-arcade-games-of-your-14_04_2021.tar.gz
6109003776    /home/hipo/VirtualBox VMs/CentOS/CentOS.vdi
23599251456    /home/hipo/VirtualBox VMs/Windows 7/Windows 7.vdi
33913044992    /home/hipo/VirtualBox VMs/Windows 10/Windows 10.vdi

I use less rarely find on Desktops and more when I have to do some kind of data usage analysis on servers, of course for my Linux home computer and any other Linux desktop machines, or just a small incomprehensive analysis du cmd is much more appropriate to use.


2. Finding large files Megabyte occupying space files sorted in Megabytes and Gigas with du
 

  • Check main 10 files sorted in megabytes that are hanging in a directory

pcfkreak:~# du -hsc /home/hipo/*|grep 'M\s'|sort -rn|head -n 10
956M    /home/hipo/last_dump1.sql
711M    /home/hipo/hipod
571M    /home/hipo/from-thinkpad_r61
453M    /home/hipo/ultimate-edition-themes
432M    /home/hipo/metasploit-framework
355M    /home/hipo/output-upgrade.txt
333M    /home/hipo/Плот
209M    /home/hipo/Work-New.tar.gz
98M    /home/hipo/DOOM64
90M    /home/hipo/mp3

  • Get 10 top larges files in Gigabytes that are space hungry and eating up your space

pcfkreak:~# du -hsc /home/hipo/*|grep 'G\s'|sort -rn|head -n 10
156G    total
60G    /home/hipo/VirtualBox VMs
37G    /home/hipo/Downloads
18G    /home/hipo/Desktop
11G    /home/hipo/Games
7.4G    /home/hipo/ownCloud
7.1G    /home/hipo/Документи
4.6G    /home/hipo/music
2.9G    /home/hipo/root
2.8G    /home/hipo/Documents


If you want to still work on the console terminal but you don't want to type too much you can use ncdu (ncurses) text tool, install it with

# apt install –yes ncdu


https://www.pc-freak.net/images/ncdu-gnu-linux-debian-screenshot.png

 For the most lazy ones or complete Linux newbies that doesn't want to spend time typing / learing or using text commands or softwares you can also check what has eaten up your full disk space with GUI tools as well.

There are at least 3 tools to use to check in Graphical Interface what has occupied your disk space on Linux / BSD, I'm aware of:

3. Filelight GUI disk usage analysis Linux tool

For those using KDE or preferring a shiny GUI interface that will capture the eye, perhaps filelight would be the option of choice tool to get analysis sum of your directory sturctures and file use on the laptop or desktop *unix OS.

unix-desktop:~# apt-cache show filelight|grep -i description-en -A 7
Description-en: show where your diskspace is being used
 Filelight allows you to understand your disk usage by graphically
 representing your filesystem as a set of concentric, segmented rings.
 .
 It is like a pie-chart, but the segments nest, allowing you to see both
 which directories take up all your space, and which directories
 and files inside those directories are the real culprits.
Description-md5: 397ff9a469e07a772f22460c66b66875


To use it simply go ahead and install it with apt or yum / dnf or whatever Linux package manager your distro uses:

unix-desktop:~# apt-get install –yes filelight

filelight-show-where-disk-space-is-being-used-graphically-tool-linux

4. GNOME DIsk Usage Analyzer Baobab GUI tool

For those being a GNOME / Mate / Budgie / Cinnamon Graphical interface users baobab shold be the program to use as it uses the famous LibGD library.

unix-desktop:~# apt-cache show baobab|grep -i description-en -A10
Description-en: GNOME disk usage analyzer
 Disk Usage Analyzer is a graphical, menu-driven application to analyse
 disk usage in a GNOME environment. It can easily scan either the whole
 filesystem tree, or a specific user-requested directory branch (local or
 remote).
 .
 It also auto-detects in real-time any changes made to your home
 directory as far as any mounted/unmounted device. Disk Usage Analyzer
 also provides a full graphical treemap window for each selected folder.
Description-md5: 5f6072b89ebb1dc83433fa7658814dc6
Homepage: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Baobab

 

gnome-disk-analyzer-baobab-tool-screenshot-of-hard-disk-directory-locations-sorted-by-size

5. Qdirstat graphical application to show where your disk space has gone on Linux

Qdirstat is perhaps well known tool to track disk space issues on Linux desktop hosts, known by the hardcore KDE / LXDE / LXQT / DDE GUI interface / environment lovers and as a KDE tool uses the infamous Qt library. I personally don't like it and don't put it on machines I use because I never use kde and don't want to waste my disk space with additional libraries such as the QT Library which historically was not totally free in terms of licensing and even now is in both free and non free licensing GPL / LGPL and QT Commercial Licensing license.

unix-desktop:~# apt-cache show qdirstat|grep -i description-en -A10
Description-en: Qt-based directory statistics
 QDirStat is a graphical application to show where your disk space has gone and
 to help you to clean it up.
 .
 QDirStat has a number of new features compared to KDirStat. To name a few:
  * Multi-selection in both the tree and the treemap.
  * Unlimited number of user-defined cleanup actions.
  * Properly show errors of cleanup actions (and their output, if desired).
  * File categories (MIME types) and their treemap color are now configurable.
  * Exclude rules for directories are easily configurable.
  * Desktop-agnostic; no longer relies on KDE or any other specific desktop.


qdirstat-linux-screenshot-show-what-directory-uses-most-hard-disk-space

That shiny fuzed graphics is actually a repsesantation of all directories the bigger and if one scrolls on the colorful gamma a text with directory and size or file will appear. Though the graphical represantation is really c00l to me it is a bit unreadable, thus I prefer and recommend the other two GUI tools filelight or baobab instead.

6. Finding duplicate files on Linux system with duff command tool

Talking about big unknown left-over files on your hard drives, it is appropriate to mention one tool here that is a console one but very useful to anyone willing to get rid of old duplicate files that are hanging around on the disk. Sometimes such copies are produced while copying large amount of files from place to place or simply by mistake while copying Photo / Video files from your Smart Phone to Linux desktop etc. 

This is where the duff command line utility might be super beneficial for you.

unix-desktop:~# apt-cache show duff|grep -i description-en -A3
Description-en: Duplicate file finder
 Duff is a command-line utility for identifying duplicates in a given set of
 files.  It attempts to be usably fast and uses the SHA family of message
 digests as a part of the comparisons.

Using duff tool is very straight forward to see all the duplicate files hanging in a directory lets say your home folder.

unix-desktop:~#  duff -rP /home/hipo

/home/hipo/music/var/Quake II Soundtrack – Kill Ratio.mp3
/home/hipo/mp3/Quake II Soundtrack – Kill Ratio.mp3
2 files in cluster 44 (7913472 bytes, digest 98f38be49e2ffcbf90927f9357b3e24a81d5a649)
/home/hipo/music/var/HYPODIL_01-Scakauec.mp3
/home/hipo/mp3/HYPODIL_01-Scakauec.mp3
2 files in cluster 45 (2807808 bytes, digest ce9067ce1f132fc096a5044845c7fac73e99c0ed)
/home/hipo/music/var/Quake II Suondtrack – March Of The Stoggs.mp3
/home/hipo/mp3/Quake II Suondtrack – March Of The Stoggs.mp3
2 files in cluster 46 (3506176 bytes, digest efcc401b4ebda9b0b2367aceb8e334c8ba1a357d)
/home/hipo/music/var/Quake II Suondtrack – Quad Machine.mp3
/home/hipo/mp3/Quake II Suondtrack – Quad Machine.mp3
2 files in cluster 47 (7917568 bytes, digest 0905c1d790654016c2ecf2949f78d47a870c3822)
/home/hipo/music/var/Cyberpunk Group – Futureshock!.mp3
/home/hipo/mp3/Cyberpunk Group – Futureshock!.mp3

-r (Recursively search into all specified directories.)

P (Don't follow any symbolic links.  This overrides any previous -H or -L option.  This is the default.  Note that this only applies to directories, as sym‐
             bolic links to files are never followed.)

7. Deleting duplicate files with duff

If you're absolutely sure you know what you're doing and you have a backup in case if something messes up during duplicate teletions, to get rid of lets say any duplicate Picture files found by duff run sommething like:

# duff -e0 -r /home/hipo/Pictures/ | xargs -0 rm

!!! Please note that using duff is for those who absolutely know what they're doing and have their data recent data. Deleting the wrong data by mistake with the tool might put you in the first grade and you'll be the only one to blame  🙂 !!!

Wrap it Up

Filling up the disk with unknown large files is a task to resolve that happens often. For the unlazy on Linux / BSD / Mac OS and other UNIX like OS-es the easiest way is to use find or du with some one liner command. For the lazy Windows addicted Graphical users filelightqdirstat or baobab GUI disk usage analysis tools are there.
If you have a lot of files and many of thems are duplicates you can use duff to check them out and remove all unneded duplicates and save space. 
Hope this article, was helpful for someone.
That's all folks, enjoy your data profilactics, if you know any other good easy command or GUI tools or hints for drive disk space profilactics please share.

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.

KVM Virtual Machine RHEL 8.3 Linux install on Redhat 8.3 Linux Hypervisor with custom tailored kickstart.cfg

Friday, January 22nd, 2021

kvm_virtualization-logo-redhat-8.3-install-howto-with-kickstart

If you don't have tried it yet Redhat and CentOS and other RPM based Linux operationg systems that use anaconda installer is generating a kickstart file after being installed under /root/{anaconda-ks.cfg,initial-setup- ks.cfg,original-ks.cfg} immediately after the OS installation completes. Using this Kickstart file template you can automate installation of Redhat installation with exactly the same configuration as many times as you like by directly loading your /root/original-ks.cfg file in RHEL installer.

Here is the official description of Kickstart files from Redhat:

"The Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation process automatically writes a Kickstart file that contains the settings for the installed system. This file is always saved as /root/anaconda-ks.cfg. You may use this file to repeat the installation with identical settings, or modify copies to specify settings for other systems."


Kickstart files contain answers to all questions normally asked by the text / graphical installation program, such as what time zone you want the system to use, how the drives should be partitioned, or which packages should be installed. Providing a prepared Kickstart file when the installation begins therefore allows you to perform the installation automatically, without need for any intervention from the user. This is especially useful when deploying Redhat based distro (RHEL / CentOS / Fedora …) on a large number of systems at once and in general pretty useful if you're into the field of so called "DevOps" system administration and you need to provision a certain set of OS to a multitude of physical servers or create or recreate easily virtual machines with a certain set of configuration.
 

1. Create /vmprivate storage directory where Virtual machines will reside

First step on the Hypervisor host which will hold the future created virtual machines is to create location where it will be created:

[root@redhat ~]#  lvcreate –size 140G –name vmprivate vg00
[root@redhat ~]#  mkfs.ext4 -j -b 4096 /dev/mapper/vg00-vmprivate
[root@redhat ~]# mount /dev/mapper/vg00-vmprivate /vmprivate

To view what is the situation with Logical Volumes and  VG group names:

[root@redhat ~]# vgdisplay -v|grep -i vmprivate -A7 -B7
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
  – currently set to     8192
  Block device           253:0

 

  — Logical volume —
  LV Path                /dev/vg00/vmprivate
  LV Name                vmprivate
  VG Name                vg00
  LV UUID                VVUgsf-FXq2-TsMJ-QPLw-7lGb-Dq5m-3J9XJJ
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Creation host, time main.hostname.com, 2021-01-20 17:26:11 +0100
  LV Status              available
  # open                 1
  LV Size                150.00 GiB


Note that you'll need to have the size physically available on a SAS / SSD Hard Drive physically connected to Hypervisor Host.

To make the changes Virtual Machines storage location directory permanently mounted add to /etc/fstab

/dev/mapper/vg00-vmprivate  /vmprivate              ext4    defaults,nodev,nosuid 1 2

[root@redhat ~]# echo '/dev/mapper/vg00-vmprivate  /vmprivate              ext4    defaults,nodev,nosuid 1 2' >> /etc/fstab

 

2. Second we need to install the following set of RPM packages on the Hypervisor Hardware host

[root@redhat ~]# yum install qemu-kvm qemu-img libvirt virt-install libvirt-client virt-manager libguestfs-tools virt-install virt-top -y

3. Enable libvirtd on the host

[root@redhat ~]#  lsmod | grep -i kvm
[root@redhat ~]#  systemctl enable libvirtd

4. Configure network bridging br0 interface on Hypervisor


In /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 you need to include:

NM_CONTROLED=NO

Next use nmcli redhat configurator to create the bridge (you can use ip command instead) but since the tool is the redhat way to do it lets do it their way ..

[root@redhat ~]# nmcli connection delete eno3
[root@redhat ~]# nmcli connection add type bridge autoconnect yes con-name br0 ifname br0
[root@redhat ~]# nmcli connection modify br0 ipv4.addresses 10.80.51.16/26 ipv4.method manual
[root@redhat ~]# nmcli connection modify br0 ipv4.gateway 10.80.51.1
[root@redhat ~]# nmcli connection modify br0 ipv4.dns 172.20.88.2
[root@redhat ~]# nmcli connection add type bridge-slave autoconnect yes con-name eno3 ifname eno3 master br0
[root@redhat ~]# nmcli connection up br0

5. Prepare a working kickstart.cfg file for VM


Below is a sample kickstart file I've used to build a working fully functional Virtual Machine with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 (Ootpa) .

#version=RHEL8
#install
# Run the Setup Agent on first boot
firstboot --enable
ignoredisk --only-use=vda
# Use network installation
#url --url=http://hostname.com/rhel/8/BaseOS
##url --url=http://171.23.8.65/rhel/8/os/BaseOS
# Use text mode install
text
#graphical
# System language
#lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard --vckeymap=us --xlayouts='us'
# Keyboard layouts
##keyboard us
lang en_US.UTF-8
# Root password
rootpw $6$gTiUCif4$YdKxeewgwYCLS4uRc/XOeKSitvDJNHFycxWVHi.RYGkgKctTMCAiY2TErua5Yh7flw2lUijooOClQQhlbstZ81 --iscrypted
# network-stuff
# place ip=your_VM_IP, netmask, gateway, nameserver hostname 
network --bootproto=static --ip=10.80.21.19 --netmask=255.255.255.192 --gateway=10.80.21.1 --nameserver=172.30.85.2 --device=eth0 --noipv6 --hostname=FQDN.VMhost.com --onboot=yes
# if you need just localhost initially configured uncomment and comment above
##network В --device=lo --hostname=localhost.localdomain
# System authorization information
authconfig --enableshadow --passalgo=sha512 --enablefingerprint
# skipx
skipx
# Firewall configuration
firewall --disabled
# System timezone
timezone Europe/Berlin
# Clear the Master Boot Record
##zerombr
# Repositories
## Add RPM repositories from KS file if necessery
#repo --name=appstream --baseurl=http://hostname.com/rhel/8/AppStream
#repo --name=baseos --baseurl=http://hostname.com/rhel/8/BaseOS
#repo --name=inst.stage2 --baseurl=http://hostname.com ff=/dev/vg0/vmprivate
##repo --name=rhsm-baseos В  В --baseurl=http://172.54.8.65/rhel/8/rhsm/x86_64/BaseOS/
##repo --name=rhsm-appstream --baseurl=http://172.54.8.65/rhel/8/rhsm/x86_64/AppStream/
##repo --name=os-baseos В  В  В --baseurl=http://172.54.9.65/rhel/8/os/BaseOS/
##repo --name=os-appstream В  --baseurl=http://172.54.8.65/rhel/8/os/AppStream/
#repo --name=inst.stage2 --baseurl=http://172.54.8.65/rhel/8/BaseOS
# Disk partitioning information set proper disk sizing
##bootloader --location=mbr --boot-drive=vda
bootloader --append=" crashkernel=auto tsc=reliable divider=10 plymouth.enable=0 console=ttyS0 " --location=mbr --boot-drive=vda
# partition plan
zerombr
clearpart --all --drives=vda --initlabel
part /boot --size=1024 --fstype=ext4 --asprimary
part swap --size=1024
part pv.01 --size=30000 --grow --ondisk=vda
##part pv.0 --size=80000 --fstype=lvmpv
#part pv.0 --size=61440 --fstype=lvmpv
volgroup s pv.01
logvol / --vgname=s --size=15360 --name=root --fstype=ext4
logvol /var/cache/ --vgname=s --size=5120 --name=cache --fstype=ext4 --fsoptions="defaults,nodev,nosuid"
logvol /var/log --vgname=s --size=7680 --name=log --fstype=ext4 --fsoptions="defaults,nodev,noexec,nosuid"
logvol /tmp --vgname=s --size=5120 --name=tmp --fstype=ext4 --fsoptions="defaults,nodev,nosuid"
logvol /home --vgname=s --size=5120 --name=home --fstype=ext4 --fsoptions="defaults,nodev,nosuid"
logvol /opt --vgname=s --size=2048 --name=opt --fstype=ext4 --fsoptions="defaults,nodev,nosuid"
logvol /var/log/audit --vgname=s --size=3072 --name=audit --fstype=ext4 --fsoptions="defaults,nodev,nosuid"
logvol /var/spool --vgname=s --size=2048 --name=spool --fstype=ext4 --fsoptions="defaults,nodev,nosuid"
logvol /var --vgname=s --size=7680 --name=var --fstype=ext4 --fsoptions="defaults,nodev,nosuid"
# SELinux configuration
selinux --disabled
# Installation logging level
logging --level=debug
# reboot automatically
reboot
###
%packages
@standard
python3
pam_ssh_agent_auth
-nmap-ncat
#-plymouth
#-bpftool
-cockpit
#-cryptsetup
-usbutils
#-kmod-kvdo
#-ledmon
#-libstoragemgmt
#-lvm2
#-mdadm
-rsync
#-smartmontools
-sos
-subscription-manager-cockpit
# Tune Linux vm.dirty_background_bytes (IMAGE-439)
# The following tuning causes dirty data to begin to be background flushed at
# 100 Mbytes, so that it writes earlier and more often to avoid a large build
# up and improving overall throughput.
echo "vm.dirty_background_bytes=100000000" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
# Disable kdump
systemctl disable kdump.service
%end

Important note to make here is the MD5 set root password string in (rootpw) line this string can be generated with openssl or mkpasswd commands :

Method 1: use openssl cmd to generate (md5, sha256, sha512) encrypted pass string

[root@redhat ~]# openssl passwd -6 -salt xyz test
$6$xyz$rjarwc/BNZWcH6B31aAXWo1942.i7rCX5AT/oxALL5gCznYVGKh6nycQVZiHDVbnbu0BsQyPfBgqYveKcCgOE0

Note: passing -1 will generate an MD5 password, -5 a SHA256 encryption and -6 SHA512 encrypted string (logically recommended for better security)

Method 2: (md5, sha256, sha512)

[root@redhat ~]# mkpasswd –method=SHA-512 –stdin

The option –method accepts md5, sha-256 and sha-512
Theoretically there is also a kickstart file generator web interface on Redhat's site here however I never used it myself but instead use above kickstart.cfg
 

6. Install the new VM with virt-install cmd


Roll the new preconfigured VM based on above ks template file use some kind of one liner command line  like below:
 

[root@redhat ~]# virt-install -n RHEL8_3-VirtualMachine –description "CentOS 8.3 Virtual Machine" –os-type=Linux –os-variant=rhel8.3 –ram=8192 –vcpus=8 –location=/vmprivate/rhel-server-8.3-x86_64-dvd.iso –disk path=/vmprivate/RHEL8_3-VirtualMachine.img,bus=virtio,size=70 –graphics none –initrd-inject=/root/kickstart.cfg –extra-args "console=ttyS0 ks=file:/kickstart.cfg"

7. Use a tiny shell script to automate VM creation


For some clarity and better automation in case you plan to repeat VM creation you can prepare a tiny bash shell script:
 

#!/bin/sh
KS_FILE='kickstart.cfg';
VM_NAME='RHEL8_3-VirtualMachine';
VM_DESCR='CentOS 8.3 Virtual Machine';
RAM='8192';
CPUS='8';
# size is in Gigabytes
VM_IMG_SIZE='140';
ISO_LOCATION='/vmprivate/rhel-server-8.3-x86_64-dvd.iso';
VM_IMG_FILE_LOC='/vmprivate/RHEL8_3-VirtualMachine.img';

virt-install -n "$VMNAME" –description "$VM_DESCR" –os-type=Linux –os-variant=rhel8.3 –ram=8192 –vcpus=8 –location="$ISO_LOCATION" –disk path=$VM_IMG_FILE,bus=virtio,size=$IMG_VM_SIZE –graphics none –initrd-inject=/root/$KS_FILE –extra-args "console=ttyS0 ks=file:/$KS_FILE"


A copy of virt-install.sh script can be downloaded here

Wait for the installation to finish it should be visualized and if all installation is smooth you should get a login prompt use the password generated with openssl tool and test to login, then disconnect from the machine by pressing CTRL + ] and try to login via TTY with

[root@redhat ~]# virst list –all
 Id   Name        State
—————————
 2    
RHEL8_3-VirtualMachine   running

[root@redhat ~]#  virsh console RHEL8_3-VirtualMachine


redhat8-login-prompt

One last thing I recommend you check the official documentation on Kickstart2 from CentOS official website

In case if you later need to destroy the VM and the respective created Image file you can do it with:
 

[root@redhat ~]#  virsh destroy RHEL8_3-VirtualMachine
[root@redhat ~]#  virsh undefine RHEL8_3-VirtualMachine

Don't forget to celebreate the success and give this nice article a credit by sharing this nice tutorial with a friend or by placing a link to it from your blog 🙂

 

 

Enjoy !

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