Linux on Planet Hawleywood

Ohio Linuxfest 2023

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I made it.

Friday was good, but I got here late.

TimeAttended?9:00Arduino Meets Raspberry Pi Using O.L.D. Programming Techniques – Cameron Hughes and Tracy Hughes10:00Exploiting the IT Value Stream: Iterative Automation Strategy – Brad Krumme11:00Syslog for Fun (and Profit?) – Warren Myers13:00History of Computing – Ken Elliott14:00NixOS from Basics to Devops – Adam Stephens15:00The Outstanding Advantages of Being a Linux-Based Artist – Thomas Hancock16:00Simulated AI Hardware: a Toy Matrix Multiply – Zak Kohler17:00✔Keynote: Open Source Can’t Win – Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier YouTube Stream

Nine traits of the veteran Unix admin

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Note: I found this article onlineand wanted to save it to my Wallabag instance, but it’s frustratingly split into 2 pages and would require a lot of pointless gymnastics to combine. So, instead, I copy/pasted the article contents here and offer it as geeky entertainment while granting all credit to the original author and publication. All original links are intact. Enjoy

The Deep End

By Paul Venezia, Senior Contributing Editor, InfoWorld | Feb 14, 2011 6:00 am PST

One man's trash is another man's treasure

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I go out walking every morning. My usual route takes me around my apartment complex and the apartment complex next door. Last Wednesday’s walk was no different.

I was up stupid early - before 6:00 AM and out the door shortly thereafter. When rounding the corner next door I saw a pile of hardware garbage near the dumpster on the other side of the garages. There was a tower PC case, opened, that looked pretty gutted (although the hard drive was still in it - sigh). There were a couple what looked to be older stereo components another computer that looked to be in pretty good condition and a nice (if not pretty well-used) desk lamp.

SSH Host Verification

Tue, 09 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

How often have you seen something like this?

The authenticity of host '111.222.333.444 (111.222.333.444)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is f3:cf:58:ae:71:0b:c8:04:6f:34:a3:b2:e4:1e:0c:8b.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

The temptation to quickly type yes and hit the enter key is great. But do you know why you are seeing this message?

You should only get this the first time you connect to a new host. After you respond yes the host gets stored in ~/.ssh/known_hosts, and you won’t get prompted the next time you connect.

Generic Directory Backup Script

Sun, 07 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I regularly have directories of files I want to back up in case of disaster. Usually these are files that change often, and I only want to keep recent versions in case I want to revert or recover changes. (Git? Git, who?)

I have used this script over and over as a simple way to archive a directory to a location with a date-stamped filename. It also cleans up after itself by deleting files older than X days. I stick it in CRON and let it run on a schedule and I always have an archive of the last X days of the files in my directory.

Ubuntu Phased Updates

Sun, 25 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Q: Ubuntu phased updates

Recently, during the normal software upgrade process (i.e., apt upgrade or apt dist-upgrade) I started getting messages like this:

[...]
The following packages have been kept back:
[...]
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and [...] not upgraded.

What are my options?

A: Phased Updates are a safety feature

Some users get the upgraded packages first, and have the ability to report broken package, instead of everybody getting a broken package at once and millions of users scratching their heads.

It’s there for your protection. Don’t try to outsmart it.

Hardening SSH

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

It’s about time I get a standard sshd_config file that doesn’t rely on sane defaults.

Disabling Password-based Authentication

You should disable password-based authentication altogether. Make sure to only do this once you have verified that you can log in with an account that can escalate to root - or that you have an alternate way of getting back onto your machine. To lock down your server, edit your /etc/sshd/sshd_config and set the following options:

Uncomplicated Firewall / Docker Workaround

Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

To get UFW to work well with Docker, you have to add some rules to the bottom of

/etc/ufw/after.rules

# BEGIN UFW AND DOCKER
*filter
:ufw-user-forward - [0:0]
:ufw-docker-logging-deny - [0:0]
:DOCKER-USER - [0:0]
-A DOCKER-USER -j ufw-user-forward
-A DOCKER-USER -j RETURN -s 10.0.0.0/8
-A DOCKER-USER -j RETURN -s 172.16.0.0/12
-A DOCKER-USER -j RETURN -s 192.168.0.0/16
-A DOCKER-USER -p udp -m udp --sport 53 --dport 1024:65535 -j RETURN
-A DOCKER-USER -j ufw-docker-logging-deny -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags FIN,SYN,RST,ACK SYN -d 192.168.0.0/16
-A DOCKER-USER -j ufw-docker-logging-deny -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags FIN,SYN,RST,ACK SYN -d 10.0.0.0/8
-A DOCKER-USER -j ufw-docker-logging-deny -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags FIN,SYN,RST,ACK SYN -d 172.16.0.0/12
-A DOCKER-USER -j ufw-docker-logging-deny -p udp -m udp --dport 0:32767 -d 192.168.0.0/16
-A DOCKER-USER -j ufw-docker-logging-deny -p udp -m udp --dport 0:32767 -d 10.0.0.0/8
-A DOCKER-USER -j ufw-docker-logging-deny -p udp -m udp --dport 0:32767 -d 172.16.0.0/12
-A DOCKER-USER -j RETURN
-A ufw-docker-logging-deny -m limit --limit 3/min --limit-burst 10 -j LOG --log-prefix "[UFW DOCKER BLOCK] "
-A ufw-docker-logging-deny -j DROP
COMMIT

Adding Rules

Then you can add rules. Always add rules with comments. Examples below:

Linux Terminal Emulators: KiTTY over PuTTY

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

Do you work on Linux machines? Do you only have a Windows machine from which to connect? Then you’re probably already using PuTTY.

Well, step aside PuTTY, there’s a new terminal client in town.

KiTTY is a fork of the original PuTTY software, with loads of new features, including a portable version that saves all of your sessions and settings into an INI file in the same folder.

Installation

Download KiTTY Portable
???
PROFIT!

Just kidding. There are no other steps. The download is an exe that’s ready to go. Just double-click on it and enter your connection parameters (should be familiar if you’ve ever used PuTTY)

Fun with wget

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

wget multiple files

wget -r -l1 -A.mp3 http://aaa.com/directory

In the above example, -r and -l1 options together enable 1-level deep recursive retrieval, and -A option specifies lists of file name suffixes to accept during recursive download (.mp3 in this case).

ways to wget entire webpage

This one works so well, I’ve created an alias for it:

wgetMirror='/usr/bin/wget -o wget.log -mkEpnp –wait=9 –user-agent='\''Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)'\'' –no-check-certificate'

Other options:

wget --recursive --no-clobber --page-requisites --html-extension --convert-links --restrict-file-names=windows --domains example.com --no-parent <url>

Modify User Agent

$ wget -U "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)" <url>

wget from webdav with authentication

wget --http-user=user-id --http-password=password <URL>

Reference

Doctor Docker (or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Tolerate the Container")

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Backstory: I’ve been either paying for or using 3rd part apps for Read-It-Later (Pocket), Hosted Bookmarks (Raindrop.io) and an RSS Feedreader (Inoreader) for about a year. In the interest of 1) teaching myself Docker and 2) decoupling from hosted solutions I have finally replaced all three of the above apps with docker containers.

I am using Portainer to manage my docker nodes (I have two) and containers. I recommend learning at least the basics on how to build and modify containers via the command line before using a GUI tool to manage them, but Portainer came highly recommended and abstracts a lot of the drudgery into simple point and clicks.

Ohio Linuxfest 2020 - Nov 06-07 2020 (Virtual)

Sat, 07 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Friday 2020-11-06

Day One YouTube Stream

11:30 – Warner and Beth Lynn Welcome
12:00 – Baremetal RISC-V Renode – Zak Kohler
12:45 – One Sprint to Drastically Improve Web Accessibility – Robin Clower
13:30 – Delta Ansible: Keeping up with Changes and Deprecations – Andrew Cziryak
14:15 – SSH Tunnels and More – Der Hans

https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/

https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/
15:00 – FSF Campaigns – Zoë Kooyman, Program Manager; Greg Farough, Campaigns Manager

[[OLF2020 - FSF.pdf|Slide Deck]]

[[OLF2020 - FSF.pdf|Slide Deck]]
16:00 – UN Sustainable Goals – Dorothy Gordon
16:30 – Exploring trade-offs in S3 file systems – Andrew Gaul
17:15 – We Don’t Compete on Security – Andrew J Krug and Nathan Case
18:00 – Nixie Pixel and CS Geek on the Geek Beacon Community

Saturday 2020-11-07

Day Two Youtube Stream

Ohio Linuxfest 2019 - Nov 02 2019, Columbus, Ohio

Sun, 03 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

My Schedule

09:00 How Will You Steer Your Open Source Career? Keynote Rikii Endsley
11:00 Delta Ansible: Keeping up With Changes and Deprecations Andrew Cziryak The guy next to me is SNORING!
The guy next to me is SNORING!
13:00 Modern Puppet Session Steven Pritchard I walked out of the puppet talk. It was way over my head and things just weren’t making any sense
I walked out of the puppet talk. It was way over my head and things just weren’t making any sense
14:00 An introduction to the Windows to Subsystem for Linux Rehgan Avon This girl has limited exposure to Linux, but seems enthusiastic enough to do an intro to WSL She’s encouraging the audience to participate, so she doesn’t get things wrong and has backup to answer questions
This girl has limited exposure to Linux, but seems enthusiastic enough to do an intro to WSL She’s encouraging the audience to participate, so she doesn’t get things wrong and has backup to answer questions
15:00 Getting started with Infrastructure as Code Session Tim Quinlan
16:00 Holistic System Automation with Ansible Tim Quinlan
17:00 Lightning Talks AdvocacyTop 10 IT Commandments youtubePico8Redhat VDO (fs de-duplication)jqpatent trolls vs gnome youtubeJavaScript vulnerability tester eval-villianlets-encrypt cert transparencyMad Dog rant on Patent Troll youtubeburnout avoidancemore jq / gron / json/yaml schema
Advocacy
Top 10 IT Commandments youtube
Pico8
Redhat VDO (fs de-duplication)
jq
patent trolls vs gnome youtube
JavaScript vulnerability tester eval-villian
lets-encrypt cert transparency
Mad Dog rant on Patent Troll youtube
burnout avoidance
more jq / gron / json/yaml schema
18:00 Keynote Jon “maddog” Hall 50 years of *x, Why is it important, and where do we go from here?

Other observations

There are fewer vendors this year. Fewer vendors = less swag 😢
Got a free T-Shirt from Linode and signed up for another $50 credit with my hotmail address.
Lunch was good (chicken, salmon and Brussels sprouts) but I can’t stop burping salmon
registered to win an Oculus from Facebook with my planethawleywood address (Update: didn’t win 😢)
This place is crawling with textbook nerds. Pocket protectors, neck beards, and a surprising amount of excess weight. Also, a depressing amount of MacBooks.
The after party was nice, but held in a smaller room than it was in 2017. Build-your-own sliders and onion rings. I ate a couple sliders (sans-bun) before heading out early. I did not participate in the raffle, so there was no reason to hang out.
All-in-all, it was another good time. I think the lack of sleep I got the night before affected me somewhat, and I also found myself sitting around between talks a couple of times (the speaking rooms were really warm and that combined with a topic I wasn’t really interested in made me sleepier)
I did come home with 4 nice shirts!

OLF 2019 Youtube Playlist

SELinux is the devil

Tue, 20 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I spent two hours troubleshooting strange Apache behavior on a new VM before discovering SELinux was enforcing

I always use CentOS in the cloud because it’s stable and awesome for server-grade applications (web server, webdav, samba…etc) I use Ubuntu or a Debian derivative on the desktop because the packages are more up to date and I don’t mind living on the edge at home. (Plus - interacting with CentOS and Ubuntu both on a daily basis keeps me sharp!)

Do It Out In The Open

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I attended my first Ohio Linuxfest this year (2017) and had a great time. I found the lightning talks especially inspirational.

One of the talks I especially like were the lightning talks. Lightning talks are a series of short (5 minute), impromptu talks that anyone can do.

They hand you a microphone, and you say what you want to say.

There were a lot of Linux advocacy speeches (as you’d expect) and “How Linux has affected me” type talks. One of the talks that hit home with me was a gentleman who talked about how when he attended his first Linuxfest, Linux was not his career. Fast-forward a few years, and he is back to say that he now has a Linux job that he secured by being active in the community and meeting people and learning on the job.

Ohio Linuxfest 2017 - Sep 29-30 2017, Columbus, Ohio

Sat, 30 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Attended talks:

Command Line Tools, Clif Flynt
Keynote: The Battle Over Our Technology, Karen Sandler (robo-lawyer)
Lumina Rising: Challenging Desktop Orthodoxy, Ken Moore
The ‘Onwards’ & ‘Upwards’ of Careers in Open Source – A Panel Discussion, Warner Moore, Cassandra Faris, Jason Green, Chad White
Secure Cloud: Linode With Full Disk Encryption, Roberto C. Sánchez
So What Is It Like to Work at Red Hat Anyways?, Steve Ovens
Working in the Open, Jason Plum, GitLab
Lightning Talks
Keynote: A Brief History of an Open Source Company, Tarus Balog

Missed Talks:

Building Sustainable FOSS Communities, Mike Dolan LinkedIn
Keynote: Who Cares if the Code is Free? User Experience & Open Source, Máirín Duffy
A Short Tutorial on a Revision Control System for Sysadmins, Robert Threet
What’s new in FreeNAS 11
Top 10 Easy Cybersecurity Wins for Linux Environments, Michael Contino Slide deck
Getting Hit by an 18-wheeler: Privacy & Anonymity in the Modern Age, Cody Hofstetter
Plaintext Accounting with the Ledger Ecosystem - Colin Dean

2017 Cleveland Givecamp

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I made it to Cleveland Givecamp this year after many years of wanting to go but never having the guts.

I added this to my LinkedIn page:

Technical Volunteer, Cleveland GiveCamp Jul 2017 I volunteered at Cleveland GiveCamp and assisted “The Valentine Project” in refreshing their web presence. I served as site admin by managing hosting, DNS, loading the initial CMS and database and configuring email. I handled site security by configuring SSL and hardening user accounts. I also assisted with scrum-style checklists and documentation to deliver a finished product in just over 24 working hours from July 21-23, 2017.

Linux Doesn't Ask "Are You Sure?"

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Are you sure you want to ruin your entire day? (Y/N)

Preface: This happened a couple of years back and has completely resolved since. It’s also one of those events that fellow sysadmins might relate to that make you go back and rethink (and rewrite) your backup scripts and policies involving production machines and how to not be stupid, in general.

Today is the day after Easter.

This past Good Friday was not… well… good.

Earliest Know Record of "The Linux Guy"

Thu, 05 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I found what I believe to be the earliest reference of me using Linux on the internet.

Via Google Groups, I had posted a question asking for help configuring X on Debian 1.3.1 (released July 1997):

I hope I haven’t missed an obvious solution to this problem somewhere - but it’s slowly driving me mad… I’ve installed Debian 1.3.1 (older version, I’m sure, I’ve had the CDs for about a year) and am trying to configure Xwindows.I can successfully start XF86Setup and even get my intellimouse to work but I can’t seem to find a happy configuration for my Permedia 3000 graphics card. There is no preset for my card and I’ve tried to ‘hand-configure’ it but every time I finish configuring and XF86Setup exits and tries to fire up the server my monitor goes blank (even the power light goes from green to amber(stand-by mode) - the first 2 times I had no choice but to power off (OUCH!) and run e2fsk manually to recover - since then I’ve learned to exit Xwindows (Ctrl-Alt-Bkspc) blindly (the video never does come back - but at least I can hear the exit beep and shut down nicely)Obviously, I’d like to take full advantage of the capabilities of my card - but I’ll settle for just being able to see the screen :)If anyone can offer some advice as to where to start, I’d appreciate it! I’ve got ‘LINUX - The Complete Reference’ the book with all the HOWTO’s and stuff - although I don’t know if that’s totally accurate because of it’s age either (also about a year) but any refernces to HOWTO’s or web pages or just a message from somebody who has a Permedia 3000 card working under LINUX would be great!Thanks for helping….

Birds of a Feather

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

While attending a fundraiser at a bar tonight a girl approached me and asked if the penguin on my shirt was the Linux penguin (It was).

I spent the next 40 minutes chatting with her and her boyfriend (a chef) about Linux and other assorted geekery.

Totally restored my faith in humanity.

Thank you, Anthony. I wish I would have gotten your girlfriend’s name. I hope her brother finds a Linux job. And I wish you nothing but success in the kitchen.

I can install Linux on anything!

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Hail Linux

Thu, 13 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

PSA:

Just so everyone knows: I am a Linux administrator. I have been for a few years now.

I DO NOT own any windows machines although I DO use them at work.

If you choose to click that “Upgrade to Windows 10” button I’ve been hearing about you are on your own.

I will be happy to help you figure out what went wrong and try to fix things - but don’t call me and ask things like:

Abort, Retry, Ignore... Nevermore?

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I installed Linux again. This is like the fourth or fifth time. This time I found a new distribution: Mepis. I tried it out on my CrapTop(tm) at work (yeah - I scavenged an old low-end laptop to experiment on) and I got it working! So I brought the CD home and hooked up a spare 20 gig hard drive and installed it at home. Carrie was a little scared at first - but I assured her that I didn’t touch our Windows install. Long story short - I’m making this entry from Firefox on my new Linux installation.

Linux on Planet Hawleywood

Ohio Linuxfest 2023

Nine traits of the veteran Unix admin

One man's trash is another man's treasure

SSH Host Verification

Generic Directory Backup Script

Ubuntu Phased Updates

Q: Ubuntu phased updates

A: Phased Updates are a safety feature

Hardening SSH

Summary

Disabling Password-based Authentication

Uncomplicated Firewall / Docker Workaround

Adding Rules

Linux Terminal Emulators: KiTTY over PuTTY

Summary

Installation

Fun with wget

wget multiple files

ways to wget entire webpage

Modify User Agent

wget from webdav with authentication

Reference

Doctor Docker (or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Tolerate the Container")

Ohio Linuxfest 2020 - Nov 06-07 2020 (Virtual)

Friday 2020-11-06

Saturday 2020-11-07

Ohio Linuxfest 2019 - Nov 02 2019, Columbus, Ohio

My Schedule

Other observations

SELinux is the devil

Do It Out In The Open

Ohio Linuxfest 2017 - Sep 29-30 2017, Columbus, Ohio

Attended talks:

Missed Talks:

Links:

2017 Cleveland Givecamp

Linux Doesn't Ask "Are You Sure?"

Earliest Know Record of "The Linux Guy"

Birds of a Feather

I can install Linux on anything!

Hail Linux

Abort, Retry, Ignore... Nevermore?