Behind the Eyes

Behind the Eyes

  • LetsEncrypt it!

    Hello, Quite a quick turnaround for blog posts and me. This one is going to be helpful for those of us that use Wildcard Certificates in our environment and found out that our SSL provider changed their policies based on industry standards, but now their certificates cost 200x more than they used to so we are moving to an opensource and free solution.

    For those of you that don’t know what the previous paragraph means, Google, and other major web site providers implemented that all communications on the Internet be secured. To do this, we use SSL or Secure Socket Layer certificates. These certificates verify and validate that the site you are on is the real one and any information that you provide on it will be encrypted and secure. SSL Certificate do this encrypting and signing to make sure everything is good. In the past, we used to have to spend $100’s, if not $1000’s (Like it did) to have this capability. LetsEncrypt came about to make this free and accessible to everyone. The downside is that the certificates are only valid for 90 days instead of a year, but you get what you pay for.

    I am moving to this model because my vendor of SSL, Digicert changed their model and now I can’t renew certificates without spending another $600 on top of the $5k I’ve already spent. So I am moving to LetsEncrypt.

    LetsEncrypt is a SSL company that uses a software package called certbot that can automatically create and install certificates that are trusted to systems.

    My DNS host provider, however, is not one of their partners. However, they do allow me to edit records on the fly, which is important since that is how LetsEncrypt verifies that you own the domain and won’t generate a certificate if you don’t. This means that I can’t automate the deployment or the generation, and I have to run the following command to update my certificates every 90 days. Some of my systems can be automated, which those, like this one that runs my web server, can. However, I do have some systems like my Virtual Center server or my Email server that use Wildcard or a single certificate to cover multiple servers. This blog will discuss how to do this, mainly so that in 90 days I can remember how to do this.

    So, on to how to do this.

    First, install certbot on a machine. Since I’m a Linux person, and I used Ubuntu, I installed this on my local machine:

    sudo apt update
sudo apt install letsencrypt

    This installs the base LetsEncrypt software with no plugins. Since my DNS provider does not have a plugin, I have to do this manually.

    I also had to add the wildcard, or “*” to my domain to prove I owned the domain, so I logged in to my DNS provider, and created an “A” record that pointed to my webserver with the *.lucaswilliams.net name. This will allow me to use this certificate on any of my server inside my lucaswilliams.net domain. Very useful for virtual server for VMware, email, and other servers that need HTTPS and SSL Certificates.

    Once I created the wildcard domain entry in my DNS record. I then went to the terminal on my Linux machine and typed the following:

    sudo certbot certonly --manual \
--preferred-challenges=dns \
--email user@domain.com \
--server https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory \
--agree-tos \
-d *.domain.com

    for the --server https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory line, you have to use this server to create the certificate as this is the only one that LetsEncrypt uses to for this requirement.

    After hitting enter to start the process, I was presented a prompt asking if I wanted to share my information and details about the certificate, which I replied “N” but if you want you can.

    The next prompt is the important one. It looks like the following:

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Please deploy a DNS TXT record under the name:

_acme-challenge.domain.com.

with the following value:

q12yr1dyFyrh143HHRTe42HH_hf#1d7&ewftgs8H

Before continuing, verify the TXT record has been deployed. Depending on the DNS
provider, this may take some time, from a few seconds to multiple minutes. You can
check if it has finished deploying with aid of online tools, such as the Google
Admin Toolbox: https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/#TXT/_acme-challenge.domain.com.
Look for one or more bolded line(s) below the line ';ANSWER'. It should show the
value(s) you've just added.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Press Enter to Continue

    I then logged into my DNS provider and created this TXT record and then hit enter in the terminal to complete the key generation. LetsEncrypt verified the record and created my certificates in /etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.com. You will need ‘root’ access for the live directory, so I ran sudo -i to change to root user and access the certificates.

    I then copied the privekey.pem and fullchain.pem files to my servers and renamed them to what the system understands as the private key file and the certificate file.

    The biggest takeaway from this is that LetsEncrypt will let us create certificates for our systems for free, however, they only are valid for 90 days which means that we have to do this every 3 months. Some systems can be fully automated if their names don’t change or the certificate is used only for validation and verification of the site and name, but more complex certificates, like email verification and signature signing, this is the way to go for that.

    If any of you know of a better way of doing this, please let me know and I’ll share it and give you credit for the improvment!

  • Replacing failed disks in a MD RAID in Ubuntu Server

    Hello everyone! Been a moment since my last blog update. This is a special one that I have been wanting to write, but wanted to wait until I actually had to do it so I can show real world examples, and boy, is this one for the record books.

    So, my secondary KVM server has a 5 disk hot swappable chassis that I bought on NewEgg about 7 years ago that allows you to install 5 SATA disks and these disks are connected to the mother board from the chassis into the 5 SATA ports. This allows me to hot swap the hard drives if they ever fail, and well, two of them did about a month ago. The system is setup as a RAID-5. So all of the disks are members of the RAID and then the 5th disk is a Hot Spare. Well, Disk 4 and 5 failed together. Basically, disk 4 failed, and while 5 was becoming the 4th disk, it failed. Luckily the Array was still good, but now I need to replace the failed disks.

    I bought 2 new 2TB disks from NewEgg and installed them in the array. Unfortunately, the system does not automatically detect new drives installed or removed, so I had to run the following commands to get the disks recognized by the system.

    sudo -i
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host1/scan
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host2/scan
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host3/scan

    I then listed the /dev/ directory to make sure that /dev/sdd and /dev/sde were no longer being seen as they have been removed. I also checked the raid configuration to make sure that they were not listed any longer:

    mdadm -D /dev/md0
mdadm -D /dev/md1

    Both arrays no longer listed the failed disks, so I’m ready to physically add the new disks.

    I installed the new disks. Now I need to re-scan the bus for Linux to see the disks:

    echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host1/scan
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host2/scan
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host3/scan

    I then listed the /dev directory and I can now see the new disks, sdd and sde.

    I then need to make sure that they have the correct format and partition layout to work with my existing array. For this I used the sfdisk command to copy a partition layout and then apply it to the new disks:

    sfdisk -d /dev/sda > partitions.txt
sfdisk /dev/sdd < partitions.txt
sfdisk /dev/sde < partitions.txt

    If I do another listing of the /dev directory I can see the new drives have the partitions. I’m now ready to add the disks back to the array:

    mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sdd2
mdadm --add /dev/md1 /dev/sdd3
mdadm --add-spare /dev/md0 /dev/sde2
mdadm --add-spare /dev/md1 /dev/sde3

    I then check the status of the array to make sure it is rebuilding:

    mdadm -D /dev/md0
mdadm -D /dev/md1

    The system shown it was rebuilding the arrays and at the current rate it was going to take about a day.

    The next day I go and check the status, and low and behold I found out that disk 5 (sde) had failed and was no longer reporting in. I got a bad disk shipped to me. So I contacted NewEgg and they sent me out a replacement as soon as I sent them the failed disk. Luckily it was the hot spare so it didn’t have any impact on the system removing it or adding it back, but I did run the following command to remove the spare from the array and then re-scanned the bus so that the disk was fully removed from the server:

    sudo mdadm --remove /dev/md0 /dev/sde2
sudo mdadm --remove /dev/md1 /dev/sde3
sudo echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan
sudo echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host1/scan
sudo echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host2/scan
sudo echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host3/scan
sudo mdadm -D /dev/md0
sudo mdadm -D /dev/md1

    The MDADM reported that there was no longer a spare available and the listing of the /dev directory no longer shown /dev/sde. A week later, I got my new spare from NewEgg and installed it and ran the following:

    sudo -i
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host1/scan
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host2/scan
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host3/scan
ls /dev
sfdisk /dev/sde < partitions.txt
ls /dev
mdadm --add-spare /dev/md0 /dev/sde2
mdadm --add-spare /dev/md1 /dev/sde3
mdadm -D /dev/md0
mdadm -D /dev/md1

    This added the disk and then added it as a hot spare for the arrays. Since it’s a hot spare, it does not need to resync.

    And there you have it, how to replace the disks in a MD RAID on Ubuntu.

  • Growing Ubuntu LVM After Install

    Hello everyone. I hope you have all been well.

    I have a new blog entry on something I just noticed today.

    So I typically don’t use LVM in my Linux Virtual Machines, mainly because I have had some issues in the past trying to migrate VM’s from one hypervisor type to another, for example, VMware to KVM or vice versa. I have found that if I use LVM, I have mapping issues and it takes some work to get the VM’s working again after converting the raw disk image from vmdk to qcow2 or vice versa.

    However, since I don’t plan on doing that anymore (I’m sticking with KVM/Qemu for the time being) I have looked at using LVM again since I like how easy it is to grow the volume if I have to in the future. While growing a disk image is fairly easy, trying to grow a /dev/vda or /dev/sda is a little cumbersome, usually requiring me to boot my VM with a tool like PMagic or even the Ubuntu install media and using gparted to manipulate the size and then rebooting back into the VM after successfully growing it.

    With LVM, this is much simpler. 3 commands and I’m done, and don’t need a reboot. Those commands:

    • pvdisplay
    • lvextend
    • resize2fs

    Now, One thing I have noticed after a fresh install of Ubuntu Server 22.04.2, using LVM, I don’t get all my hard drive partition used. I noticed this after I installed, I ran df -h and noticed that my / folder was at 32%. I built the VM with a 50G hard drive, yet df was only seeing 23GB. I then ran

    sudo pvdisplay

    Sure enough, the device was 46GB in size. I then ran

    sudo lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv

    This command extended my partition out to the remaining space. Next, I grew the file system to use the new space:

    sudo resize2fs /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv

    I then ran df -h again, and low and behold, my / folder is now saying 46GB and 16% used instead of 32%.

    I hope this helps anyone else!

  • Building ONIE with DUE

    Howdy everyone, been a while since I’ve had a post but this one is long overdue.

    I’m still working in Networking, and every once in a while, I need to update the ONIE software on a switch, or even create a KVM version for GNS3 so that I can test latest versions of NOS’s.

    Well, a lot has changed and improved since I had to do this. ONIE now has a build environment using DUE, or Dedicated User Environment. Cumulus has made this, and it is in the APT repos for Ubuntu and Debian. This does make building much easier as trying to build a build machine with today’s procedure from OCP’s GitHub repo is 100% broken and doesn’t work. They still ask to use Debian 9, which most of the servers hosting packages have been retired since Debian 9 has EOL’d. I’ve tried with Debian 10, only to have packages not be supported. So I found out about DUE and was having issues with that, but after much searching and reading, I finally found a way to build ONIE images successfully and consistently.

    Just a slight Caution: At the rate of change with ONIE, this procedure can change again. I will either update this blog or create a new one when necessary.

    So, lets get to building!

    The first thing I did, was install Docker and DUE on my Ubuntu 22.04.4 server

    sudo apt update
sudo apt install docker.io
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
logout

    I then log back in to the server so that my new group association takes place and install DUE

    sudo apt update
sudo apt install due

    I then installed the ONIE DUE environment for Debian 10. From my research this one is the most stable and worked the best for me:

    due --create --from debian:10 --description "ONIE Build Debian 10" --name onie-build-debian-10 \
--prompt ONIE-10 --tag onie --use-template onie

    This download and sets up the build environment to build ONIE based on Cumulus’s best practices. Once this process is complete, we now get into the environment with the following command:

    due --run -i due-onie-build-debian-10:onie --dockerarg --privileged

    You are now in the Docker Container running Debian 10 and has the prerequisites for building ONIE already installed. Now we need to clone the ONIE repo from GitHub and do some minor settings to make sure the build goes smoothly.

    mkdir src
cd src
git clone https://github.com/opencomputeproject/onie.git

    I then update the git global config to include my email address and name so that during the building process when it grabs other repos to build, it doesn’t choke out and die and tell me to do it later:

     git config --global user.email "wililupy@lucaswilliams.net"
 git config --global user.name "Lucas Williams"

    So, I am building for a KVM instance of ONIE for testing in GNS3. First thing I need to do is build the security key

    cd onie/build-config/
make signing-keys-install MACHINE=kvm_x86_64
make -j4 MACHINE=kvm_x86_64 shim-self-sign
make -j4 MACHINE=kvm_x86_64 shim
make -j4 MACHINE=kvm_x86_64 shim-self-sign
make -j4 MACHINE=kvm_x86_64 shim

    I had to run the shim-self-sign after the shim build option again to create self-signed shims after creating the shim, and then had to run shim again to install the signed shims in the correct directory so that ONIE build would get pass the missing shim files.

    Now we are ready to actually build the KVM ONIE image.

     make -j4 MACHINE=kvm_x86_64 all

    Now, I’m not sure if this is a bug or what, but I actually had to run the previous command about 10 times after every time it completed, because it didn’t actually complete. I would just press UP on my keyboard arrow key to re-run the previous command, and I did this until I got the following output:

    Added to ISO image: directory '/'='/home/wililupy/src/onie/build/kvm_x86_64-r0/recovery/iso-sysroot'
Created: /home/wililupy/src/onie/build/images/onie-updater-x86_64-kvm_x86_64-r0
=== Finished making onie-x86_64-kvm_x86_64-r0 master-06121636-dirty ===
$

    I then ran ls ../build/images to verify that my recovery ISO file was there:

    $ ls ../build/images
kvm_x86_64-r0.initrd       kvm_x86_64-r0.vmlinuz.unsigned
kvm_x86_64-r0.initrd.sig   onie-recovery-x86_64-kvm_x86_64-r0.iso
kvm_x86_64-r0.vmlinuz      onie-updater-x86_64-kvm_x86_64-r0
kvm_x86_64-r0.vmlinuz.sig
$

    I then logged out of the DUE environment and my ISO was in my home directory under the src/onie/build/images/onie-recovery-x86_64-kvm_x86_64-r0.iso file. From here I was able to upload it to my GNS3 server and create a new ONIE template and map the ISO as the CD-ROM and created a blank qcow2 hard disk image to use the recovery and build the image to use on my GNS3.

    One thing to note is that this procedure is for building the KVM version of ONIE. To build others, just change the MACHINE= variable to be what ever platform you are building for.

    Good luck and let me know in the comments if this worked for you.

  • NVMe over TCP setup using BE Networks Verity

    Hello everyone. It’s been a while, almost a year. I have an updated blog that I have written for my company I work for, BE Networks. The link is below. Please enjoy and please share and comment.

    Thanks!

    How to Build NVMe over TCP Storage Networks with BE Networks Verity

  • Emptying Zimbra mailbox from the Command Line

    Hello everyone. I hope you are all doing well and staying safe!

    I wanted to document this procedure for clearing out an email box in Zimbra. I recently had to update my Zimbra mail server and I noticed that my admin account was strangely full. Over 200,000 messages in the inbox. Looking at it, they ended up being storage alerts that the Core snap in my Ubuntu Server was out of disk space. This is normal for snaps since they are SquashFS file systems for the applications they run and that is how they are designed. However, the amount of alerts was quite amazing.

    Since I’m not using snaps on this system, I removed the core snap and all of it’s revisions, and then removed snapd from the system so that the alerts would stop. I did this by doing the following:

    $ sudo snap list --all

    This listed all the snaps and revisions running on my mail server. I then noted the revision number and removed all the disabled snap versions of core by running the following:

    $ sudo snap remove --revision=xxx core

    where xxx is the revision number of the snap. I ran this twice since snaps only keep the previous two versions by default. I than deleted snapd from the system so that it won’t update and remove the core snap from the system:

    $ sudo apt purge snapd

    After this ran, I ran df -h to verify that the /dev/loop2 which is where core was mounted on my system was no longer mounted, which it wasn’t. Since I don’t plan on using snaps on this system, I have no issues.

    Next, I needed to delete the over 200,000 alerts in the admin account. I tried to use the web UI to do this, but it was taking forever. After some Google searching and reading the Zimbra documents, I found out about the command zmmailbox.

    Since I didn’t care about any of the email in the mailbox, I was ready to just delete the entire contents. Use the following commands to do it:

    $ ssh mailhost.example.net
$ sudo su - zimbra
$ zmmailbox
mbox> adminAuthenticate -u https://mailhost.example.net:7071 admin@example.net adminpassword
mbox> selectMailbox admin@example.net
mbox admin@example.net> emptyFolder /Inbox
mbox admin@example.net> emptyFolder /Trash
mbox admin@example.net> exit
$ exit

    It took a little while after the emptyFolder command but it cleared out the inbox and trash folders.

    Let me know if this helps you.

  • Minecraft Server for Ubuntu 20.04.2

    Hello everyone. I hope you are all doing well. I am writing this blog entry because I created a Minecraft server for my kids some time ago, but I had a hardware failure in the system and never replaced it. At the time, it was no big deal since the boys decided that they were done with Minecraft. But lately, with this new version of Minecraft, they have gotten back into it, and they wanted to have a shared sandbox that they can play with their friends on.

    So, I rebuilt their Minecraft server, but this time, I did it from 16.04 to 20.04. It was pretty straight forward and not much has changed in the way of doing this, but this is here for those of you that want to deploy your own Minecraft server.

    NOTE: This will only work for the Java version of Minecraft. If you are using the Windows 10 version or the one on Xbox or Switch, you will not be able to connect to this server.

    So, the first thing you need is a clean installation of Ubuntu 20.04.2 Server. The system specs should be at least 4GB of RAM and 2 CPU Cores and 80GB of Storage. After you install Ubuntu, do the normal first boot practices, update, upgrade, reboot if required, etc.

    sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

    Once that is completed, you need to install a couple things on top.

    One thing I like is the MCRcon tool from Tiiffi. I use this to do backups and statistics of my server, and it is really easy to use, and it’s super small. So I install the Build-Essential package as well as git. Minecraft also leverages Java, so I install the Open Java Development Kit packages with headless mode:

    sudo apt install git build-essential openjdk-11-jre-headless

    Once that is completed, I then create a minecraft user so that when I run this as a service, it is a lot more secure, and I have a location where to keep all the dedicated Minecraft files.

    sudo useradd -m -r -U -d /opt/minecraft -s /bin/bash minecraft

    This creates the Minecraft user with the home directory in /opt/minecraft. This also doesn’t create a password for this account so we don’t have to worry about someone gaining access to our system with this account. You can only access this account via sudo su - minecraft with your local admin account.

    Now, we need to switch to the minecraft user and run the following:

    sudo su - minecraft
mkdir -p {server,tools,backups}
git clone https://github.com/Tiiffi/mcrcon.git ~/tools/mcrcon
cd ~/tools/mcrcon
make

    This will create the required directories for Minecraft, and download and build the MCRcon tool. You can verify that the MCRcon tools built successfully by running the command:

    ~/tools/mcrcon/mcrcon -v

    You will get the following output:

    mcrcon 0.7.1 (built: Mar 26 2021 22:34:02) - https://github.com/Tiiffi/mcrcon
 Bug reports:
     tiiffi+mcrcon at gmail
     https://github.com/Tiiffi/mcrcon/issues/

    Now, we get to installing the Minecraft Server Java file.

    First, we need to download the server.jar file from Minecraft. You can go here to download the file, or what I did, is I go to the link, and from there, I right click the link and select ‘Copy Link Address’ so I can paste it into my terminal on the server and use wget to install it.

    wget https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/1b557e7b033b583cd9f66746b7a9ab1ec1673ced/server.jar -P ~/server

    Now, we need to run the Minecraft server. It will fail on the first run because we need to accept the EULA. We also need to modify the server.properties file since the first run creates these files:

    cd ~/server
java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar server.jar nogui

    After the program fails to start, we need to modify the eula.txt file and change the eula=false at the end of the file to eula=true. Save this file and exit.
    Next, we need to enable RCON in Minecraft. Open the server.properties file and search for the following variables, and change them accordingly:

    rcon.port=25575
rcon.password=PassW0rd
enable-rcon=true

    Also, while you are in this file, you can make any other changes that you want to the server, such as the server name, listening port for the server, the MOTD, etc. Also, choose a complex password so that not just anyone can remote control your server.

    Now, I like to have this run as a service using SystemD. To do this, create a service script. First you have to exit as the Minecraft user by typing exit and getting back to your local admin shell. Then run the following:

    sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service

    Paste the following in the file:

    [Unit]
Description=Minecraft Server
After=network.target

[Service]
User=minecraft
Nice=1
KillMode=none
SuccessExitStatus=0 1
ProtectHome=true
ProtectSystem=full
PrivateDevices=true
NoNewPrivileges=true
WorkingDirectory=/opt/minecraft/server
ExecStart=/usr/bin/java -Xmx2G -Xms2G -jar server.jar nogui
ExecStop=/opt/minecraft/tools/mcrcon/mcrcon -H 127.0.0.1 -P 25575 -p PassW0rd stop

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

    Save the document. Next, run

    sudo systemctl daemon-reload

    This will refresh systemd with the new minecraft.service.

    Now, you can start the minecraft service:

    sudo systemctl start minecraft

    To get it to start on reboots, execute the following:

    sudo sytemctl enable minecraft

    The last thing we have to do is create the backup job for your server. This uses the MCRcon tool and crontab to clean up the server as well.

    Switch back to the Minecraft user and perform the following:

    sudo su - minecraft
vi ~/tools/backup.sh

    Paste the following script into the new file you are creating:

    !/bin/bash
 function rcon {
   /opt/minecraft/tools/mcrcon/mcrcon -H 127.0.0.1 -P 25575 -p PassW0rd "$1"
 }
 rcon "save-off"
 rcon "save-all"
 tar -cvpzf /opt/minecraft/backups/server-$(date +%F-%H-%M).tar.gz /opt/minecraft/server
 rcon "save-on"
 # Delete older backups
 find /opt/minecraft/backups/ -type f -mtime +7 -name '*.gz' -delete

    Now, create a crontab to run the backup:

    crontab -e
0 0 * * * /opt/minecraft/tools/backup.sh

    Now exit as the Minecraft user and return as the local admin. Lastly, because I leverage UFW for my firewall, I need to open the port to the world so that people can connect to it. I do that with the following commands:

    sudo ufw allow from 10.1.10.0/24 to any 25575
sudo ufw allow 25565/tcp

    This allows the Remote console to be accessed only by my internal network, and allows the Minecraft game to be accessed by the outside world.

    Now, you are ready to connect your Minecraft clients to your server and have some fun!

    Let me know if this guide worked for you or if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

  • Installing Ubuntu 20.04.2 on Macbook Pro Mid 2012

    Hello everyone. Been a while and I have a new blog entry so that I don’t forget how to do this if I ever have to do it again.

    I got my girlfriend a new Macbook Pro M1 for Hanukkah and she gave me her old one (It’s a Macbook Pro Mid 2012, or 14,1). I was going to update it to Mac OS 11, but found out that it didn’t support it, so I figured I would try to revive life to it by installing Ubuntu on it. This proved to be harder than I expected, but if you keep reading, I’ll tell you how I finally did it. (I’m actually writing this blog from the laptop running Ubuntu.)

    So, the installation was pretty straight forward. I burned Ubuntu 20.04.2 on a DVD (From https://releases.ubuntu.com) and booted up the mac by inserting the DVD in the drive and holding down the “Option” key while booting up and I select the first EFI Partition to boot from by pressing the Up arrow after selecting it. It booted right into Ubuntu no problem.

    I managed to install Ubuntu, and everything went smoothly. After installation, I noticed a weird error about MOK and EFI. I found out that Mac’s EFI wants a signed OS. To fix this, all I did was:

    sudo su -
cd /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu
cp grubx64.efi shimx64.efi

    This will clear the black screen and error when booting.

    Next, I ran sudo apt update & sudo apt upgrade -y to make sure I had all the updates to my laptop.

    With the 20.04.2 update of Ubuntu, everything works out of the box with the Mid 2012 version of the Mac Book. If you run into any issues during the installation, leave a comment and I will try to help.

    Leave a comment if it helps.

  • Installing Jitsi Meet on Ubuntu 20.04

    Hello everyone! It’s been a while since I updated my blog. I hope you all are staying safe and healthy.

    I decided that I would write a blog about how I built my own video conferencing server during this whole outbreak with COVID and having to social distance and stay home.

    My family is all over the country, and with travel and get togethers not being possible, I figured I would reach out and try to video conference with my family. However, we found that not all of us have iPhone or Androids, Laptops, and even comptuers running the same OS. Plus we all are Zoom’d out after work, so we didn’t want to use Zoom. So while taking a college class, I found out about Jitsi and decided I would try to create my own hosted video conference server. The thing I liked about Jitsi is that it has it’s own web client. So you can host and have meetings directly from the server using any web browser on any OS. It also has Apple Store and Google Play Store apps so you can connect that way, however, I had issues with the Google Play version of the App connecting to my server, but figured out the problem was with certificates and the Google version of the app not trusting my SSL certificates on my server. I will detail further on what I did to fix this issue.

    This blog will detail how I did it using Ubuntu 20.04 as well as securing the server down so that not just anyone can use it and host video conferences.

    First thing you need to do, is have a spare server that is capable of hosting the video conferencing software, as well as the users you want to have per conference. There are many discussions in forums about how to scale your server, but what I did for mine is 4 core CPU, 8GB of RAM, and 80GB of Storage. It has a 1GB NIC connected to my external network pool so that it is accessible directly on the Internet. I have had over 15 people at a time conferencing and it never went above 40% utilization of the CPU and never maxed out the network, and the experience was perfect. You can adjust as you see fit.

    First, install Ubuntu 20.04.1 on the server. I use the Live Server ISO and configure the server and SSH and install my SSH Keys. I disable SSH password since I don’t use it and use keys only. I don’t install any Snaps since I don’t need that on this server. Once the OS installation is complete, reboot the server and login.

    Next, I update all the repos and packages to make sure my system is fully updated: 

    $ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

    Next, I setup UFW to secure the server so that it is protected from the outside:

    $ sudo ufw allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/24 to any port 22
$ sudo ufw enable

    xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is my internal network.

    Next, I copy my SSL certificates and SSL keys to the server. I use the default locations in /etc/ssl/ to store my keys and certificates. I put the key in private/ and the certificates in certs/.

    Now, before we can install Jitsi, I needed to make sure my hostname and /etc/hosts are configured for Jitsi to work correclty. I set the FQDN for my server using hostnamectl:

    $ sudo hostnamectl set-hostname meet.domain.name

    You can verify that it takes by running hostname at the prompt and it return the name you just set.

    Next you have to modify the /etc/hosts file and put the FQDN of your server in place of the localhost entry.

    Now, I create the firewall rules for Jitsi.

    $ sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
$ sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
$ sudo ufw allow 4443/tcp
$ sudo ufw allow 10000/udp

    Now we are ready to install Jitsi. Luckily, it has a repo that we can use, but we have to have the system trust it, so first we have to download the jitsi gpg key using wget:

    $ wget https://download.jitis.org/jitsi-key.gpg.key
$ sudo apt-key add jitsi-key.gpg.key 
$ rm jitsi-key.gpg.key

    Now we create the repo source list to download Jitsi:

    $ sudo vi /etc/apt/source.list.d/jitsi-stable.list
i
deb https://download.jitsi.org stable/

    Press the <esc> key to get the vi prompt and then type :wq to save and quite vi.

    Now, run sudo apt update to refresh the repos on your system and then you are ready to install Jitsi by running:

    $ sudo apt install jitsi-meet

    You will be brought to a prompt where it asks for the server’s name, enter the FQDN of your server here. Next you will be asked about certificates. Select “I want to use my own certificates” and enter the path of your certificates and key.

    Thats all it takes to install Jitsi. You now have a server that people can connect to and join and create video conferences. However, I don’t just want anyone to be able to create conference rooms on my server, so I locked it down by modifying some of the configuration files.

    The first configuration file we need to modify is the /etc/prosody/conf.avail/meet.domain.name.cfg.lua file. This file will tell Jitsi to allow anonymous room creation, or password creation. Open the file in vi and find this line:

    authentication = "anonymous"

    and change it to:

    authentication = "internal_plain"

    Then, go all the way to the bottom of the file and add the following line:

    VirtualHost "guest.meet.domain.name"
     authentication = "anonymous"
     c2s_require_encryption = false

    Save the file and exit. These settings allow it so that only someone authenticated in Jitsi can create a room, but guests are allowed to join the room once it is created.

    Next we need to modify the /etc/jitis/meet/meet.domain.name-config.js file. Edit and uncomment the following line:

    // anonymousdomain: 'guest.meet.domain.name',

    You uncomment it by removing the // from the front of the line. Save the file and quit vi.

    The last file we have to modify is /etc/jitsi/jicofo/sip-communicator.properties file. Go all the way to the bottom of the file and add the following line:

    org.jitsi.jicofo.auth.URL=XMPP:meet.domain.name

    Now you are ready to add users to the system that you want to have the permissions to create rooms on the server. You will use the prosodyctl command to do this:

    $ sudo prosodyctl register <username> meet.domain.name <password>

    You can do this for as many users as you want.

    Last, restart all the Jitsi services so that everything you changed will take effect:

    $ sudo systemctl restart prosody

    You can now login to your meet server by opening a web browser to it, create a room, and you will be prompted to enter your Jitsi ID that you just created. It will be <username>@meet.domain.name and the password you set using the prosodyctl command.

    Android Users and Jitsi

    As I mentioned earlier, you can download the Jitsi app from the Apple Store and the Google Play Store. However, there is an issue with the Android version of Jitsi app where it only trusts Jitsi’s servers hosted on jitsi.org. To get around this with my friends and family, I shared with them my certificates for Jitsi in an email to them, and they installed them on their device. Once they did this they were able to connect to my Jitsi server using the Android app. IPhone and Web users do not have this issue.

    Conclusion

    I hope you liked this blog entry on installing your own video conferencing server. If you have any questions, or just want to leave a comment, leave it below.

    Thanks and Happy Hollidays!

  • RetroPie on the Intel NUC Hades Canyon

    RetroPie on the Intel NUC Hades Canyon

    Hey everyone! Been a while since I wrote a blog and I figured this would be a good one. So, because of the COVID-19, and everyone Social Distancing and schools being closed down. I decided that I was going to do a project. Me and my boys love retro gaming. We have used RetroPie in the past on Raspberry Pi’s and loved it, but we wanted to play some more modern games like from their Wii or Gamecube or PlayStation2, and those just can’t be done on the Raspberry Pi version of RetroPie.

    I read a blog about running RetroPie on an Intel NUC, which I followed and for the most part, I got it working right. Some of my lessons learned will be in this HowTo. But after a while, we noticed that it just didn’t perform like it does on the PC or laptop with a decent graphics card. So after doing some research I found the Intel NUC gaming section, and purchased a Hades Canyon, which I feel will give us the performance we are looking for. Plus it will definitely give us the storage since PS2 Games are HUGE!

    So, without further ado, here is how to get RetroPie working on your Hades Canyon (or regular NUC):

    First thing you going to want to do is install Linux on the NUC. Burn the 18.04 Server ISO to a thumbdrive. I downloaded the Live Server version, but you can use the alternate. I recommend Server since you don’t need to install the full Desktop expirience, and I can use the space savings for more ROMS!!

    Next, plug it in to the front USB port. Connect a keyboard up to the other USB port and connect the video and network. Luckily I have a mini switch next to my TV, so I just connected to that. Hades Canyon and NUC have WiFi, but I don’t use it.

    Power on the NUC and it will automatically boot off of USB. You’ll get the GRUB menu and it will start the Live Installer for Ubuntu. I kept everything default, full disk, no LVM, no Encryption, DHCP on the Ethernet settings, and clicked install.

    Setting up the user, I kept this simple and as close to the regular RetroPie settings:

    • User: Retro Pie
    • Server Name: retropie
    • Username: pi
    • Password: raspberry

    I also told it to enable SSH and to download my public SSH keys from Launchpad.net and to allow remote password authentication.

    After a few minutes, the install completed and I unplugged the USB thumbdrive and reboot the NUC. It restarted in Ubuntu 18.04.4.

    I like to use the HWE kernel for my RetroPie since the newer kernel’s have new features and RetroPie might make use of them. So I do the following:

    sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install --install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04

    And then you reboot the NUC again. Once it comes back up you are ready to do RetroPie installation. This is what I did:

    SSH into the NUC

    Set it so the the pi user can execute sudo without a password (makes scripting much easier)

    sudo sed -i -e '$a\pi ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' /etc/sudoers

    Type the pi password and you’re all set. You won’t have to type that password again if you use sudo.

    Now to add the universe repo and all of the RetroPie dependancies:

    sudo apt-add-repository universe
sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y 
sudo apt install xorg openbox pulseaudio alsa-utils menu \ libglib2.0-bin python-xdg at-spi2-core dbus-x11 git \
dialog unzip xmlstarlet --no-install-recommends -y

    Now we need to create an OpenBox autorun script to start terminal and start Emulation Station

    mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox
echo 'gnome-terminal --full-screen --hide-menubar -- \ emulationstation' >> ~/.config/openbox/autostart

    Next, create the .xsession file:

    echo 'exec openbox-session' >> ~/.xsession

    Now we need to make it so X11 starts on reboots:

    echo 'if [[ -z $DISPLAY ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]; then' >> ~/.bash_profile
sed -i '$ a\startx -- -nocursor >/dev/null 2>&1' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '$ a\fi' ~/.bash_profile

    Next, we make it so the that pi user automatically logs in and that way Emulation Station will be what you see on the screen:

    sudo mkdir /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d
sudo sh -c 'echo [Service] >> /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.servcie.d/override.conf' 
sudo sed -i '$ a\ExecStart=' /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf
sudo sed -i '$ a\ExecStart= /sbin/agetty --skip-login --noissue --autologin pi %I $TERM' /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.servcie.d/override.conf
sudo sed -i '$ a\Type=idle' /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.servcie.d/override.conf

    Now we are ready to download RetroPie from the Git Repo and run the installation scripts:

    git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git
sudo RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh

    This will start the RetroPie installer. Accept the EULA and select Basic Installation. Select Yes to install all packages from Core and Main. They system will then start downloading and building RetroPie directly on the NUC

    Note: This takes some time. Grab a beverage, some food. I’ll wait.

    Once building and installation is complete, you can reboot the NUC from the menu. However, I have a few more customizations that I do.

    I use an Xbox One Controller with my NUC, so I have to install the driver for it on Ubuntu. To do that, cursor down to Driver, and select the xboxdrv and install from source. It takes about 3 minutes to download and build the driver. When it completes, you are back at the Menu. Select Back from the bottom to go up a level, and do it again to get back to the main menu.

    I also install Dolphin Emulator, and the Playstation2 Emulator, and they are found in the experimental section. They can be a trick to setup and work correctly. For me to get Dolphin to recognize the Xbox Controller correctly, I actually had to change my .bash_profile to enable cursor and window mode so that I could use the mouse on the screen so I could point and click the settings. Now that I have that done, I backed up the configuration from the old NUC, and just copied it to the new one with ease.

    I also use Dolphin for Wii games, and I have a Dolphin Bar so that I can use my Wii controllers. This was a slight bear to setup. First, you need to create a couple udev rules:

    sudo touch /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules
sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules

    Now paste the following into your rules file:

    #GameCube Controller Adapter
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0337", TAG+="uaccess"

#Wiimotes or DolphinBar
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0306", TAG+="uaccess"
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0330", TAG+="uaccess"

    Now, you can plug in the Dolphin Bar to a USB port and connect your controller. Make sure you are in Mode 4 for emulation mode on the Dolphin Bar, and then start Dolphin emulator by running it from /opt/retropie/emulators/dolphin/bin/dolphin-emu and select controllers. In the middle of the dialog, you will select “Emulate the Wii’s Bluetooth Adapter” and for the Wii Remotes, select Real Wii Remote. You won’t be able to configure them, but that is ok. Also check Continuous Scanning and save. Restart the NUC and now it will work. To verify, start Dolphin again, and make sure that the Wiimote is connected to the Dolphin Bar, when the game starts, the Wiimote will rumble letting you know its connected.

    Also, Playstation and Playstation2 require BIOS’s to work.

    After installing all the Emulators I want, I then go back to the main menu and select Configuration / tools.

    I then configure Samba so that I can access my NUC’s ROM’s and am able to upload them using Samba. After it install Samba, select to Install Retropie Samba shares.

    And now you are all done. This is where I reboot the device.

    Now we are ready to setup the XBox One controller. First thing is to go to RetroPie Configuration in Emulation Station, and select Bluetooth. This will install the required Bluetooth libraries and binaries. Next, we need to SSH back into the box and make a setting change. XBox One controllers don’t use ERTM. Create a bluetooth.conf in /etc/modprobe.d/ and add the following line to the file:

    options bluetooth disable\_ertm=Y

    Reboot the NUC again. Now, go back in the RetroPie Configuration in Emulation Station, and select Bluetooth, set the Xbox Controller to be discoverable by turning it on, and holding the small button near the left bumper on top of the controller until the Xbox button flashes fast. Then in Emulation Station, select Search for controller. After a few moments it will be listed as Xbox Wireless Controller. Select it, and select the first option for connection and it will successfully connect. Back on the main screen in Emulation Station, press Enter or Start on another controller and select Configure Input. Select Yes and when it asks to press ‘A’ on a the controller, press A on the Xbox One Controller and you can configure it.

    These next steps are just to make the system pretty. I don’t log the default Linux Boot up text scrolling on my TV, so I use Herb Fargus’s Boot themes using Plymouth, and set it to the RetroPie PacMan default setting:

    sudo apt update
sudo apt install plymouth plymouth-themes plymouth-x11 -y
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com.com/HerbFargus/plymouth-themes.git tempthemes
sudo cp -r ~/tempthemes/. /usr/share/plymouth/themes/
rm -rf tempthemes
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth default.plymouth /usr/share/plymouth/themes/retorpie-pacman/retropie-pacman.plymouth 10
sudo update-alternatives --set default.plymouth /usr/share/plymouth/themes/retropie-pacman/retropie-pacman.plymouth
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo cp /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.backup
sudo sed -i -e 's/GRUB_TIMEOUT=10/GRUB_TIMEOUT=2/g' /etc/default/grub
sudo sed -i -e 's/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="quiet splash"/g' /etc/default/grub
sudo update-grub

    This piece hides the last login information before starting OpenBox:

    sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_lastlog.so/#session  optional pam_lastlog.so/g'/etc/pam.d/login
sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_motd.so motd=\/run\/motd.dynamic/#session optional pam_motd.so motd=\/run\/motd.dynamic/g' /etc/pam.d/login
sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_motd.so noupdate/#session optional pam_motd.so noupdate/g' /etc/pam.d/login
sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_mail.so standard/#session optional pam_mail.so standard/g' /etc/pam.d/login

    And to hide the terminal in Emulation Station:

    sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ use-theme-colors false' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ use-theme-transparency false' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ default-show-menubar false' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ foreground-color '#FFFFFF'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ background-color '#000000'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ cursor-blink-mode 'off'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ scrollbar-policy 'never'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ audible-bell false' ~/.bash_profile 
cp /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
cp ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml ~/.config/openbox/rc.xmlbackup 
sed -i '//a ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a true ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a no ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a below ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a no ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a yes ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml

    And lastly, if you want to suppress cloud-init, lets just remove it since we don’t need it:

    sudo apt purge cloud-init -y
sudo rm -rf /etc/cloud/
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/cloud/

    And you’re done. May need to do some tweaks with the graphics to get good performance. I found that running in 4k tends to slow the games and audio down to unplayable, but found that if I play in 1080 mode, they work better. Before the game starts and it asks you to press a button to configure when running retro-arch, hit A button and select the emulator resolution from the list. Find one that works the best for you.

    Happy Retro Gaming!