The Network Administrator

Imaging a Linux workstation or Server

MWahl | September 17, 2010 | 9:36 am

This seems simply enough right…? I spent a day or so looking for a way to image an linux workstation and to add to the complexity I didnt have a large enough external hard drive so i had to do this over the network to a server share. Below are the steps I used.

1. Download a ubuntu live cd http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

2. Next boot the workstation you wish to image using the ubuntu live cd, dont install ubuntu, just choose to try it out.

3. Fire up a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)
In the command window we will create a mount to a server share to dump the image to.
Type sudo apt-get install smbfs
Type sudo mkdir /media/windows_share
Type sudo mount -t smbfs //192.168.1.250/shared_folder/ /media/windows_share -o username=NamesGoesHere,password=PasswordHere

4. All mounted drives should be in /media,
so we’ll type cd /media/windows_share
5. Now to take the image
type sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=./computer.img
6. You can restore the image by following steps 2 through 4 above on the computer you wish to have the image pushed onto.
Replace step 5 with the command
sudo dd if=./computer.img of=/dev/sda
I should also point out that it would be good practice to wipe the destination hard drive before pushing the image on it. This can be done from the terminal window using the command
sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda
Also please note in my case the hard drive being imaged was sda, your drive might be different and you can check by issuing the command
fdisk -l
from a terminal window and then looking for the correct hard drive to be imaged.

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Lenovo S10-3T running Fedora 12

MWahl | May 6, 2010 | 7:10 pm

I took a new Lenovo S10-3T which shipped with Windows 7 and reloaded it with Fedora. I was not able load Fedora via usb as i dont have a DVD/CD Drive. I followed the instructions https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/ and used the live usb creator. I ended up just using an external usb DVD drive and was able to perform the install that way, I had trouble getting the ethernet and wireless interface to intialize.

To correct the broadcom BCM57780 ethernet issue…
/etc/rc.d/rc.local file to add the following 3 lines:

rmmod tg3 insmod /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/net/phy/broadcom.ko insmod /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/net/tg3.ko
Go ahead and reboot…..

The Wireless is a Broadcom bcm4312. It was fixed by doing the following….

Open a term window and become root….

su - yum update yum install broadcom-wl

if you have any trouble try updating repo.

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm


rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

rpm -Uvh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm

Then reboot….

The S10 that i have did not come with with bluetooth …I took it apart and found that out

So i went to BestBuy and bought a RocketFish http://www.rocketfishproducts.com/pc-169-3-rocketfish-bluetooth-micro-adapter-for-bluetooth-enabled-cell-phones-black.aspx

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Linux change ownership of a directory and its files

MWahl | January 31, 2010 | 3:01 pm

chown -R ../

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Configuring a secure FTP Linux Server

MWahl | December 24, 2009 | 10:58 am

I needed to configure an SFTP server on a Fedora 8 Core server. To Keep things simple I choose SFTP over VSFTP as I was already running the SSH Daemon for server management.

So if you dont already have the SSH Daemon installed, open a terminal session as root and type
Yum install ssh*


Select Yes to download and install 
type cd /etc/ssh
type vi sshd_config  and make sure the config is similar to the one below
#####SSHD_Config######
#	$OpenBSD: sshd_config,v 1.80 2008/07/02 02:24:18 djm Exp $
# This is the sshd server system-wide configuration file.  See

# sshd_config(5) for more information.
# This sshd was compiled with PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
# The strategy used for options in the default sshd_config shipped with

# OpenSSH is to specify options with their default value where

# possible, but leave them commented.  Uncommented options change a

# default value.
#Port 22

#AddressFamily any

#ListenAddress 0.0.0.0

#ListenAddress ::
# Disable legacy (protocol version 1) support in the server for new

# installations. In future the default will change to require explicit

# activation of protocol 1

Protocol 2
# HostKey for protocol version 1

#HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key

# HostKeys for protocol version 2

#HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key

#HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
# Lifetime and size of ephemeral version 1 server key

#KeyRegenerationInterval 1h

#ServerKeyBits 1024
# Logging

# obsoletes QuietMode and FascistLogging

#SyslogFacility AUTH

#LogLevel INFO
# Authentication:
#LoginGraceTime 2m

#PermitRootLogin yes

#StrictModes yes

#MaxAuthTries 6

#MaxSessions 10
#RSAAuthentication yes

#PubkeyAuthentication yes

#AuthorizedKeysFile	.ssh/authorized_keys
# For this to work you will also need host keys in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts

#RhostsRSAAuthentication no

# similar for protocol version 2

#HostbasedAuthentication no

# Change to yes if you don't trust ~/.ssh/known_hosts for

# RhostsRSAAuthentication and HostbasedAuthentication

#IgnoreUserKnownHosts no

# Don't read the user's ~/.rhosts and ~/.shosts files

#IgnoreRhosts yes
# To disable tunneled clear text passwords, change to no here!

PasswordAuthentication no

#PermitEmptyPasswords no
# Change to no to disable s/key passwords

#ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes
# Kerberos options

#KerberosAuthentication no

#KerberosOrLocalPasswd yes

#KerberosTicketCleanup yes

#KerberosGetAFSToken no
# GSSAPI options

#GSSAPIAuthentication no

#GSSAPICleanupCredentials yes
# Set this to 'yes' to enable support for the deprecated 'gssapi' authentication

# mechanism to OpenSSH 3.8p1. The newer 'gssapi-with-mic' mechanism is included

# in this release. The use of 'gssapi' is deprecated due to the presence of

# potential man-in-the-middle attacks, which 'gssapi-with-mic' is not susceptible to.

#GSSAPIEnableMITMAttack no
# Set this to 'yes' to enable PAM authentication, account processing,

# and session processing. If this is enabled, PAM authentication will

# be allowed through the ChallengeResponseAuthentication and

# PasswordAuthentication.  Depending on your PAM configuration,

# PAM authentication via ChallengeResponseAuthentication may bypass

# the setting of "PermitRootLogin without-password".

# If you just want the PAM account and session checks to run without

# PAM authentication, then enable this but set PasswordAuthentication

# and ChallengeResponseAuthentication to 'no'.

UsePAM yes
#AllowAgentForwarding yes

#AllowTcpForwarding yes

#GatewayPorts no

X11Forwarding yes

#X11DisplayOffset 10

#X11UseLocalhost yes

#PrintMotd yes

#PrintLastLog yes

#TCPKeepAlive yes

#UseLogin no

#UsePrivilegeSeparation yes

#PermitUserEnvironment no

#Compression delayed

#ClientAliveInterval 0

#ClientAliveCountMax 3

#UseDNS yes

#PidFile /var/run/sshd.pid

#MaxStartups 10

#PermitTunnel no

#ChrootDirectory none
# no default banner path

#Banner none
# override default of no subsystems

Subsystem	sftp	/usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server
# This enables accepting locale enviroment variables LC_* LANG, see sshd_config(5).

AcceptEnv LANG LC_CTYPE LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME LC_COLLATE LC_MONETARY LC_MESSAGES

AcceptEnv LC_PAPER LC_NAME LC_ADDRESS LC_TELEPHONE LC_MEASUREMENT

AcceptEnv LC_IDENTIFICATION LC_ALL
# Example of overriding settings on a per-user basis

#Match User anoncvs

#	X11Forwarding no

#	AllowTcpForwarding no

#	ForceCommand cvs server

press Esc then type :wq! and enter to close out of the vi editor and save changes
Restart the SSH Daemon by typing service sshd restart

If you have any trouble connecting, you can install Putty http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

After installing putty, open a windows command window, browse to C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY>psftp -v (internal or external server IP address)

I did see a difference between Fedora and Open SuSE with this line in sshd_config, just make sure the path to sftp-server is correct. If your unsure where sftp-server is you can always run a search as find -name ‘ftp-server*’ or something like that.

Subsystem sftp /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server

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Lost your Root Password

MWahl | November 22, 2009 | 6:54 pm

If you have inheirted an system or simply lost SU password in most cases you can reset the password. Remember phyiscal access is root or administrator access….

Open SuSE

If using CD/DVD boot media, You need to choose Rescue System

mount -o remount,rw /dev/sda2 /mnt

# cd /mnt
# chroot /mnt
# passwd (new password)

Reboot

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Nagios IT Monitoring software

MWahl | November 22, 2009 | 6:35 pm

As an alternative to more costly software monitoring solutions this is free, Nagios provides the means to monitor windows and linux servers and other equipment such as

To keeps things simple I chose to install Nagios on Open SuSE 11.2 http://software.opensuse.org/112/en. Just go through a typical install, make sure that you install apache2 or httpd (Fedora) and C/C++ development libraries. Also I like to change the default run level from 5 to 3 so that you can put the memory toward the server and not toward the GUI interface. I would also recommend enabling SSH to manager the server. For the most part you will be modifying conf files and managing the server from http://nagios_server_IP/nagios. Once you have your monitoring server operating system built in my case I chose OpenSuSE, follow these simple steps….

As a quick note, step 1, I had an issue with these commands…..
/usr/sbin/usermod -a -G nagcmd nagios

/usr/sbin/usermod -a -G nagcmd wwwrun

so, instead I used….

/usr/sbin/usermod -G nagcmd nagios
/usr/sbin/usermod -G nagcmd wwwrun

Also one more note, after two installs the status map has not worked. I am running OpenSuSE, to fix this problem I did the following.

Make sure these packages are installed.

http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/quickstart-opensuse.html

http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/quickstart-fedora.html

http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/quickstart-ubuntu.html

Debian/ubuntu

apt-get install

libgd

libgd-devel

libpng

libpng-devel

libjpeg

libjpeg-devel

zlib

zlib-devel

Fedora /centos/RHEL/opensuse

Use yum install Or yast2 -i

gd

gd-devel

png

png-devel

jpeg

jpeg-devel

zlib

zlib-devel

While in the Nagios directory run the following commands. IF YOU ARE RUNNING RUNNING THESE COMMANDS ON AN EXISTING INSTALL YOU WILL LOSE DATA, SO PLEASE MAKE A COPY OF YOU CONFIG FILES.

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Top free or open source tools

MWahl | October 17, 2009 | 8:59 am

https://www.mesh.com/welcome/default.aspx – Windows live mesh, allows you to sync files and remote desktop to any computer running live mesh client.

http://www.leafnetworks.net/ – Enable network and device sharing between an individual’s home office and work PCs

http://www.cacti.net/ – Data collection, storage and graphing tool that lets you poll data from multiple sources and create visual representations of information across complex networks

http://www.kismetwireless.net/ – Kismet is an 802.11 Layer 2 wireless network detector, sniffer and intrusion detection system. It works with any wireless card that supports raw monitoring mode

http://www.kiwisyslog.com/ – Kiwi Syslog Daemon is a freeware Syslog Daemon for Windows that receives messages from network devices and displays them in real time

http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/ – MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a tool that graphs router and other network device traffic by monitoring SNMP and creating visual images of the traffic passing through each interface.

http://www.solarwinds.com/products/freetools/netflow_configurator.aspx – If you are unfamiliar with the command-line options for configuring NetFlow set up NetFlow on supported Cisco devices.

http://nmap.org/ – uses raw IP packets to determine which hosts are available on the network, which services those hosts are offering, what operating system they are running and what types of packet filters and firewalls are in use

http://www.pingplotter.com/–traceroute application that allows you to trace the route between them and a target and collect performance metrics about that route.

http://www.plixer.com/products/netflow-sflow/free-netflow-scrutinizer.php – NetFlow and sFlow analyzer that accepts unlimited flows from routers, switches and network interfaces

http://www.uvnc.com/ – remotely control the screen of another computer from a workstation via the Internet or a network connection.

http://www.wireshark.org/ – examine protocol data from a live network or from a capture file on disk

http://www.ziptie.org/overview – network inventory and configuration management

http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/

http://iptrack.sourceforge.net/ – IP address management (IPAM) software and tracking tool

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Clonezilla

MWahl | September 15, 2009 | 9:21 pm

http://clonezilla.org/

What is Clonezilla ?

You’re probably familiar with the popular proprietary commercial package Norton Ghost®, and its OpenSource counterpart, Partition Image. The problem with these software packages is that it takes a lot of time to massively clone systems to many computers. You’ve probably also heard of Symantec’s solution to this problem, Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition® with multicasting. Well, now there is an OpenSource clone system (OCS) solution called Clonezilla with unicasting and multicasting!

Clonezilla, based on DRBL, Partition Image, ntfsclone, partclone, and udpcast, allows you to do bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the harddisk. This increases the clone efficiency. At the NCHC’s Classroom C, Clonezilla SE was used to clone 41 computers simultaneously. It took only about 10 minutes to clone a 5.6 GBytes system image to all 41 computers via multicasting!

Features of Clonezilla

Free (GPL) Software.
Filesystem supported: ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, xfs, jfs of GNU/Linux, FAT, NTFS of MS Windows, and HFS+ of Mac OS. Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux, MS windows and Intel-based Mac OS, no matter it’s 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86-64) OS. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.
LVM2 (LVM version 1 is not) under GNU/Linux is supported.
Multicast is supported in Clonezilla SE, which is suitable for massively clone. You can also remotely use it to save or restore a bunch of computers if PXE and Wake-on-LAN are supported in your clients.
Based on Partimage, ntfsclone, partclone, and dd to clone partition. However, clonezilla, containing some other programs, can save and restore not only partitions, but also a whole disk.
By using another free software drbl-winroll, which is also developed by us, the hostname, group, and SID of cloned MS windows machine can be automatically changed.