GNU/Linux

GNU/Linux: How to give access to a subfolder to a user where the user does not have execute permission over the parent folder

 in GNU/Linux  tagged bind / execute / GNU/Linux / mount / symlink by

On GNU/Linux, you can traverse a directory if and only if you have execute permission on the whole path that you are going to use to access it. This rule applies a limitation to scenarios where for some reason you want to give execute access to a certain user on a subfolder but you do not want to enable the execute permission on the all the folders in the path.

In order to access the folder theFolder in the path /folderA/folderB/theFolder, if you are on the same level as folderA (or higher) you need to have execute permission both on folderA and folderA/folderB additionally to the permissions needed on theFolder. On another scenario if you are located in the same level as folderB (and you have execute rights to it) even if you do not have the execute rights to folder folderA you would still be able to access theFolder as your whole path (which is a relative path in this scenario) skips folderA. This feature is due to the fact that in GNU/Linux that the path that you use to access a folder determines your access constraints. In cases where the user does not have execute access to the whole path, creating symbolic links for them will not help you give them access. The kernel will still go through the access rights of the whole path that the symlink describes and it will act accordingly.

A hack-ish solution around this issue is to use mount to remount a part of the file hierarchy somewhere else using the bind parameter. For example: if we needed to give access to a user to the folder theFolder that resides in /folderA/folderB/theFolder without enabling execute rights on folderA nor /folderA/folderB we could execute the following command in a folder where that user already has execute access in (for example in the user’s home folder).

sudo mount --bind /folderA/folderB/theFolder finallyTheFolder;

Notes:

  • This solution circumvents security, be sure to think things through before implementing it
  • This solution ‘escapes’ normal good practices so it could lead to software bugs on your behalf
  • The bind will not persist after a reboot
  • To make this change permanent, you will need to add a configuration line in /etc/fstab
  • If the directory that you wish to bind contains mounted file systems, these file systems will not be transferred to the target. The mount points will appear as empty directories.

Using TeamViewer tar package on Ubuntu

 in GNU/Linux  tagged teamviewer / ubuntu by

Recently, we needed to start TeamViewer on an Ubuntu GNU/Linux machine where we did not want to install it.
To do so, we used the 64bit tar package from the TeamViewer Linux download page.

After downloading the package and extracting its content, we realised that we could not start TeamViewer (./teamviewer) as is.
In order to troubleshoot, we used a terminal and executed the check libraries functionality (./tv-setup checklibs;) from the archive folder that gave us some missing dependencies:

./tv-setup checklibs

    -=-   TeamViewer tar.xz check   -=-     

  In order to use the tar.xz version of TeamViewer,
  you have to make sure that the necessary libraries are installed.

    Writing raw output to /home/xeirwn/Downloads/teamviewer_13.1.3026_amd64/teamviewer/logfiles/DependencyCheck.log

 Analyzing dependencies ...           
    libQt5Core.so.5 => not found
    libQt5DBus.so.5 => not found
    libQt5Gui.so.5 => not found
    libQt5Network.so.5 => not found
    libQt5Qml.so.5 => not found
    libQt5Quick.so.5 => not found
    libQt5WebKit.so.5 => not found
    libQt5WebKitWidgets.so.5 => not found
    libQt5Widgets.so.5 => not found
    libQt5X11Extras.so.5 => not found

    The libraries listed above seem to be missing.
    Please find and install the corresponding packages.
    Then, run this command again.

    QtQuickControls seems to be missing

    The following command may be helpful:
      apt-get install libdbus-1-3 libqt5gui5 libqt5widgets5 libqt5qml5 libqt5quick5 libqt5webkit5 libqt5x11extras5 qml-module-qtquick2 qml-module-qtquick-controls qml-module-qtquick-dialogs qml-module-qtquick-window2 qml-module-qtquick-layouts;

Solution: Following the instructions we executed the following:

sudo apt-get install libdbus-1-3 libqt5gui5 libqt5widgets5 libqt5qml5 libqt5quick5 libqt5webkit5 libqt5x11extras5 qml-module-qtquick2 qml-module-qtquick-controls qml-module-qtquick-dialogs qml-module-qtquick-window2 qml-module-qtquick-layouts;

After the installation of the libraries, we executed once more the check libraries functionality (./tv-setup checklibs;)  where we got the message that everything seem to be OK.

 ./tv-setup checklibs

    -=-   TeamViewer tar.xz check   -=-     

  In order to use the tar.xz version of TeamViewer,
  you have to make sure that the necessary libraries are installed.

    Writing raw output to /home/xeirwn/Downloads/teamviewer_13.1.3026_amd64/teamviewer/logfiles/DependencyCheck.log

 Analyzing dependencies ...           

    All library dependencies (*.so) seem to be satisfied!

    QtQuickControls seems to be installed

Trying to start the (./teamviewer)  application did not gave an error but it would not start again.
It appeared that there was a service running which would not allow the GUI to show up.
To avoid too much fuss, we restarted the machine and tried (./teamviewer)  once more, this time with success.
So after installing the libraries and restarting the machine, we were able to start TeamViewer on our Ubuntu machine without installing it.

Fedora GNU/Linux : Disable USB Storage Devices

 in GNU/Linux  tagged blacklist.conf / fedora / lsmod / modprobe / USB Storage Devices / usb_storage / usb-storage by

There is this machine that runs Fedora GNU/Linux, for which its owners asked us to block all USB Storage Devices without affecting other peripheral devices like keyboards and mice. The reason for that was to prevent unlawful data leakage that the users of that machine could do.

On Linux there is a kernel module named usb_storage that can be found at /lib/modules/$KERNEL_VERSION/kernel/drivers/usb/storage/usb-storage.ko.xz (to get the kernel version, execute uname -r;) which operates as the USB Mass Storage driver for Linux.

Apparently, we just needed to block the usb_storage module.  Initially, we tried to block the module by using the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file but with no success. We failed to blacklist the module using the following commands (we were not sure which of the two names are correct, so we tried both, one at a time. It appears that both can be correct..):
echo -e "usb_storage\n" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf;
echo -e "usb-storage\n" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf;
After creating/updating the blacklist.conf file we restarted the machine as the module does not get loaded on boot automatically, it only gets loaded when needed. Unfortunately, as we mentioned before, these attempts led to no solution as we were still able to use USB storage devices even after creating the blacklist.conf file.
Since this method failed, we had to turn our heads towards a different solution, that due to its nature, it can be considered a hack.

Solution

What we did was to create a new configuration file in /etc/modprobe.d/ that would prevent usb_storage from being loaded by redirecting any requests to load the specific module to the /bin/true application.

echo "install usb_storage /bin/true" >> /etc/modprobe.d/disable-usb-storage.conf;
# Or the following (both names usb_storage and usb-storage seem to work)
# echo "install usb-storage /bin/true" >> /etc/modprobe.d/disable-usb-storage.conf;

Then, we had to make sure that the module was not already loaded. To see if the usb_storage module was already loaded we executed:

lsmod | grep -i usb_storage;

When lsmod | grep -i usb_storage; did not return any results, then it meant we were done! Since it was not in the list, it meant that the module was not loaded and so the next time someone tried to use a USB mass storage device they would not be able to load the module.

In cases were we got a line back (and thus the module was already loaded), then we needed to unload it manually or restart the machine. To avoid rebooting the machine we used modprobe to unload the usb_storage module.

modprobe -r usb_storage;

Some times, we would get the following error: modprobe: FATAL: Module usb_storage is in use.. This error meant that some other kernel module was using usb_storage and would not allow us to unload it. Using lsmod | grep -i usb_storage; we would get back a line like the following: usb_storage 73728 1 uas. The last column is a comma separated list of kernel modules that use usb_storage and we would need to unload them as well (replacing commas with space characters). Since we had only one dependency, our command became like the one below:

modprobe -r uas usb_storage;

And we were done!

To Re-enable USB mass storage devices (revert)

That is the easy part, to re-enable access to the USB mass storage devices, all we had to do was delete the configuration file:

rm /etc/modprobe.d/disable-usb-storage.conf;

Of course, to block them again, the we would have to follow the steps in the above solution.

Fedora GNU/Linux: Disable/Stop or Enable/Start Bluetooth service

 in GNU/Linux  tagged Bluetooth / disable / enable / fedora / start / stop by

There was this Fedora box for which we were asked to disable most of the methods it had available for communicating with the outside world.
One of the features of the box that we decided to block was its Bluetooth device.
To make our life easy, and since the users would not have admin rights, we decided to simply stop and disable the Bluetooth service on the box and be over with it!

The way we stopped and disabled the Bluetooth service was with the following two devices.

#Stop Bluetooth service that is currently executing
systemctl stop bluetooth;
#Prevent Bluetooth service from starting after a reboot
systemctl disable bluetooth;

Once you disable the service and stop it, you will notice that on the GUI of the Gnome settings application it still shows the basic menu for the Bluetooth device.
That should not worry you though because if you enter the Bluetooth configuration tab you will notice that the user will not be able to turn the device on and make use of it.

Revert changes and re-enable / re-start the Bluetooth service:

In order to restore the Bluetooth service back to normal (to enable it and start it), just execute the following two commands:

#Start the Bluetooth service right now
systemctl start bluetooth;
#Make sure that Bluetooth service will start after each system restart
systemctl enable bluetooth;

GNU/Linux Fedora 27: Prevent Network Manager from restarting after reboot

 in GNU/Linux  tagged fedora / NetworkManager / NetworkManager-wait-online / reboot / systemctl by

Recently we were working on a Fedora 27 GNU/Linux box where we needed to completely disable the Network Manager.
Initially, we just stopped the NetworkManager service and then disabled it thinking that it would be enough.
To our surprise after we rebooted the box, we noticed that the Network Manager was active again!

After some research we found out that another service called NetworkManager-wait-online was starting the NetworkManager as some sort of recovery mechanism.
So, in order to permanently block NetworkManager from starting on boot, we disabled NetworkManager-wait-online as well.

In the end our solution to disable the NetworkManager service came down to executing the following commands as root (or using sudo):

systemctl stop NetworkManager;
systemctl stop NetworkManager-wait-online;

systemctl disable NetworkManager;
systemctl disable NetworkManager-wait-online;

Ubuntu: install / start/stop enable/disable ssh server

 in GNU/Linux  tagged disable / enable / install / openssh / openssh-server / server / ssh / SSH server / start / status / stop / systemctl / ubuntu by

OpenSSH is a freely available version of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol family of tools for remotely controlling, or transferring files between, computers.

Install SSH server

To install the openssh-server on an Ubuntu, you need execute the following command as root or using sudo:

apt-get install openssh-server -y;

Disable SSH server

To disable the ssh service, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl disable ssh;

Enable SSH server

To enable the ssh service, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl enable ssh;

Stop SSH server

To stop (or deactivate) the ssh service, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl stop ssh;

Start SSH server

To start (or activate) the ssh service, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl start ssh;

Status of SSH server

To check the status of the ssh service, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl status ssh;

CONCEPTS

In a nutshell:

  • enabled is a service that is configured to start when the system boots
  • disabled is a service that is configured to not start when the system boots
  • active is a service that is currently running
  • inactive is a service that is currently stopped and may be disabled, but it can be started and become active

In much more detail:

systemd provides a dependency system between various entities called “units” of 12 different types. Units encapsulate various objects that are relevant for system boot-up and maintenance. The majority of units are configured in unit configuration files, whose syntax and basic set of options is described in systemd.unit(5), however some are created automatically from other configuration, dynamically from system state or programmatically at runtime. Units may be “active” (meaning started, bound, plugged in, …, depending on the unit type, see below), or “inactive” (meaning stopped, unbound, unplugged, …), as well as in the process of being activated or deactivated, i.e. between the two states (these states are called “activating”, “deactivating”). A special “failed” state is available as well, which is very similar to “inactive” and is entered when the service failed in some way (process returned error code on exit, or crashed, or an operation timed out). If this state is entered, the cause will be logged, for later reference. Note that the various unit types may have a number of additional substates, which are mapped to the five generalized unit states described here.
— From man systemd

 

Ubuntu SSHD listen to multiple ports

 in GNU/Linux  tagged cloudflare / mulitple ports / server / ssh / sshd / sshd_config / ubuntu by

Recently, we’ve setup an Ubuntu server behind CloudFlare that needed to listen for SSH connections.
Unfortunately, CloudFlare does not allow connections to the default SSH port which is 22.
So, to achieve what it was needed we either had to change the port that the SSH service was listening to or add an additional port.
We decided to go with the option of listening to multiple ports for SSH connections, this way users that were also behind the CloudFlare CDN could still continue to use their SSH clients without being forced to define the connection port manually.

The port listening setting is available in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, using sudo we edited the file with a text editor and searched for the following lines:

# What ports, IPs and protocols we listen for
Port 22

Right after the line that contains Port 22, we added another line for the new port (to see the list of all available open ports on CloudFlare, check this post)

And the file became as follows:

# What ports, IPs and protocols we listen for
Port 22
Port 2053

Afterwards, we restarted the SSHD service to apply the changes by executing the following command by using sudo:

systemctl restart ssh;

How we create bootable GNU/Linux USB flash drives from terminal

 in Bash  tagged boot / bootable / fdisk / gnome-disks / live / liveUSB / lsblk by

A very important tool in our everyday life are the LiveUSB GNU/Linux flash drives.
We keep an updated collection of several GNU/Linux flavors/distributions (Fedora, CentOS, (L/X)Ubuntu, Kali etc.) that are used depending on the scenario.

The command we use is the following:

sudo dd bs=4M if=path/to/OS.iso of=/dev/sdX conv=fdatasync;

dd allows you to convert and copy a file and we use it to copy the ISO file of the operating system onto the USB flash drive.

Notes:

  1. You need to unmount the USB flash drive before formatting it, e.g.:
    sudo umount /dev/sdXY;
  2. You need to use the device filename and not a partition filename:
    e.g. You need to use /dev/sdX and NOT /dev/sdX1
  3. You need to use either the root account or execute the command with sudo
  4. If you do not know the filename associated with your flash drive, use an application like the following ones to determine which /dev file is mapped to the USB flash drive:
    gnome-disks; or
    lsblk; or
    sudo fdisk -l;

The parameters we use are the following:

  • bs=SIZE_IN_BYTES defines up to how many bytes should be read and written at a time.
    In our case we used 4 Megabytes (4M).
  • if=INPUT_FILE defines the file to be read, we use this parameter to point to the OS ISO file that we want to write on the USB drive.
  • of=OUTPUT_FILE defines the filename where the data is to be written in.
    In GNU/Linux, devices are accessible like files as well so we used /dev/sdX here that happened to be the device file assigned to our USB device.
  • conv=CONVS converts the file as per the comma separated symbol list
    fdatasync physically writes output file data before finishing, we use this parameter to be sure that all I/O operations are done well before dd terminates, this way we are certain that our USB device will be ready to use as soon as the application is done.

Lubuntu LVM Encrypted

 in GNU/Linux  tagged encrypted / lubuntu / lvm / lvm2 / lxde / swap / swapoff / ubuntu by

While trying to setup a lubuntu GNU/Linux that would use an encrypted LVM file-system we run into several problems that should have not been there.
For example, the installer would not continue as swap memory was not encrypted and it was blocking the operation.
An other issue was that the LVM support package was not installed by default although it is needed by the installer.

Our solution requires an active internet connection so that you can install the lvm2 package.

Methodology

After booting into the live session, before we started the installation process, we opened a terminal from the main menu (Start Menu) and executed the following two commands:

sudo apt-get install lvm2 -y;

sudo swapoff --all;

These two commands disabled all swap (so that we do not get the error that swap is not encrypted) and it installed the lvm2 package that is needed by the installer to create our LVM setup.

The following video presents the full successful installation procedure by making the changes before starting the procedure.

The next video, shows our attempts to fix the installation after encountering the errors instead of fixing them beforehand.

Compiling DJI Onboard-SDK: error: ‘fd_set’ does not name a type

 in C++ / GNU/Linux  tagged compile / DJI / fedora / GNU/Linux / matrice / Onboard-SDK by

While compiling the DJI Onboard SDK on a Fedora GNU/Linux we got the following error:

[ 41%] Building CXX object osdk-core/CMakeFiles/djiosdk-core.dir/platform/linux/src/linux_serial_device.cpp.o
In file included from Onboard-SDK/osdk-core/platform/linux/src/linux_serial_device.cpp:33:0:
Onboard-SDK/osdk-core/platform/linux/inc/linux_serial_device.hpp:97:3: error: ‘fd_set’ does not name a type; did you mean ‘tzset’?
 fd_set m_serial_fd_set;
 ^~~~~~
 tzset
In file included from /usr/include/sys/types.h:197:0,
 from /usr/include/stdlib.h:279,
 from /usr/include/c++/7/cstdlib:75,
 from /usr/include/c++/7/bits/stl_algo.h:59,
 from /usr/include/c++/7/algorithm:62,
 from Onboard-SDK/osdk-core/platform/linux/src/linux_serial_device.cpp:34:
Onboard-SDK/osdk-core/platform/linux/src/linux_serial_device.cpp: In member function ‘int DJI::OSDK::LinuxSerialDevice::_serialStart(const char*, int)’:
Onboard-SDK/osdk-core/platform/linux/src/linux_serial_device.cpp:330:14: error: ‘m_serial_fd_set’ was not declared in this scope
 FD_ZERO(&m_serial_fd_set);
 ^
Onboard-SDK/osdk-core/platform/linux/src/linux_serial_device.cpp:330:14: note: suggested alternative: ‘m_serial_fd’
Onboard-SDK/osdk-core/platform/linux/src/linux_serial_device.cpp:331:26: error: ‘m_serial_fd_set’ was not declared in this scope
 FD_SET(m_serial_fd, &m_serial_fd_set);
 ^
Onboard-SDK/osdk-core/platform/linux/src/linux_serial_device.cpp:331:26: note: suggested alternative: ‘m_serial_fd’
make[2]: *** [osdk-core/CMakeFiles/djiosdk-core.dir/build.make:735: osdk-core/CMakeFiles/djiosdk-core.dir/platform/linux/src/linux_serial_device.cpp.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:86: osdk-core/CMakeFiles/djiosdk-core.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [Makefile:130: all] Error 2

To resolve this, we added to the file Onboard-SDK/osdk-core/platform/linux/inc/linux_serial_device.hpp the following include directive right after line 37 (which contained #define LINUXSERIALDEVICE_H):

#include <sys/select.h>

Then, we issued make again which terminated successfully.

Source: https://github.com/dji-sdk/Onboard-SDK

Compilation Commands:

git clone https://github.com/dji-sdk/Onboard-SDK;

cd Onboard-SDK;

mkdir build;

cd build;

cmake ..;

#Modify the file Onboard-SDK/osdk-core/platform/linux/inc/linux_serial_device.hpp and add #include <sys/select.h> at the top

make all;

# Something

# Make profit