GNU/Linux

208 posts

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

GNU/Linux

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

GNU/Linux

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

GNU/Linux

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

GNU/Linux

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

Bash

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

GNU/Linux

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

C++ GNU/Linux

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

Lubuntu: “Do Nothing” when I close the laptop’s lid

GNU/Linux

A few days ago we setup a server on a laptop with lubuntu. We wanted to make sure that once the screen lid is off, the PC would not shut down (or hibernate or sleep) and it would continue to accept requests.

We tried to configure the PC through the system settings that are available with the GUI but we could not get it to work right. Anyhow, what we did in the end and worked was the following:

In the file /etc/systemd/logind.conf we set the variable HandleLidSwitch to ignore. So after the change, the following line was in logind.conf:

HandleLidSwitch=ignore

If the above line is commented out (i.e. starts with the character #, be sure to uncomment it by removing the # character).
After that, we had to restart the systemd-logind service as follows:

service systemd-logind restart;

Finally, to test we closed the lid and the server was operating as expected.

Note

If you have a power manager such as xfce4-power-manager-settings, it is a good practice to make sure it is configure properly first before doing the change above. (e.g. Set Lock screen or Switch off display in When laptop lid is closed option).

If you start xfce4-power-manager after you do the change above, you might have to restart the service again as the solution seems to stop.

Change date in GoPro video files

Bash GNU/Linux

Recently, we made some time-lapses with our GoPro camera which was not used for some time and discharged. Due to that, the date and time configuration of the camera was wrong and the resulting video files had wrong metadata information in their EXIF.

To update the dates in the produced video files we used the exiftool that is shipped in the perl-Image-ExifTool package. We use Fedora, so we used dnf to install the application with all needed dependencies as follows:

sudo dnf install -y perl-Image-ExifTool;

After installing exiftool, we used the following commands to change the dates and times of the video named GOPR6426 (and its preview / thumbnail video):

$ mydate='2018:02:23 15:20:00';
$ exiftool "-AllDates=$mydate" "-TrackCreateDate=$mydate" "-TrackModifyDate=$mydate" "-MediaCreateDate=$mydate" "-MediaModifyDate=$mydate" -overwrite_original GOPR4626.*;

Notes:

  • You need extra disk space to update the file as it creates a copy of it even if you overwrite the original
  • We used the wildcard character * in our command to make sure we update not only the main video but also the preview / thumbnail videos that GoPro produces.
  • If you skip -overwrite_original, then a new file will be created
  • We had to update several date fields in order to be sure that we covered all of them that were visible in the EXIF data of the media