Homelab on Voltaicforge

DuckDNS with UDM Pro

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

DuckDNS with Unifi Dream Machine

I recently got a UDM Pro and have just managed to get DuckDNS working.

There are many other suggestions on the internet, for using the webui with ‘dyndns’ and a variety of settings that should work. None did for me as of today, on UDM-Pro software version 1.11.0.

UDM currently uses the software inadyn to provide its ddns capabilities—and it has more providers available that what is exposed in the WebUI. To get it working I edited the inadyn.conf manually via SSH. (Google UDM SSH Setup if you need to setup SSH access to your UDM)

If there is no Dynamic DNS setup in the UDM WebUI it disables the servers, so for now I have created a dummy service in the UDM WebUI

Once SSH’d into the UDM, check what config the file your UDM is running:

# ps aux | grep inadyn
12799 root     /usr/sbin/inadyn -n -s -C -f /run/ddns-eth8-inadyn.conf

In this case, my config file is located at /run/ddns-eth8-inadyn.conf

Edit the file (using VI) and add a duckdns config block: (VI by default doesn’t allow editing, press i to enter ‘interactive’ mode to turn it into a text editor)

provider duckdns.org:2 {
    username         = <YOUR_TOKEN>
    password         = noPasswordForDuckdns
    hostname         = <YOUR_DOMAIN>.duckdns.org
}

Save and close. On VI, ESC will exit interactive mode, then :wq will ‘Write and Quit’

This has successfully got me running with Duck on UDM—but hacky, and won’t be part of a backup

Network UPS with Synology

Sat, 06 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Network UPS with synology

Port 3493

On proxmox, install nut-tools

apt install nut

Synology username and password for ups is: Device: ups Username: monuser Password: secret

Find and uncomment line and fill out details

/etc/nut/upsmon.conf

MONITOR ups@192.168.2.253 1 monuser secret slave

/etc/nut/nut.conf

MODE=netclient

Note: Found on the synology in /usr/syno/etc/ups/upsd.user

Setup pfSense for TPG NBN

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Setting up pfSense for TPG NBN

After much frustration, I have finially buggered off the terrible HG659 router that is provided with TPG NBN.

I had significant trouble getting pfSense to connect to the NBN even using the details on their site. PPPoE should be reasonably simple, connect NBN box to pfSense WAN port, set to PPPoE and enter TPG username/password.

Wrong!

After quite some time I found that they use a VLAN setting, and without it being set right it would not connect at all. Its not mentioned in their setting site, conspicuously.

I got mine working once I set the WAN port to be on a VLAN 2.

Create a new VLAN, under Interface -> Assign -> VLANs -> Add. Setup on the WAN Interface (mine is re0) and with a VLAN tag of 2.

Add a PPP configuration under Interface -> Assign -> PPP -> Add. Use Link type PPPoE, Link Interface of the VLAN you set up before. Enter TPG username/password

For WAN port, under Interface -> WAN, ensure we have PPPoE set for IP4 Configuration Type, and again your Username/Password

Then under Interface -> Assign, set the WAN network port to the PPPOE of the VLAN setup above.

You should now have a working NBN setup under pfSense, and that locked down modem can be thrown in the trash where it belongs!

Setting up Dropbox and encryption in Linux

Sat, 25 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Premise

Due to the fact that I now run Linux across my Homelab, Desktop and Laptop, I’ve been looking into keeping everything in sync.

Dropbox is reasonably popular for this on Linux systems (outside of P2P sync), but the issues, of course, is security. My mantra is if you put it on the internet assume that everyone can see it, and you can never remove it.

I wanted to use a Dropbox-style sync for a number of services (backup dotfiles, zim-wiki files, website code, etc). The intention was to be able to start something on the laptop, move to the desktop and be able to pick up where I left off.

Dropbox install.

Installing Dropbox should be easy across most distributions from core repositories.

# Debain
cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -
~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd


# Arch
pacaur -S dropbox

Setup script

First, put your password in a file in your home directory, plaintext. We will pass this as an argument to the script, and ensure it has permissions to be read only by your user.

You can modify the file location if you wish.

mkdir ~/.config/certificates/
echo "<password>" > ~/.config/certificates/encfs
chmod 0600 ~/.config/certificates/encfs

Then, create the script. Again, you can change the location.

~/scripts/dropbox.sh

cat ~/.config/certificates/encfs | encfs -S ~/Dropbox/encrypted/ ~/Private/

When called, this calls encfs, and supply the password by outputting the file created earlier into it.

Whilst there are a number of places we could call this upon startup to ensure its loaded upon startup, I chose the lazy option and just had it in my Cinnamon startup apps.

Now, place your files in the ~Private folder. They will be encryped into the ~/Dropbox/encrypted/ folder. Repead on another computer to have shared sync.

Stop Chromium asking for keyring unlock

Sat, 25 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I recently started using (sigh) Chromium over Firefox due to very slow webgl performance (and general overall faster performance)

However, annoyingly it asks for the Gnome keychain to be unlocked upon launch.

A simple fix I found is to simply change the shortcut to

chromium --password-store=basic

This will drop chromium to a basic password store machanism, so it doesn’t use gnome-keyring

Of course, this assumes your not wanting to use the features of chromium to store login details into the OS’s password manager. However, since you should be using a service like KeePass or LastPass to manage passwords securely, this shouldn’t be an issue.

I canged my Cinnamon settings by selecting ‘Open Editor’ in the Menu options in settings, then finding the chromium shortcut. I then added the ‘–password-store=basic’ to the shortcut.

Docking a PuTTY window into Notepad++

Sun, 01 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Challenge of developing in Jekyll via remote Linux server

During development of this site, I came across too many limitations with using Jekyll on Windows. You can use Jekyll in Windows with PortableJekyll, but I found the Windows environment still limited Jekyll. Mainly ImageMagick for using responsive images, which isn’t worth the hassle of setting up on Windows. I decided it was easier to spool up a Debian VM on my virtual server to install Gem/Ruby/Jekyll on. This lets me keep the website code on my NAS (allowing for easy cloud backup), code on Windows, and run Jekyll on Linux.

However, swapping back and forward between a terminal and the website code to site build was annoying, so I decided to see if I could ‘dock’ a PuTTY terminal into Notepad++

Adding a Putty Terminal into Notepad++

I’ve been using Notepad++ to develop in Windows for quite some time now. It’s a fantastic little program for us Windows people. A docked PuTTY window would greatly improve my workflow.

To do the same as I have above, it’s actually pretty simple.

Download:

Plink - PuTTY command line
~~Ansicon~~ - (Git repo defunct) Ansi escape sequence converter (to convert Linux CLI escape codes to Windows CLI, else the terminal doesn’t work well)
nppconsole - Notepad++ console plugin.
Warning: I had to use the older 11.53 ansicon version under Windows 10 x64, the later versions crashed frequently.

The do the following

Extract NPPConsole to your Notepad++ plugins directory (Program Files x86/Notepad++/Plugins)
Restart Notepad++ if it’s running
Unzip and copy plink and ansicon to a folder of your choosing (I put them both in the Notepad++ folder as it’s where the CLI defaults to, and I’m lazy)
Open a CLI at the Notepad++ folder and run ansicon.exe plink.exe -ssh user@location -pw yourpasword, replacing the relevant parts with your user/server IP/password.
All going well, you can now replicate that command in Notepad++. Open Notepad++, select Plugins -> NppConsole (should be there if you restarted and copied the dll correctly). Run the command and you are set!

If you have a saved profile in PuTTy you can replace the command with ansicon plink -ssh SESSION_NAME , replacing SESSION_NAME with your sessions name from the PuTTY dialogue. This works with key authentication as well, which I much prefer to use. This also saves you the risk of keeping a plaintext password in a potentially insecure location.

Info: You can use the plugin Nppexec as well instead of NppConsole - but I prefer Nppconsole for this.

You now have a working CLI in Notepad++ that can call an SSH session. I wrote a few batch scripts, so I just have to run site-dev in Windows to jump to my Linux VM that contains Jekyll, then ./site-dev to run a bash script to call up Jekyll in dev mode. Already having made a site-push bash to push the site to Amazon AWS, so I don’t need to leave Notepad++ to do any development work.

I couldn’t get Ctrl-C to work with either NppConsole or NppExec, both terminate the command without sending SIGTERM or similar to the PuTTY. Let me know if you figure out a way around this, as it means it’s difficult to gracefully terminate Jekyll. Workaround below.

Workaround for no Ctrl-C to exit Jekyll

My workaround for this has become to have a PuTTY terminal open just for stopping Jekyll. This isn’t as bad as it sounds. Just write a bash script to kill ruby as follows:

pgrep ruby | xargs kill

Warning: This will kill all ruby threads! Note this if you often have other ruby threads often running

I saved it as site-kill. My workflow is site-dev for the development of this site (with dev flags for config, etc.), site-push to rebuild the site from scratch and push to AWS. The new site-kill kills off any ruby threads.

Bonus - Markdown highlighting in Notepad++

The default colours finally made me crack during writing this post. Too much white! The language highlighting file I had for Markdown didn’t play ball with custom styles.

I found a language highlighting file for Markdown on GitHub that had a file for the Zenburn colour scheme. This is what you can see in the screenshots above. So much better!