JTK – Notes and Ramblings Things we have found …

After being away from things for a bit, it was time to update several of the Pis but I was met with an unfortunate error wen executing sudo apt-get update:

E: Repository 'http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian buster InRelease' changed its 'Suite' value from 'stable' to 'oldstable'
N: This must be accepted explicitly before updates for this repository can be applied. See apt-secure(8) manpage for details.
E: Repository 'http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian buster InRelease' changed its 'Suite' value from 'testing' to 'oldstable'
N: This must be accepted explicitly before updates for this repository can be applied. See apt-secure(8) manpage for details.

After consulting the oracle I found an article that had a solution. Turns out that Buster moved to “oldstable” after Bullseye became the current “stable”. The simple solution is:

sudo apt-get update --allow-releaseinfo-change

This will update the appropriate configuration setting for atp-get to allow thing to continue.

For version 5.10.24 of Unifi Controller software on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with Java jdk 8u211 Unifi was unable to locate java home.

My solution was to edit /etc/init.d/unifi. In the function set_java_home() change the entire contents to:

JAVA_HOME=type -p java|xargs readlink -f|xargs dirname|xargs dirname

This is based on a discussion at https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/Java-Home-Directory-Fail-Issue-on-Ubuntu-RESOLVED/td-p/474037.

This, strangely, was not an issue on a separate install. The difference seems to be IBM Java vs OpenJDK. Only the IBM Java system had the issue.

Nut has been setup and running mostly successfully on the LAN for a few years. Most of the small units are APC, larger unit in the basement is a CyberPower. I replaced one of the units with a small CyberPower CP1500AVR. It refused to cooperate via usb. According to the everything I could find online it should use the same usbhid-ups driver the previous unit had. Instead, I get a myriad of usb errors in dmesg.

I followed the recommendations of several online guide for configuring nut to see what I had missed previously to no avail. Several writer indicated they had similar and other issues with CyberPower usb connections.

Both http://tedfelix.com/software/nut-network-ups-tools.html and https://nmaggioni.xyz/2017/03/14/NUT-CyberPower-UPS/ had helpful pointers.

The most significant being the proper udev rules(from /lib/udev/rules.d/52-nut-usbups.rules) and the potential need to increase the pollinterval and deadtime.

Refer to my earlier post for configuring Nut on Windows.

Using tutorials from https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-setup-ftp-server-with-vsftpd-on-centos-7/ and https://www.tecmint.com/install-ftp-server-in-centos-7/.

Install vsftpd:

yum install vsftpd

Edit /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf:

anonymous_enable=NO
local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
local_umask=022
dirmessage_enable=YES
xferlog_enable=YES
connect_from_port_20=YES
xferlog_std_format=YES
listen=YES
listen_address=192.168.0.1
# ip address of the server
listen_ipv6=NO
pam_service_name=vsftpd
userlist_enable=YES
userlist_file=/etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.userlist
userlist_deny=NO
chroot_local_user=YES
user_sub_token=$USER
local_root=/home/$USER/ftp
tcp_wrappers=YES

Create a ftp user, add it to /etc/vsftpd/vsftpduserlist and create directories:

adduser newftpuser
passwd newftpuser

echo "newftpuser" | sudo tee -a /etc/vsftpd/user_list 
  
mkdir -p /home/newftpuser/ftp/upload
chmod 550 /home/newftpuser/ftp
chmod 750 /home/newftpuser/ftp/upload
chown -R newftpuser: /home/newftpuser/ftp
 
usermod newftpuser -s /bin/nologin

Start the server and enable it to run as a daemon at startup:

systemctl start vsftpd
systemctl enable vsftpd 

Things should be up and running. This is not a secure server. We did not create a certificate or enable TLS. User credentials will be sent as plain text. The server is only listening on the one specified interface. We did not make any firewall adjustments.

Recently I found on one of my systems that I was unable to access c$ even when using admin credentials. The solution can be found at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/951016/description-of-user-account-control-and-remote-restrictions-in-windows The Fix It For Me feature of the article is no longer supported but the description of the manual fix via regedit works:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
   
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
3. If the LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy registry entry does not exist, follow these steps: 
   
   1. On the Edit menu, point to
      New, and then click DWORD Value.
   2. Type
      LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then press ENTER.
      
4. Right-click LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then click
   Modify.
5. In the Value data box, type
   1, and then click OK.
6. Exit Registry Editor.

After recent update to 14.04LTS the dropbox status icon was gone. The installed version of dropbox is 2015.10.28.

After reading http://askubuntu.com/questions/732967/dropbox-icon-is-not-working-xubuntu-14-04-lts-64 I decided to use the option of editing /usr/bin/dropbox.

I added the line
os.environ['DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS'] = ""
after the “import os” line.

Also of note is the dropbox command line interface. Simply type dropbox at the shell prompt for more info.

I use NUT for all of my UPS on Linux machines. There is a beta Windows port available. I have it working for two Windows 7 Pro 64 bit boxes.

Documentation on getting it working under Windows is sparse.

Downloaded NUT Windows MSI installer 2.6.5-6. Installed.

Copy libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll from bin to sbin. it is required for upsmon to run.

Grabbed a copy of libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll from my Nmap install and copied these to the bin and sbin folders. Without these two files upsc, upsd and upsmon throw error (0xc000007b).

Downloaded libusb-win32-bin-1.2.6.0.zip from SourceForge.

Used usb-lib bin/inf_wizard.exe to create the proper .inf file for the UPS and installed.

You can use bin/nut-scanner.exe to see is the UPS is detected.

Edit the config files: nut.conf, ups.conf, upsd,conf, uspd.users and upsmon.conf.

To fully integrate into the network, I edited(on the appropriate systems):
/etc/nut/host.conf to add the new system to the list displayed in the web status display.
/etc/nut/upsmon.conf to add the system to the list monitored for status with email/text warnings.

Linux Printer:

You will need two packages from the Brother website. The lpr and the CUPS .deb files. Install the lpr package first. After installing both, restart cupsd. The Printers dialog should now show the printer. You may want to confirm the IP settings and print a test page.

Ignore the instructions to edit /etc/printcap.This file is auto generated and it makes no sense to edit it.

The installable .deb packages can be downloaded from http://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll2380dw_us_as&os=128. As of today the current version 3.2.0-1 dated 2015-02-12.

Linux Scanner:
Instructions

This can be summarized as:

brsaneconfig4 -a name=(name your device) model=HL-L2380DW ip=xx.xx.xx.xx

Once installed the scanner should show up in simple-scan or xsane.

Note the links on the instruction page does not point to the latest driver and the instructions on the download page do not mention network scanning.

The driver and brsaneconfig4 can be downloaded from http://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll2380dw_us_as&os=128. As of today the current version is 0.4.3-1 dated 2015-05-19.

Quick notes on adding BCP Bridging to PopTop PPTP server:

• We are using pptpd version 1.2.1 since it has better support for broadcasting than the earlier 1.1.4 version.
• When building pptpd use the following configure option: ./configure –with-bcrelay to enable the bcrelay module.
• In /etc/pptpd.conf, add bcrelay eth0 (replace eth0 with the name of your internal interface) This will enable broadcast forwarding between the ppp interfaces as well as the interface you specify.
• In /etc/ppp/options-pptp, make sure that the mppe required option is commented. Since we will be playing games over this VPN connection, encryption is not necessary.

More can be found at http://non-standard.net/freebsd/game-vpn/vpnfaq.html.

Found this discussion where the problem of no multicast is solved by disabling the VMware adapters in the host.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsdesktop/en-US/4e5a4725-e1b7-4ea3-a1db-be8ad1a19f34/why-cant-vista-receive-multicast-but-xp-can

After installing Samsung Kies software for the Galaxy Tab SyncToy started giving a “failed to create provider” error. The solution is to “repair” the MS Sync Framework. This is easily done from “Add/Modify Programs”.