Category Archives: Linux

Bashmagic collection vol1

Keep only last X lines of a file (shrink).

Deploy maven artefact to a specific repo without specifying it in pom.xml (format repoId:default:repoUrl). Repo should be specified in your .m2 settings.xml with any necessary credentials.

One liner to set password for default PostgreSQL user after initial install.

Run command inside a screen and save all output to a file

Scroll around inside a screen.

Add 4GB swap on Centos 7 with a stroke of a copy-paste.

Standard tcpdump.

Show listening ports with corresponding executables.

Show systemd logs for a specific service.

Freshly installed nginx configured as reverse proxy on Centos 7 getting "Permission denied" when connecting to backend service

Convert a certificate stored in a Java keystore to a PEM cert and key (for example, Tomcat to Nginx transition).

Disable git SSL verification per-repo.

Disable git SSL verification at clone time.

Clear git username and password cache for a repo (in case of password change or similar).

Give user sudo privileges.

Git submodule is added to an existing repo and is not resolving for you locally.

Print all TCP connections of a Docker container.

Nmap portscan.

Force JVM to use /dev/urandom instead of /dev/random (sometimes needed in low entropy environments like Docker).

Debug print all network activities on JVM level.

Create .htpasswd file for Nginx

Do or do not do something if file was modified recently

 

Cen
GitHub
Eurobattle.net
Lagabuse.com
Bnetdocs

Oh FileZilla…

I have encountered a weird problem when connecting to our FreeBSD server with FileZilla over SFTP. Either with password or key authentication I would get:

Error:    Server sent disconnect message
Error:    type 2 (protocol error):
Error:    "Too many authentication failures"

So let's turn on debugging shall we?

 

Trace:    Pageant is running. Requesting keys.
Trace:    Pageant has 15 SSH-2 keys
Trace:    Successfully loaded 1 key pair from file
Trace:    Trying Pageant key #0
Trace:    Server refused our key
Trace:    Trying Pageant key #1
Trace:    Server refused our key
Trace:    Trying Pageant key #2
Trace:    Server refused our key
Trace:    Trying Pageant key #3
Trace:    Server refused our key
Trace:    Trying Pageant key #4
Trace:    Server refused our key
Trace:    Trying Pageant key #5
Trace:    Received disconnect message (protocol error)
Trace:    Disconnection message text: Too many authentication failures

So basically, I give Filezilla a specific keyfile but it tries all my keys anyway. Now let's see what the bright minds on FileZilla issue tracker have to say about this bug.

https://trac.filezilla-project.org/ticket/7739 gives us a workaround:

which works nicely. A working workaround is a blessing if you really need to use someting that is essentially broken. The bug is marked as a duplicate of https://trac.filezilla-project.org/ticket/5480

This bug contains a brilliant comment by an apparent FileZilla developer:

This is by design, FileZilla uses the system's SSH agent.

Just reconfigure the server to allow for more keys.

What the actual? The bug will apparently be solved via https://trac.filezilla-project.org/ticket/8232

which is marked as "fixed" and the comment 19 months ago says it will be in the "next version". The latest version is 3.24.0 released on January 1st 2017 which is exactly what I have and guess what? Not fixed, after 7 years.

 

So at this point I'll just safely assume that FileZilla might as well be the worst SFTP client in existence and just use something else. But guess what? There is more. The exact same problem exists in Gnome Files if you try to open an sftp:// location. The obvious reason is that Gnome Files does not ask you anything about keys or athenticaton type but just cycles through SSH keys to try and find the correct one. Why did nobody think about offering me a popup dialog to pick the correct key? Probably because Gnome likes to dumb down things, I can't really find any other reason.

Cen
GitHub
Eurobattle.net
Lagabuse.com
Bnetdocs

pgadmin4 on Fedora 25

You can now access the web interface at http://localhost:5050.

Unfortunately the standalone app does not currently work due to a bug in pgadmin4 package.

Fortunately the pgadmin4 standalone app is just a web wrapper so you are not missing much.

Cen
GitHub
Eurobattle.net
Lagabuse.com
Bnetdocs

Fedora 25 on Lenoyo Y50

Everything except WiFi worked out of the box. To get the WiFi working:

Taken from here.

In your BIOS make sure you disable Secure Boot. Not UEFI, not Legacy mode, specifically the switch that disables secure boot and nothing else. After these steps, WiFi works. To enter BIOS on Y50, tap F2 after Lenovo splash screen.

 

Edit 7.2.2017: WiFi performance is unfortunately ABYSMAL. Will update this post if I find any solutions. Connection is super slow and constantly dropping.

Luckily, USB tethering from Android works like a charm so it's not a deal breaker for now.

Edit 2: looks like blacklisting bcma driver makes things much much better:

 

Cen
GitHub
Eurobattle.net
Lagabuse.com
Bnetdocs

OJDBC7 in a Docker container? Prepare for trouble

Scenario: A JDK8 Docker container using OJDBC7 to connect to the database. Sounds simple enough, what could go wrong?

Simptoms: Connecting to the database randomly takes several minutes, fails with a weird SqlRecoverableException: no more data to read from socket or just works fine as if there is no problem.

The same Docker image also works fine on some machine but fails consistently on other.

The reason is this. Docker is not good at /dev/random. Probably even more so if you run it in a VM, since it's double isolated from actual entropy sources (my non scientific observation). For whatever reason, OJDBC defaults to /dev/random and this causes a block when connecting to the database due to high probability of /dev/random depletion.

Simple solution is to just mount /dev/urandom to /dev/random inside the Docker, in docker run command:

So.. if you ever want to use OJDBC inside Docker, remember this flag. It will save lives or at least spare you hours of useless debugging.

 

Cen
GitHub
Eurobattle.net
Lagabuse.com
Bnetdocs

Fedora 24 XFCE pains and gains

I recently installed Fedora 24 XFCE on my brand new Entroware Apollo, a Linux friendly laptop. Here is a list of problems I encountered during my first week of use. While most of these problems had a solution with a bit of googling, non-tech savvy person would have severe problems solving them.

PAINS

  1. System completely hangs when I connect a second monitor. Unresolved.
  2. Could not see any WiFi networks because the interface was not managed. Had to make it managed in NetworkManager.conf manually.
  3. At some point, XFCE panel would not show up anymore and I got an error message on startup asking me to start the panel. Solved it by deleting .config folder. What the hell?
  4. No login prompt when laptop comes out of suspend, even though I have both option in power management and session settings turned on. Unresolved.
  5. Adding programs to favorites in Whiskers menu sometimes does not persist across reboots. I think esepcially when I did a hard reset due to issue #1.
  6. My Nexus 4 would not automount in Thunar over USB. After an hour of Googling and installing random packages I got it to work, I think?

GAINS

  1. Numix theme on XFCE is extremely nice, I love it. There is just one small bug so far in Volume widget, the selection color hides the slider completely.
  2. My FreeNAS was automatically detected by Thunar while the old Gnome-files setup would not show it and even refuse to mount it sometimes manually. A nice surprise.
  3. I like how you can fully customize XFCE panels. The only thing I actually couldn't do is completely hide the panel (there is like a 3px grey bar when the panel is hidden). Other than that it's super nice.
  4. Fedy is super nice. Props to it's maintainers, it all just works.

 

So basically, everything kinda works now but it was a bumpy road to achieve this. Hopefully I get some feedback on issue #1 in Fedora bug tracker because it's really severe.

Cen
GitHub
Eurobattle.net
Lagabuse.com
Bnetdocs