Summer Nights

Not frequently but once in a while you would need to replace your “troubling” hard disk with a new shiny one. In order to keep all your mapping intact, you would like to use the same UUIDs and even the partition map. But as the new hard disk is generally a larger size, it makes sense to expand the main partition to the end of the drive. So here are some commands to do this job.

First make a copy of the existing partition table:

sfdisk -d /dev/sda > sda.dump

Now shutdown the computer, remove the old disk, and install the new disk. After booting, copy the partition table to the new disk.

sfdisk /dev/sda < sda.dump

Now open parted and expand the last partition through the end of the available space

parted /dev/sda
..print (to see the table)
..resizepart (use the end figure from the table to expand to the end)

Format the newly created partitions.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

Everything should be alright now but if needed, you can also manually apply the UUIDs.

tune2fs /dev/sda1 -U xxxxe50b-89d4-xxxx-8d8e-e6c4d547xxxx
tune2fs /dev/sda2 -U xxxxae63-xxxx-4054-b55d-b52f751xxxxx

Often we would like to monitor the online status of one or more websites or urls in order to be able to fix any issues as soon as a problem arises. I created the following simple mechanism to probe a list of url’s and send push notifications in case of an error.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

# Script to check url health and send push notifications using pushover servrice
# Author: Dr. Asif Rana (aiqbalrana@gmail.com)
# License: MIT License 
# Date: 20180213, 12:06 CET

import urllib.request
import http.client, urllib
import sys
sitelist = {
  'http://site1url/' : 'site1 label',
  'http://site2url/' : 'site2 label', }
for x in sitelist:
  statuslive = 0
  try:
    url = urllib.request.urlopen(x)
    code = url.getcode()
    if (code == 200):
      statuslive = 1
  except:
    statuslive = 0
 
  if (statuslive == 0):
    conn = http.client.HTTPSConnection("api.pushover.net:443")
    conn.request("POST", "/1/messages.json", urllib.parse.urlencode({
    "token": "your pushover.net application token",
    "user": "your pushover.net user key", "
    message": "Site down: " + sitelist[x], }), { "Content-type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" })
    conn.getresponse()

Ideally, you would run this script on a different server than the site you would like to monitor. A pushover.net account will be needed to get your token and key. In addition, you would need to install the pushover app on your iOS or Android device to get the notifications.

Tested and works great for a simple URL monitoring and getting notifications about website crashes, etc.!

You need to add this script as a cronjob using crontab tool and run it on regular intervals (e.g., every 5 minutes) to check the urls.

In ossec.conf:

<active-response>
    <repeated_offenders>60,120,1440</repeated_offenders>
 </active-response>

where 60, 120, 1440 indicate minutes banned after first, second, and third offense. Adapt these values to your taste.

apt install software-properties-common
add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
apt update
apt-get install python-certbot-apache
certbot-auto -d www.domain.com -d subdomain.domain.com -d subdomain2.domain.com  -d domain.com

This should install the certificates for all the domains in their respective sections (443) in the apache config file.

Now the certificates should be renewed every 90 days: Test renewal by doing a dry run:
certbot renew --dry-run

If everything works, then configure a fully automatic renewal via a cron job, e.g.,
0 0 15 * * /usr/bin/certbot renew --quiet

• Edit /etc/bind/db.domainname.com
• Increase the serial number and add the following line:
  subdomain IN A xx.xx.xx.xx
• named-checkconf
• service bind9 restart

Place the following two files (confluence.service and jira.service) under /etc/systemd/system folder.

confluence.service

[Unit]                                                               
Description=Confluence                                               
After=mysql.service                                                  
                                                                     
[Service]                                                            
Type=forking                                                         
User=confluence                                                      
PIDFile=/opt/atlassian/confluence/work/catalina.pid                  
ExecStart=/opt/atlassian/confluence/bin/start-confluence.sh          
ExecStop=/opt/atlassian/confluence/bin/stop-confluence.sh            
                                                                     
[Install]                                                            
WantedBy=default.target

jira.service

[Unit]                                                                                  
Description=Jira                                                                        
After=network.target ossec.service apache2.service mysql.service confluence.service     
                                                                                        
[Service]                                                                               
Type=forking                                                                            
User=jira                                                                               
PIDFile=/opt/atlassian/jira/work/catalina.pid                                           
ExecStart=/opt/atlassian/jira/bin/start-jira.sh                                         
ExecStop=/opt/atlassian/jira/bin/stop-jira.sh                                           
                                                                                        
[Install]                                                                               
WantedBy=default.target

Enable and start services using the following commands. The services will be enabled on next bootup.

systemctl enable jira.service
systemctl enable confluence.service
systemctl start jira.service
systemctl start confluence.service

Some other useful commands:

systemctl disable jira.service
systemctl daemon-reload

• Download, make, test, and install latest stable Redis:

cd /tmp
curl -O http://download.redis.io/redis-stable.tar.gz
tar -xvf redis-stable.tar.gz
cd redis-stable
make
make test
make install

• Check that it is running by:apt install php-redis

redis-server -v

• Install Redis support for php

apt install php-redis

• Check that its working and enabled:

  php --ri redis

• Add the following to /var/www/owncloud/config/config.php:

'memcache.local' => 'OC\\Memcache\\Redis', 
'filelocking.enabled' => 'true', 
'memcache.locking' => 'OC\\Memcache\\Redis', 
'redis' => 
 array ( 
 'host' => 'localhost', 
 'port' => REDIS_PORT, 
 ),

In addition, enable asset pipelining in owncloud by putting in:

$CONFIG = array (

the following line:

asset-pipeline.enabled' => true,

• Open Admin panel in owncloud and see the logs for any anomalies or to confirm good status.

As I have to do it every now and then, here are the important steps of the upgrade workflow:

• Backup the whole folder (/var/www/owncloud) using, e.g.

  cp -a owncloud backup_folder

• Activate the maintenance mode (in owncloud folder):

  sudo -u www-data php occ maintenance:mode --on

• Download the new owncloud archive and “replace” the existing folder (including .htaccess file)
• Replace back the config/config.php file from the backup_folder and the data folder
• Run the upgrade:

  sudo -u www-data php occ upgrade

• Switch back to normal mode:

  sudo -u www-data php occ maintenance:mode --off