Evaggelos Balaskas - System Engineer

So you build a GitLab project, you created a pipeline and then a scheduler to run every week your pipeline.

And then you realize that you are polluting the internet with deprecated (garbage) things, at some point you have a debug option on, bla bla bla… etc etc.

It is time to clean up your mess!

Create a GitLab API Token

aka Personal Access Tokens

Select scopes: api.

Verify API token

run something like this

export GITLAB_API="glpat-HldkXzyurwBmroAdQCMo"

curl -sL --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: ${GITLAB_API}" "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects?owned=true" | jq .[].path_with_namespace

you should see your projects.

Get your Project ID

create a new bash variable:

export PROJECT="terraform-provider/terraform-provider-hcloud-ci"

and then use the get rest api call

curl -sL --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: ${GITLAB_API}" "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects?owned=true&search=${PROJECT}&search_namespaces=true" | jq -r .[].id

or you can also put the id into a new bash variable:

export ID=$(curl -sL --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: ${GITLAB_API}" "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects?owned=true&search=${PROJECT}&search_namespaces=true" | jq -r .[].id)

View the previous pipelines

curl -sL \
  --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: ${GITLAB_API}" \
  https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/${ID}/pipelines | jq .

Remove deprecated pipelines

just delete them via the API

curl -sL --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: ${GITLAB_API}"   "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/${ID}/pipelines?per_page=150"  \
 | jq  -r .[].id    \
 | awk '{print "curl -sL --header \"PRIVATE-TOKEN: ${GITLAB_API}\" --request DELETE https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/${ID}/pipelines/"$1}'   \
 | sh -x

that’s it !

It’s been a while since I got my hands on python and I came across with an interesting issue of an internal check today, when upgrading an old Proxy Virtual Machine.

Certificate Verify Failed

Suddenly the internal python check was reporting

[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:727)

Python Version

python version before the upgrade was Python 2.7.12 , now is Python 2.7.17

According to the online python documentation:

Changed in version 2.7.9: cafile, capath, cadefault, and context were added.

So something has changed but in both versions the verification for self-signed CA should have the same behavior!

Going down the rabbit hole, seems the most relevant info is in here PEP-0476 but in both cases you have to import SSL and this is not 100% the case !

Nevertheless the default behavior now is to verify the certificate in HTTPS and that is what we need to do!

urllib2 proxy

One of requirements is to check that the proxy is working. URLLIB2 needs a ProxyHandler to do so.

proxy_url = "http://{proxy}/".format(**cfg)
proxy_handler = urllib2.ProxyHandler({ 'http' : proxy_url })

after that, we need to pass the proxy_handler to a build_opener and get the response

opener = urllib2.build_opener(proxy_handler)
response = opener.open(cfg["url"])
return response

This will check an internal URL through our proxy but it will fail when trying to verify the self-signed certificate.

SSL

To enable SSL functionality to python2 we need to import the ssl module

import ssl

after that it is simple a case of creating a SSLContext to open the https url.

To create an SSL Context, there is a useful function for common purposes

ssl.create_default_context(purpose=Purpose.SERVER_AUTH, cafile=None, capath=None, cadata=None)¶

In our case we can pass our internal self-signed CA file as an argument

ctx = ssl.create_default_context(cafile="/etc/certs/ca.pem")

perfect.

Build an HTTPS handler

As we are using an build_opener to pass the proxy handler, but we also need to create an additional handler for the SSL (transport layer) in urllib2.

handler = urllib2.HTTPSHandler(context=ctx)

okay, our handler has the SSL Context with the CA file in place.

Build Opener

it is time to stitch everything together

## Create SSLContext with CA file to pass to handler
ctx = ssl.create_default_context(cafile="/etc/csi.certs/vm2csi/ca.pem")

## Create an HTTPS Handler with our custom SSL Context
handler = urllib2.HTTPSHandler(context=ctx)

## Create a Proxy Handler
proxy_handler = urllib2.ProxyHandler({ 'http' : proxy_url })

## Stitch together the proxy and https handlers to build an opener
opener = urllib2.build_opener(proxy_handler,handler)

## Get the response
response = opener.open(cfg["url"])
return response

and now we have a proper internal check!

WackoWiki is the wiki of my choice and one of the first opensource project I’ve ever contributed. I still use wackowiki for personal use!

A few days ago, wackowiki released version 6.0.25. In this blog post, I will try to share my experience of installing wackowiki on a new VM ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Ansible Role

I have updated the WackoWiki Ansible Role on my personal github account to represent all necessary steps of this article.

Terraform files

In order to test/verify wackowiki installation and ansible role, I use a virtual machine on my home lab. To make this fast and reproducable, I have uploaded my terraform files that I used on my lab here: GitHub

Requirements

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

apt-get update
apt -y install /
       php /
       php-common /
       php-bcmath /
       php-ctype /
       php-gd /
       php-iconv /
       php-json /
       php-mbstring /
       php-mysql /
       apache2 /
       libapache2-mod-php /
       mariadb-server /
       unzip

Apache2

We need to enable mod_reqwrite in apache2 but also to add the appropiate configuration in the default conf in VirtualHost

sudo -i
a2enmod rewrite

vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
...
    # enable.htaccess
    <Directory /var/www/html/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
...
</VirtualHost>

MySQL

wacko.sql

CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS wacko;
CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS 'wacko'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YOURNEWPASSWORD';
GRANT  ALL PRIVILEGES ON wacko.* TO 'wacko'@'localhost';
FLUSH  PRIVILEGES;

sudo -i
mysql < wacko.sql

Get WackoWiki

curl -sLO https://downloads.sourceforge.net/wackowiki/wacko.6.0.25.zip
unzip wacko.6.0.25.zip
mv wackowiki-6.0.25/wacko /var/www/html/wacko/
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wacko/

Web Installation

Post Install

Last, we need to remove write permission for the wackowiki configuration file and remove setup folder

sudo -i
chmod -w /var/www/html/wacko/config/config.php
rm -rf   /var/www/html/wacko/setup/

Simple WackoWiki Walkthrough

WireGuard: fast, modern, secure VPN tunnel. WireGuard securely encapsulates IP packets over UDP.

Goal

What I would like to achieve, in this article, is to provide a comprehensive guide for a redirect-gateway vpn using wireguard with a twist. The client machine should reach internet through the wireguard vpn server. No other communications should be allowed from the client and that means if we drop the VPN connection, client can not go to the internet.

Intro - Lab Details

Here are my lab details. This blog post will help you understand all the necessary steps and provide you with a guide to replicate the setup. You should be able to create a wireguard VPN server-client between two points. I will be using ubuntu 20.04 as base images for both virtual machines. I am also using LibVirt and Qemu/KVM running on my archlinux host.

Wireguard Generate Keys

and the importance of them!

Before we begin, give me a moment to try explaining how the encryption between these two machines, in a high level design works.

Each linux machines creates a pair of keys.

• Private Key
• Public Key

These keys have a unique relationship. You can use your public key to encrypt something but only your private key can decrypt it. That mean, you can share your public keys via an cleartext channel (internet, email, slack). The other parties can use your public key to encrypt traffic towards you, but none other decrypt it. If a malicious actor replace the public keys, you can not decrypt any incoming traffic thus make it impossible to connect to VPN server!

Public - Private Keys

Now each party has the other’s public keys and they can encrypt traffic for each other, BUT only you can decrypt your traffic with your private key. Your private key never leaves your computer.

Hopefully you get the idea.

Wireguard Server - Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In order to make the guide easy to follow, I will start with the server part.

Server Key Generation

Generate a random private and public key for the server as-root

wg genkey | tee /etc/wireguard/privatekey | wg pubkey > /etc/wireguard/publickey

Make the keys read-only

chmod 0400 /etc/wireguard/*key

List keys

ls -l /etc/wireguard/

total 8
-r-------- 1 root root 45 Jul 12 20:29 privatekey
-r-------- 1 root root 45 Jul 12 20:29 publickey

UDP Port & firewall

In order to run a VPN service, you need to choose a random port that wireguard VPN server can listen to it.

eg.

61194

open firewall

ufw allow 61194/udp

Rule added
Rule added (v6)

view more info

ufw status verbose

Status: active
Logging: on (low)
Default: deny (incoming), allow (outgoing), disabled (routed)
New profiles: skip

To             Action      From
--             ------      ----
22/tcp         ALLOW IN    Anywhere
61194          ALLOW IN    Anywhere
22/tcp (v6)    ALLOW IN    Anywhere (v6)
61194 (v6)     ALLOW IN    Anywhere (v6)

So you see, only SSH and our VPN ports are open.
Default Incoming Policy is: DENY.

Wireguard Server Configuration File

Now it is time to create a basic configuration wireguard-server file.

Naming the wireguard interface

Clarification the name of our interface does not matter, you can choose any name. Gets it’s name from the configuration filename! But in order to follow the majority of guides try to use something from wg+. For me it is easier to name wireguard interface:

• wg0

but you may seen it also as

• wg

without a number. All good!

Making a shell script for wireguard server configuration file

Running the below script will create a new configuration file /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf

PRIVATE_KEY=$(cat /etc/wireguard/privatekey)
NETWORK=10.0.8

cat > /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf <<EOF
[Interface]
Address = ${NETWORK}.1/24
ListenPort = 61194
PrivateKey = ${PRIVATE_KEY}

EOF

ls -l /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf
cat   /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf

Note I have chosen the network 10.0.8.0/24 for my VPN setup, you can choose any Private Network

10.0.0.0/8     - Class A
172.16.0.0/12  - Class B
192.168.0.0/16 - Class C

I chose a Class C (256 IPs) from a /8 (Class A) private network, do not be confused about this. It’s just a Class-C /24 private network.

Let’s make our first test with the server

wg-quick up wg0

[#] ip link add wg0 type wireguard
[#] wg setconf wg0 /dev/fd/63
[#] ip -4 address add 10.0.8.1/24 dev wg0
[#] ip link set mtu 1420 up dev wg0

It’s Alive!

Kernel Module

Verify that wireguard is loaded as a kernel module on your system.

lsmod | grep wireguard

wireguard             212992  0
ip6_udp_tunnel         16384  1 wireguard
udp_tunnel             16384  1 wireguard

Wireguard is in the Linux kernel since March 2020.

Show IP address

ip address show dev wg0

3: wg0: <POINTOPOINT,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1420
qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/none
    inet 10.0.8.1/24 scope global wg0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Listening Connections

Verify that wireguard server listens to our specific UDP port

ss -nulp '( sport = :61194 )' | column -t

State   Recv-Q  Send-Q  Local Address:Port  Peer Address:Port  Process
UNCONN  0       0           0.0.0.0:61194       0.0.0.0:*
UNCONN  0       0              [::]:61194          [::]:*

Show wg0

wg show wg0

interface: wg0
  public key: <public key>
  private key: (hidden)
  listening port: 61194

Show Config

wg showconf wg0

[Interface]
ListenPort = 61194
PrivateKey = <private key>

Close wireguard

wg-quick down wg0

What is IP forwarding

In order for our VPN server to forward our client’s network traffic from the internal interface wg0 to it’s external interface and on top of that, to separate it’s own traffic from client’s traffic, the vpn server needs to masquerade all client’s traffic in a way that knows who to forward and send back traffic to the client. In a nuthshell this is IP forwarding and perhaps the below diagram can explain it a little better.

To do that, we need to enable the IP forward feature on our linux kernel.

sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

The above command does not persist the change across reboots. To persist this setting we need to add it, to sysctl configuration. And although many set this option global, we do not need to have to do that!

Wireguard provides four (4) stages, to run our own scripts.

Wireguard stages

• PreUp
• PostUp
• PreDown
• PostDown

So we can choose to enable IP forwarding at wireguard up and disable it on wireguard down.

IP forwarding in wireguard configuration file

PRIVATE_KEY=$(cat /etc/wireguard/privatekey)
NETWORK=10.0.8

cat > /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf <<EOF

[Interface]
Address    = ${NETWORK}.1/24
ListenPort = 61194
PrivateKey = ${PRIVATE_KEY}

PreUp    = sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
PostDown = sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=0
EOF

verify above configuration

wg-quick up wg0

[#] sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
[#] ip link add wg0 type wireguard
[#] wg setconf wg0 /dev/fd/63
[#] ip -4 address add 10.0.8.1/24 dev wg0
[#] ip link set mtu 1420 up dev wg0

Verify system control setting for IP forward:

sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

Close wireguard

wg-quick down wg0

[#] wg showconf wg0
[#] ip link delete dev wg0
[#] sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=0
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

Verify that now IP Forward is not enabled.

sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

Routing via firewall rules

Next on our agenda, is to add some additional rules on our firewall. We already enabled IP Forward feature with the above and now it is time to update our firewall so it can masquerade our client’s network traffic.

Default Route

We need to identify the default external network interface on the ubuntu server.

DEF_ROUTE=$(ip -4 -json route list default | jq  -r .[0].dev)

usually is eth0 or ensp3 or something similar.

firewall rules

1. We need to forward traffic from the internal interface to the external interface
2. We need to masquerade the traffic of the client.

iptables -A FORWARD -i %i -o ${DEF_ROUTE} -s ${NETWORK}.0/24 -j ACCEPT

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s ${NETWORK}.0/24 -o ${DEF_ROUTE} -j MASQUERADE

and also we need to drop these rules when we stop wireguard service

iptables -D FORWARD -i %i -o ${DEF_ROUTE} -s ${NETWORK}.0/24 -j ACCEPT

iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -s ${NETWORK}.0/24 -o ${DEF_ROUTE} -j MASQUERADE

See the -D after iptables.

iptables is a CLI (command line interface) for netfilters. So think the above rules as filters on our network traffic.

WG Server Conf

To put everything all together and also use wireguard PostUp and PreDown to

wg genkey | tee /etc/wireguard/privatekey | wg pubkey > /etc/wireguard/publickey

chmod 0400 /etc/wireguard/*key

PRIVATE_KEY=$(cat /etc/wireguard/privatekey)
NETWORK=10.0.8
DEF_ROUTE=$(ip -4 -json route list default | jq  -r .[0].dev)
WG_PORT=61194

cat > /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf <<EOF
[Interface]
Address    = ${NETWORK}.1/24
ListenPort = ${WG_PORT}
PrivateKey = ${PRIVATE_KEY}

PreUp    = sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
PostDown = sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=0

PostUp  = iptables -A FORWARD -i %i -o ${DEF_ROUTE} -s ${NETWORK}.0/24 -j ACCEPT ; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s ${NETWORK}.0/24 -o ${DEF_ROUTE} -j MASQUERADE
PreDown = iptables -D FORWARD -i %i -o ${DEF_ROUTE} -s ${NETWORK}.0/24 -j ACCEPT ; iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -s ${NETWORK}.0/24 -o ${DEF_ROUTE} -j MASQUERADE

EOF

testing up

wg-quick up wg0

[#] sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
[#] ip link add wg0 type wireguard
[#] wg setconf wg0 /dev/fd/63
[#] ip -4 address add 10.0.8.1/24 dev wg0
[#] ip link set mtu 1420 up dev wg0
[#] iptables -A FORWARD -i wg0 -o ens3 -s 10.0.8.0/24 -j ACCEPT ; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.0.8.0/24 -o ens3 -j MASQUERADE

testing down

wg-quick down wg0

[#] iptables -D FORWARD -i wg0 -o ens3 -s 10.0.8.0/24 -j ACCEPT ; iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -s 10.0.8.0/24 -o ens3 -j MASQUERADE
[#] ip link delete dev wg0
[#] sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=0
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

Start at boot time

systemctl enable wg-quick@wg0

and status

systemctl status wg-quick@wg0

Get the wireguard server public key

We have NOT finished yet with the server !

Also we need the output of:

cat /etc/wireguard/publickey

output should be something like this:

wr3jUAs2qdQ1Oaxbs1aA0qrNjogY6uqDpLop54WtQI4=

Wireguard Client - Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Now we need to move to our client virtual machine.
It is a lot easier but similar with above commands.

Client Key Generation

Generate a random private and public key for the client

wg genkey | tee /etc/wireguard/privatekey | wg pubkey > /etc/wireguard/publickey

Make the keys read-only

chmod 0400 /etc/wireguard/*key

Wireguard Client Configuration File

Need to replace <wireguard server public key> with the output of the above command.

Configuration is similar but simpler from the server

PRIVATE_KEY=$(cat /etc/wireguard/privatekey)
NETWORK=10.0.8
WG_PORT=61194
WGS_IP=$(ip -4 -json route list default | jq -r .[0].prefsrc)
WSG_PUBLIC_KEY="<wireguard server public key>"

cat > /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf <<EOF
[Interface]
Address    = ${NETWORK}.2/24
PrivateKey = ${PRIVATE_KEY}

[Peer]
PublicKey  = ${WSG_PUBLIC_KEY}
Endpoint   = ${WGS_IP}:${WG_PORT}
AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0

EOF

verify

wg-quick up wg0

[#] ip link add wg0 type wireguard
[#] wg setconf wg0 /dev/fd/63
[#] ip -4 address add 10.0.8.2/24 dev wg0
[#] ip link set mtu 1420 up dev wg0
[#] wg set wg0 fwmark 51820
[#] ip -4 route add 0.0.0.0/0 dev wg0 table 51820
[#] ip -4 rule add not fwmark 51820 table 51820
[#] ip -4 rule add table main suppress_prefixlength 0
[#] sysctl -q net.ipv4.conf.all.src_valid_mark=1
[#] iptables-restore -n

start client at boot

systemctl enable wg-quick@wg0

Get the wireguard client public key

We have finished with the client, but we need the output of:

cat /etc/wireguard/publickey

Wireguard Server - Peers

As we mentioned above, we need to exchange public keys of server & client to the other machines in order to encrypt network traffic.

So as we get the client public key and run the below script to the server

WSC_PUBLIC_KEY="<wireguard client public key>"
NETWORK=10.0.8

wg set wg0 peer ${WSC_PUBLIC_KEY} allowed-ips ${NETWORK}.2

after that we can verify that our wireguard server and connect to the wireguard client

wireguard server ping to client

$ ping -c 5 10.0.8.2

PING 10.0.8.2 (10.0.8.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.0.8.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.714 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.8.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.456 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.8.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.557 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.8.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.620 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.8.2: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.563 ms

--- 10.0.8.2 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4103ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.456/0.582/0.714/0.084 ms

wireguard client ping to server

$ ping -c 5 10.0.8.1

PING 10.0.8.1 (10.0.8.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.0.8.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.752 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.8.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.639 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.8.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.622 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.8.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.625 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.8.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.597 ms

--- 10.0.8.1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4093ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.597/0.647/0.752/0.054 ms

wireguard server - Peers at configuration file

Now the final things is to update our wireguard server with the client Peer (or peers).

wg showconf wg0

the output should be something like that:

[Interface]
ListenPort = 61194
PrivateKey = <server: private key>

[Peer]
PublicKey = <client: public key>
AllowedIPs = 10.0.8.2/32
Endpoint = 192.168.122.68:52587

We need to append the peer section to our configuration file.

so /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf should look like this:

[Interface]
Address    = 10.0.8.1/24
ListenPort = 61194
PrivateKey = <server: private key>

PreUp    = sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
PostDown = sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=0

PostUp  = iptables -A FORWARD -i %i -o ens3 -s 10.0.8.0/24 -j ACCEPT ; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.0.8.0/24 -o ens3 -j MASQUERADE
PreDown = iptables -D FORWARD -i %i -o ens3 -s 10.0.8.0/24 -j ACCEPT ; iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -s 10.0.8.0/24 -o ens3 -j MASQUERADE

[Peer]
PublicKey = <client: public key>
AllowedIPs = 10.0.8.2/32
Endpoint = 192.168.122.68:52587

SaveConfig

In None of server or client wireguard configuration file, we didn’t declare this option. If set, then the configuration is saved on the current state of wg0 interface. Very useful !

SaveConfig = true

client firewall

It is time to introduce our twist!

If you mtr or traceroute our traffic from our client, we will notice that in need our network traffic goes through the wireguard vpn server !

               My traceroute  [v0.93]
wgc (10.0.8.2)                        2021-07-21T22:41:44+0300

                          Packets               Pings
 Host                Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. 10.0.8.1         0.0%    88    0.6   0.6   0.4   0.8   0.1
 2. myhomepc         0.0%    88    0.8   0.8   0.5   1.0   0.1
 3. _gateway         0.0%    88    3.8   4.0   3.3   9.6   0.8
 ...

The first entry is:

1. 10.0.8.1  

if we drop our vpn connection.

wg-quick down wg0

We still go to the internet.

                     My traceroute  [v0.93]
wgc (192.168.122.68)                     2021-07-21T22:45:04+0300

                            Packets               Pings
 Host                   Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. myhomepc             0.0%     1    0.3   0.3   0.3   0.3   0.0
 2. _gateway             0.0%     1    3.3   3.3   3.3   3.3   0.0

This is important because in some use cases, we do not want our client to directly or unsupervised talk to the internet.

UFW alternative for the client

So to avoid this issue, we will re-rewrite our firewall rules.

A simple script to do that is the below. Declares the default policy to DENY for everything and only accepts ssh incoming traffic and outgoing traffic through the vpn.

DEF_ROUTE=$(ip -4 -json route list default | jq -r .[0].dev)
WGS_IP=192.168.122.69
WG_PORT=61194

## reset
ufw --force reset

## deny everything!

ufw default deny incoming
ufw default deny outgoing
ufw default deny forward

## allow ssh
ufw allow 22/tcp

## enable
ufw --force enable

## allow traffic out to the vpn server
ufw allow out on ${DEF_ROUTE} to ${WGS_IP} port ${WG_PORT}

## allow tunnel traffic out
ufw allow out on wg+

# ufw status verbose

Status: active
Logging: on (low)
Default: deny (incoming), deny (outgoing), disabled (routed)
New profiles: skip

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
22/tcp                     ALLOW IN    Anywhere
22/tcp (v6)                ALLOW IN    Anywhere (v6)             

192.168.122.69 61194       ALLOW OUT   Anywhere on ens3
Anywhere                   ALLOW OUT   Anywhere on wg+
Anywhere (v6)              ALLOW OUT   Anywhere (v6) on wg+

DNS

There is caveat. Please bare with me.

Usually and especially in virtual machines they get DNS setting through a local LAN. We can either allow traffic on the local vlan or update our local DNS setting so it can go only through our VPN

cat > /etc/systemd/resolved.conf <<EOF
[Resolve]
DNS=88.198.92.222

EOF

systemctl restart systemd-resolved

let’s try this

# ping google.com
ping: google.com: Temporary failure in name resolution

Correct, fire up wireguard vpn client

wg-quick up wg0

ping -c4 google.com

PING google.com (142.250.185.238) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from fra16s53-in-f14.1e100.net (142.250.185.238): icmp_seq=1 ttl=115 time=43.5 ms
64 bytes from fra16s53-in-f14.1e100.net (142.250.185.238): icmp_seq=2 ttl=115 time=44.9 ms
64 bytes from fra16s53-in-f14.1e100.net (142.250.185.238): icmp_seq=3 ttl=115 time=43.8 ms
64 bytes from fra16s53-in-f14.1e100.net (142.250.185.238): icmp_seq=4 ttl=115 time=43.0 ms

--- google.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 42.990/43.795/44.923/0.707 ms

mtr shows:

mtr google.com

                My traceroute  [v0.93]
wgc (10.0.8.2)                          2021-07-21T23:01:16+0300

                                        Packets               Pings
 Host                                 Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. 10.0.8.1                           0.0%     2    0.6   0.7   0.6   0.7   0.1
 2. _gateway                           0.0%     1    0.8   0.8   0.8   0.8   0.0
 3. 192.168.1.1                        0.0%     1    3.8   3.8   3.8   3.8   0.0

drop vpn connection

# wg-quick down wg0 

[#] ip -4 rule delete table 51820
[#] ip -4 rule delete table main suppress_prefixlength 0
[#] ip link delete dev wg0
[#] iptables-restore -n

# ping -c4 google.com
ping: google.com: Temporary failure in name resolution

and that is perfect !

No internet access for our client. Only when our vpn connection is up!

WireGuard: fast, modern, secure VPN tunnel

That’s it!

Below my personal settings -as of today- for LibreDNS using systemd-resolved service for DNS resolution.

sudo vim /etc/systemd/resolved.conf

basic settings

[Resolve]
DNS=116.202.176.26:854#dot.libredns.gr
DNSOverTLS=yes
FallbackDNS=88.198.92.222
Cache=yes

apply

sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved.service

verify

resolvectl query analytics.google.com

analytics.google.com: 0.0.0.0                  -- link: eth0

-- Information acquired via protocol DNS in 144.7ms.
-- Data is authenticated: no; Data was acquired via local or encrypted transport: yes
-- Data from: network

Explain Settings

DNS setting

DNS=116.202.176.26:854#dot.libredns.gr

We declare the IP of our DoT service. Using : as a separator we add the no-ads TCP port of DoT, 854. We also need to add our domain in the end to tell systemd-resolved that this IP should respond to dot.libredns.gr

Dns Over TLS

DNSOverTLS=yes

The usually setting is yes. In older systemd versions you can also select opportunistic.
As we are using Lets Encrypt systemd-resolved can not verify (by default) the IP inside the certificate. The type of certificate can verify the domain dot.libredns.gr but we are asking the IP: 116.202.176.26 and this is another type of certificate that is not free. In order to “fix” this , we added the #dot.libredns.gr in the above setting.

FallBack

Yes not everything has Five nines so you may need a fall back dns to .. fall. Be aware this is cleartext traffic! Not encrypted.

FallbackDNS=88.198.92.222

Cache

Last but not least, caching your queries can give provide you with an additional speed when browsing the internet ! You already asked this a few seconds ago, why not caching it on your local system?

Cache=yes

to give you an example

resolvectl query analytics.google.com

analytics.google.com: 0.0.0.0                  -- link: eth0

-- Information acquired via protocol DNS in 144.7ms.
-- Data is authenticated: no; Data was acquired via local or encrypted transport: yes
-- Data from: network

second time:

resolvectl query analytics.google.com
analytics.google.com: 0.0.0.0                  -- link: eth0

-- Information acquired via protocol DNS in 2.3ms.
-- Data is authenticated: no; Data was acquired via local or encrypted transport: yes
-- Data from: cache

One of the most well-known k8s memes is the below image that represent the effort and complexity on building a kubernetes cluster just to run a simple blog. So In this article, I will take the opportunity to install a simple blog engine on kubernetes using k3s!

terraform - libvirt/qemu - ubuntu

For this demo, I will be workinig on my local test lab. A libvirt /qemu ubuntu 20.04 virtual machine via terraform. You can find my terraform notes on my github repo tf/0.15/libvirt/0.6.3/ubuntu/20.04.

k3s

k3s is a lightweight, fully compliant kubernetes distribution that can run on a virtual machine, single node.

login to your machine and became root

$ ssh 192.168.122.42 -l ubuntu
$ sudo -i
#

install k3s with one command

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -

output should be something like this

[INFO]  Finding release for channel stable

[INFO]  Using v1.21.1+k3s1 as release
[INFO]  Downloading hash https://github.com/k3s-io/k3s/releases/download/v1.21.1+k3s1/sha256sum-amd64.txt
[INFO]  Downloading binary https://github.com/k3s-io/k3s/releases/download/v1.21.1+k3s1/k3s
[INFO]  Verifying binary download
[INFO]  Installing k3s to /usr/local/bin/k3s
[INFO]  Creating /usr/local/bin/kubectl symlink to k3s
[INFO]  Creating /usr/local/bin/crictl symlink to k3s
[INFO]  Creating /usr/local/bin/ctr symlink to k3s
[INFO]  Creating killall script /usr/local/bin/k3s-killall.sh
[INFO]  Creating uninstall script /usr/local/bin/k3s-uninstall.sh
[INFO]  env: Creating environment file /etc/systemd/system/k3s.service.env
[INFO]  systemd: Creating service file /etc/systemd/system/k3s.service
[INFO]  systemd: Enabling k3s unit
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/k3s.service → /etc/systemd/system/k3s.service.
[INFO]  systemd: Starting k3s

Firewall Ports

I would propose to open the below network ports so k3s can run smoothly.

Inbound Rules for K3s Server Nodes

PROTOCOL	PORT	SOURCE	DESCRIPTION
TCP	6443	K3s agent nodes	Kubernetes API Server
UDP	8472	K3s server and agent nodes	Required only for Flannel VXLAN
TCP	10250	K3s server and agent nodes	Kubelet metrics
TCP	2379-2380	K3s server nodes	Required only for HA with embedded etcd

Typically all outbound traffic is allowed.

ufw allow

ufw allow 6443/tcp
ufw allow 8472/udp
ufw allow 10250/tcp
ufw allow 2379/tcp
ufw allow 2380/tcp

full output

# ufw allow 6443/tcp
Rule added
Rule added (v6)

# ufw allow 8472/udp
Rule added
Rule added (v6)

# ufw allow 10250/tcp
Rule added
Rule added (v6)

# ufw allow 2379/tcp
Rule added
Rule added (v6)

# ufw allow 2380/tcp
Rule added
Rule added (v6)

k3s Nodes / Pods / Deployments

verify nodes, roles, pods and deployments

# kubectl get nodes -A
NAME         STATUS   ROLES                  AGE   VERSION
ubuntu2004   Ready    control-plane,master   11m   v1.21.1+k3s1

# kubectl get pods -A
NAMESPACE     NAME                                      READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
kube-system   helm-install-traefik-crd-8rjcf            0/1     Completed   2          13m
kube-system   helm-install-traefik-lwgcj                0/1     Completed   3          13m
kube-system   svclb-traefik-xtrcw                       2/2     Running     0          5m13s
kube-system   coredns-7448499f4d-6vrb7                  1/1     Running     5          13m
kube-system   traefik-97b44b794-q294l                   1/1     Running     0          5m14s
kube-system   local-path-provisioner-5ff76fc89d-pq5wb   1/1     Running     6          13m
kube-system   metrics-server-86cbb8457f-n4gsf           1/1     Running     6          13m

# kubectl get deployments -A
NAMESPACE     NAME                     READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
kube-system   coredns                  1/1     1            1           17m
kube-system   traefik                  1/1     1            1           8m50s
kube-system   local-path-provisioner   1/1     1            1           17m
kube-system   metrics-server           1/1     1            1           17m

Helm

Next thing is to install helm. Helm is a package manager for kubernetes, it will make easy to install applications.

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/master/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash

output

Downloading https://get.helm.sh/helm-v3.6.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
Verifying checksum... Done.
Preparing to install helm into /usr/local/bin
helm installed into /usr/local/bin/helm

helm version

version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.6.0", GitCommit:"7f2df6467771a75f5646b7f12afb408590ed1755", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.16.3"}

repo added

As a package manager, you can install k8s packages, named charts and you can find a lot of helm charts here https://artifacthub.io/. You can also add/install a single repo, I will explain this later.

# helm repo add nicholaswilde https://nicholaswilde.github.io/helm-charts/

"nicholaswilde" has been added to your repositories

# helm repo update
Hang tight while we grab the latest from your chart repositories...

Successfully got an update from the "nicholaswilde" chart repository
Update Complete. ⎈Happy Helming!⎈

hub Vs repo

basic difference between hub and repo is that hub is the official artifacthub. You can search charts there

helm search hub blog

URL                                                 CHART VERSION   APP VERSION DESCRIPTION
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/nicholaswi...  0.1.2           v1.3        Lightweight self-hosted facebook-styled PHP blog.
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/nicholaswi...  0.1.2           v2021.02    An ultra-lightweight blogging engine, written i...
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/bitnami/dr...  10.2.23         9.1.10      One of the most versatile open source content m...
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/bitnami/ghost  13.0.13         4.6.4       A simple, powerful publishing platform that all...
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/bitnami/jo...  10.1.10         3.9.27      PHP content management system (CMS) for publish...
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/nicholaswi...  0.1.1           0.1.1       A Self-Hosted, Twitter™-like Decentralised micr...
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/nicholaswi...  0.1.1           900b76a     A self-hosted well uh wiki engine or content ma...
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/bitnami/wo...  11.0.13         5.7.2       Web publishing platform for building blogs and ...

using a repo, means that you specify charts sources from single (or multiple) repos, usally outside of hub.

helm search repo blog

NAME                        CHART VERSION   APP VERSION DESCRIPTION
nicholaswilde/blog          0.1.2           v1.3        Lightweight self-hosted facebook-styled PHP blog.
nicholaswilde/chyrp-lite    0.1.2           v2021.02    An ultra-lightweight blogging engine, written i...
nicholaswilde/twtxt         0.1.1           0.1.1       A Self-Hosted, Twitter™-like Decentralised micr...
nicholaswilde/wiki          0.1.1           900b76a     A self-hosted well uh wiki engine or content ma...

Install a blog engine via helm

before we continue with the installation of our blog engine, we need to set the kube config via a shell variable

kube configuration yaml file

export KUBECONFIG=/etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml

kubectl-k3s, already knows where to find this yaml configuration file. kubectl is a link to k3s in our setup

# whereis kubectl
kubectl: /usr/local/bin/kubectl

# ls -l /usr/local/bin/kubectl
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Jun  4 23:20 /usr/local/bin/kubectl -> k3s

but not helm that we just installed.

After that we can install our blog engine.

helm install chyrp-lite              \
  --set env.TZ="Europe/Athens"  \
  nicholaswilde/chyrp-lite

output

NAME: chyrp-lite
LAST DEPLOYED: Fri Jun  4 23:46:04 2021
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
NOTES:
Get the application URL by running these commands:
  http://chyrp-lite.192.168.1.203.nip.io/

for the time being, ignore nip.io and verify the deployment

# kubectl get deployments
NAME         READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
chyrp-lite   1/1     1            1           2m15s

# kubectl get pods
NAME                          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
chyrp-lite-5c544b455f-d2pzm   1/1     Running   0          2m18s

Port Forwarding

as this is a pod running through k3s inside a virtual machine on our host operating system, in order to visit the blog and finish the installation we need to expose the port.

Let’s find out if there is a service running

kubectl get service chyrp-lite

output

NAME         TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)   AGE
chyrp-lite   ClusterIP   10.43.143.250   <none>        80/TCP    11h

okay we have a cluster ip.

you can also verify that our blog engine is running

curl -s 10.43.143.250/install.php | head

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <title>Chyrp Lite Installer</title>
        <meta name="viewport" content="width = 800">
        <style type="text/css">
            @font-face {
                font-family: 'Open Sans webfont';
                src: url('./fonts/OpenSans-Regular.woff') format('woff');

and then port forward the pod tcp port to our virtual machine

kubectl port-forward service/chyrp-lite 80

output

Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:80 -> 80
Forwarding from [::1]:80 -> 80

k3s issue with TCP Port 80

Port 80 used by build-in load balancer by default

That means service port 80 will become 10080 on the host, but 8080 will become 8080 without any offset.

So the above command will not work, it will give you an 404 error.
We can disable LoadBalancer (we do not need it for this demo) but it is easier to just forward the service port to 10080

kubectl port-forward service/chyrp-lite 10080:80

Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:10080 -> 80
Forwarding from [::1]:10080 -> 80
Handling connection for 10080
Handling connection for 10080

from our virtual machine we can verify

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:10080/install.php  | head

it will produce

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <title>Chyrp Lite Installer</title>
        <meta name="viewport" content="width = 800">
        <style type="text/css">
            @font-face {
                font-family: 'Open Sans webfont';
                src: url('./fonts/OpenSans-Regular.woff') format('woff');

ssh port forward

So now, we need to forward this TCP port from the virtual machine to our local machine. Using ssh, you should be able to do it like this from another terminal

ssh 192.168.122.42 -l ubuntu -L8080:127.0.0.1:10080

verify it

$ sudo ss -n -t -a 'sport = :10080'

State           Recv-Q          Send-Q                   Local Address:Port                    Peer Address:Port         Process
LISTEN          0               128                          127.0.0.1:10080                        0.0.0.0:*
LISTEN          0               128                              [::1]:10080                           [::]:*

$ curl -s http://localhost:10080/install.php | head

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <title>Chyrp Lite Installer</title>
        <meta name="viewport" content="width = 800">
        <style type="text/css">
            @font-face {
                font-family: 'Open Sans webfont';
                src: url('./fonts/OpenSans-Regular.woff') format('woff');

I am forwarding to a high tcp port (> 1024) so my user can open a tcp port, eitherwise I need to be root.

finishing the installation

To finish the installation of our blog engine, we need to visit the below url from our browser

http://localhost:10080/install.php

Database Setup

Admin Setup

Installation Completed

First blog post

that’s it !

I am using archlinux in my WSL for the last two (2) years and the whole experience is quite smooth. I wanted to test native docker will run within WSL and not with the windows docker/container service, so I installed docker. My main purpose is building packages so (for now) I do not need networking/routes or anything else.

WSL

ebal@myworklaptop:~$ uname -a
Linux myworklaptop 4.19.128-microsoft-standard #1 SMP Tue Jun 23 12:58:10 UTC 2020 x86_64 GNU/Linux

ebal@myworklaptop:~$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Arch Linux"
PRETTY_NAME="Arch Linux"
ID=arch
BUILD_ID=rolling
ANSI_COLOR="38;2;23;147;209"
HOME_URL="https://www.archlinux.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://wiki.archlinux.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://bbs.archlinux.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.archlinux.org/"
LOGO=archlinux

Docker Install

$ sudo pacman -S docker

$ sudo pacman -Q docker
docker 1:20.10.6-1

$ sudo dockerd -v
Docker version 20.10.6, build 8728dd246c

Run docker

sudo dockerd -D

-D is for debug

and now pull an alpine image

ebal@myworklaptop:~$ docker images
REPOSITORY   TAG       IMAGE ID   CREATED   SIZE

ebal@myworklaptop:~$ docker pull alpine:latest
latest: Pulling from library/alpine
540db60ca938: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:69e70a79f2d41ab5d637de98c1e0b055206ba40a8145e7bddb55ccc04e13cf8f
Status: Downloaded newer image for alpine:latest
docker.io/library/alpine:latest

ebal@myworklaptop:~$ docker images
REPOSITORY   TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED       SIZE
alpine       latest    6dbb9cc54074   2 weeks ago   5.61MB

Test alpine image

docker run -ti alpine:latest ash

perform a simple update

# apk update

fetch https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.13/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
fetch https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.13/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
v3.13.5-71-gfcabe3349a [https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.13/main]
v3.13.5-65-g28e7396caa [https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.13/community]

OK: 13887 distinct packages available

okay, seems that it is working.

Genie Systemd

as many already know, we can not run systemd inside WSL, at least not by default. So here comes genie !

A quick way into a systemd “bottle” for WSL

WSLv2 ONLY.

wsl.exe -l -v

  NAME            STATE           VERSION
* Archlinux       Running         2
  Ubuntu-20.04    Stopped         1

It will work on my arch.

Install Genie

genie comes by default with an archlinux artifact from github

curl -sLO https://github.com/arkane-systems/genie/releases/download/v1.40/genie-systemd-1.40-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

sudo pacman -U genie-systemd-1.40-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

$ pacman -Q genie-systemd
genie-systemd 1.40-1

daemonize

Genie has a dependency of daemonize.

In Archlinux, you can find the latest version of daemonize here:

https://gitlab.com/archlinux_build/daemonize

$ sudo pacman -U daemonize-1.7.8-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

loading packages...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Package (1)  New Version  Net Change
daemonize    1.7.8-1        0.03 MiB
Total Installed Size:  0.03 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y

$ pacman -Q daemonize
daemonize 1.7.8-1

Is genie running ?

We can start as-root genie with a new shell:

# genie --version
1.40

# genie -s
Waiting for systemd....!

# genie -r
running

okay !

Windows Terminal

In order to use systemd-genie by default, we need to run our WSL Archlinux with an initial command.

I use aka.ms/terminal to start/open my WSLv2 Archlinux so I had to edit the “Command Line” Option to this:

wsl.exe -d Archlinux genie -s

You can also verify that your WSL distro is down, with this

wsl.exe --shutdown

then fire up a new WSL distro!

Systemd Service

you can enable & start docker service unit,

$ sudo systemctl enable docker

$ sudo systemctl start  docker

so next time will auto-start:

$ docker images
REPOSITORY   TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED       SIZE
alpine       latest    6dbb9cc54074   2 weeks ago   5.61MB

systemd

$ ps -e fuwwww | grep -i systemd
root           1  0.1  0.2  21096 10748 ?        Ss   14:27   0:00 systemd
root          29  0.0  0.2  30472 11168 ?        Ss   14:27   0:00 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-journald
root          38  0.0  0.1  25672  7684 ?        Ss   14:27   0:00 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-udevd
dbus          63  0.0  0.1  12052  5736 ?        Ss   14:27   0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd-activation --syslog-only
root          65  0.0  0.1  14600  7224 ?        Ss   14:27   0:00 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root         211  0.0  0.1  14176  6872 ?        Ss   14:27   0:00 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-machined
ebal         312  0.0  0.0   3164   808 pts/1    S+   14:30   0:00  _ grep -i systemd
ebal         215  0.0  0.2  16036  8956 ?        Ss   14:27   0:00 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd --user

$ systemctl status docker
* docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2021-05-01 14:27:12 EEST; 3min 22s ago
TriggeredBy: * docker.socket
       Docs: https://docs.docker.com
   Main PID: 64 (dockerd)
      Tasks: 17 (limit: 4715)
     Memory: 167.9M
     CGroup: /system.slice/docker.service
             |-64 /usr/bin/dockerd -H fd://
             `-80 containerd --config /var/run/docker/containerd/containerd.toml --log-level info

May 01 14:27:12 myworklaptop-wsl systemd[1]: Started Docker Application Container Engine.
May 01 14:27:12 myworklaptop-wsl dockerd[64]: time="2021-05-01T14:27:12.303580300+03:00" level=info msg="AP>

that’s it !

I am an archlinux user using Sony WH-1000XM3 bluetooth noise-cancellation headphones. I am also using pulseaudio and it took me a while to switch the bluetooth headphones to HSP/HFP profile so the microphone can work too. Switching the bluetooth profile of your headphones to HeadSet Audio works but it is only monophonic audio and without noise-cancellation and I had to switch to piperwire also. But at least now the microphone works!

I was wondering how distros that by default have already switched to pipewire deal with this situation. So I started a fedora 34 (beta) edition and attached both my bluetooth adapter TP-LINK UB400 v1 and my web camera Logitech HD Webcam C270.

The test should be to open a jitsi meet and a zoom test meeting and verify that my headphones can work without me doing any stranger CLI magic.

tldr; works out of the box !

lsusb

[root@fedora ~]# lsusb 

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:0825 Logitech, Inc. Webcam C270
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0627:0001 Adomax Technology Co., Ltd QEMU USB Tablet
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

as you can see both usb devices have properly attached to fedora34

kernel

we need Linux kernel > 5.10.x to have a proper support

[root@fedora ~]# uname -a
Linux fedora 5.11.10-300.fc34.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Mar 25 14:03:32 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux 

pipewire

and of-course piperwire installed

[root@fedora ~]# rpm -qa | grep -Ei 'blue|pipe|pulse' 

libpipeline-1.5.3-2.fc34.x86_64
pulseaudio-libs-14.2-3.fc34.x86_64
pulseaudio-libs-glib2-14.2-3.fc34.x86_64
pipewire0.2-libs-0.2.7-5.fc34.x86_64
bluez-libs-5.56-4.fc34.x86_64
pipewire-libs-0.3.24-4.fc34.x86_64
pipewire-0.3.24-4.fc34.x86_64
bluez-5.56-4.fc34.x86_64
bluez-obexd-5.56-4.fc34.x86_64
pipewire-gstreamer-0.3.24-4.fc34.x86_64
pipewire-pulseaudio-0.3.24-4.fc34.x86_64
gnome-bluetooth-libs-3.34.5-1.fc34.x86_64
gnome-bluetooth-3.34.5-1.fc34.x86_64
bluez-cups-5.56-4.fc34.x86_64
NetworkManager-bluetooth-1.30.2-1.fc34.x86_64
pipewire-alsa-0.3.24-4.fc34.x86_64
pipewire-jack-audio-connection-kit-0.3.24-4.fc34.x86_64
pipewire-utils-0.3.24-4.fc34.x86_64

screenshots

Bluetooth Profiles

Online Meetings

In WSLv2 there is a way to limit the resources of your linux distro (cpu/memory) to have a better performance on you win10.

To give you an example, this is how it starts on my HP-G5

~$ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buffcache   available
Mem:           12659          68       12555           0          34       12425
Swap:           4096           0        4096

~$ grep -Ec proc /proc/cpuinfo
8

8 CPU threads, 12G

wslconfig

To define your specs, open cmd and change to your user profile directory

~> cd %UserProfile%

Verify that your WSL distros are stopped:

~> wsl.exe -l -v
  NAME            STATE           VERSION
* Archlinux       Running         2
  Ubuntu-20.04    Stopped         1

~> wsl.exe -t Archlinux -v

~> wsl.exe -l -v
  NAME            STATE           VERSION
* Archlinux       Stopped         2
  Ubuntu-20.04    Stopped         1

and terminate wsl

~> wsl.exe --shutdown

Create a new (or edit your previous) wsl config file

~> notepad.exe .wslconfig

My current setup is

~> type .wslconfig

[wsl2]
memory=4GB   # Limits VM memory in WSL 2 to 4 GB
processors=2 # Makes the WSL 2 VM use two virtual processors
swap=2GB     # How much swap space to add to the WSL2 VM. 0 for no swap file.
swapFile=C:\wsl2-swap.vhdx

as you can see, I want 4GB of RAM and 2 CPU , but also I want a 2GB swap file.

Edit this file according to your needs. The full settings can be found here wsl/wsl-config.

Reminder: you have to shutdown WSL

wsl.exe --shutdown

WSLv2 Limited

Now start your fav linux distro and verify

~$ grep -Ec proc /proc/cpuinfo
2

~$ grep -Ei MemTotal /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:        4028776 kB

~$ free
               total        used        free      shared  buffcache   available
Mem:         4028776       46348     3947056          64       35372     3848616
Swap:        2097152           0     2097152

that’s it !

I upgraded my home internet connection and as a result I had to give up my ~15y Static IP. Having an ephemeral Dynamic IP means I need to use a dynamic dns service to access my homepc. Although the ISP’s CPE (router) has a few public dynamic dns services, I chose to create a simple solution on my own self-hosted DNS infra.

There are a couple of ways to do that, PowerDNS supports Dynamic Updates but I do not want to open PowerDNS to the internet for this kind of operations. I just want to use cron with a simple curl over https.

PowerDNS WebAPI

to enable and use the Built-in Webserver and HTTP API we need to update our configuration:

/etc/pdns/pdns.conf

api-key=0123456789ABCDEF
api=yes

and restart powerdns auth server.

verify it

ss -tnl 'sport = :8081'

State   Recv-Q  Send-Q  Local Address:Port  Peer Address:Port
LISTEN      0       10      127.0.0.1:8081             *:*

WebServer API in PHP

Next to build our API in PHP

Basic Auth

By using https means that the transport layer is encrypted so we only need to create a basic auth mechanism.

<?php
  if ( !isset($_SERVER["PHP_AUTH_USER"]) ) {
      header("WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm='My Realm'");
      header("HTTP/1.0 401 Unauthorized");
      echo "Restricted area: Only Authorized Personnel Are Allowed to Enter This Area";
      exit;
  } else {
    // code goes here
  }
?>

by sending Basic Auth headers, the _SERVER php array variable will contain two extra variables

$_SERVER["PHP_AUTH_USER"]
$_SERVER["PHP_AUTH_PW"]

We do not need to setup an external IDM/LDAP or any other user management system just for this usecase (single user access).

and we can use something like:

<?php
  if (($_SERVER["PHP_AUTH_USER"] == "username") && ($_SERVER["PHP_AUTH_PW"] == "very_secret_password")){
    // code goes here
  }
?>

RRSet Object

We need to create the RRSet Object

here is a simple example

<?php
  $comments = array(
  );

  $record = array(
      array(
          "disabled"  => False,
          "content"   => $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]
      )
  );

  $rrsets = array(
      array(
          "name"          => "dyndns.example.org.",
          "type"          => "A",
          "ttl"           => 60,
          "changetype"    => "REPLACE",
          "records"       => $record,
          "comments"      => $comments
      )
  );

  $data = array (
      "rrsets" => $rrsets
  );

?>

by running this data set to json_encode should return something like this

{
  "rrsets": [
    {
      "changetype": "REPLACE",
      "comments": [],
      "name": "dyndns.example.org.",
      "records": [
        {
          "content": "1.2.3.4",
          "disabled": false
        }
      ],
      "ttl": 60,
      "type": "A"
    }
  ]
}

be sure to verify that records, comments and rrsets are also arrays !

Stream Context

Next thing to create our stream context

$API_TOKEN = "0123456789ABCDEF";
$URL = "http://127.0.0.1:8081/api/v1/servers/localhost/zones/example.org";

$stream_options = array(
    "http" => array(
        "method"    => "PATCH",
        "header"    => "Content-type: application/json \r\n" .
                        "X-API-Key: $API_TOKEN",
        "content"   => json_encode($data),
        "timeout"   => 3
    )
);

$context = stream_context_create($stream_options);

Be aware of " \r\n" . in header field, this took me more time than it should ! To have multiple header fiels into the http stream, you need (I don’t know why) to carriage return them.

Get Zone details

Before continue, let’s make a small script to verify that we can successfully talk to the PowerDNS HTTP API with php

<?php
  $API_TOKEN = "0123456789ABCDEF";
  $URL = "http://127.0.0.1:8081/api/v1/servers/localhost/zones/example.org";

  $stream_options = array(
      "http" => array(
          "method"    => "GET",
          "header"    => "Content-type: application/jsonrn".
                          "X-API-Key: $API_TOKEN"
      )
  );

  $context = stream_context_create($stream_options);

  echo file_get_contents($URL, false, $context);
?>

by running this:

php get.php | jq .

we should get the records of our zone in json format.

Cron Entry

you should be able to put the entire codebase together by now, so let’s work on the last component of our self-hosted dynamic dns server, how to update our record via curl

curl -sL https://username:very_secret_password@example.org/dyndns.php

every minute should do the trick

# dyndns
* * * * * curl -sL https://username:very_secret_password@example.org/dyndns.php

That’s it !

Hi! I’m writing this article as a mini-HOWTO on how to setup a btrfs-raid1 volume on encrypted disks (luks). This page servers as my personal guide/documentation, althought you can use it with little intervention.

Disclaimer: Be very careful! This is a mini-HOWTO article, do not copy/paste commands. Modify them to fit your environment.

$ date -R
Thu, 03 Dec 2020 07:58:49 +0200

Prologue

I had to replace one of my existing data/media setup (btrfs-raid0) due to some random hardware errors in one of the disks. The existing disks are 7.1y WD 1TB and the new disks are WD Purple 4TB.

Western Digital Green  1TB, about  70€ each, SATA III (6 Gbit/s), 7200 RPM, 64 MB Cache
Western Digital Purple 4TB, about 100€ each, SATA III (6 Gbit/s), 5400 RPM, 64 MB Cache

This will give me about 3.64T (from 1.86T). I had concerns with the slower RPM but in the end of this article, you will see some related stats.

My primarly daily use is streaming media (video/audio/images) via minidlna instead of cifs/nfs (samba), although the service is still up & running.

Disks

It is important to use disks with the exact same size and speed. Usually for Raid 1 purposes, I prefer using the same model. One can argue that diversity of models and manufactures to reduce possible firmware issues of a specific series should be preferable. When working with Raid 1, the most important things to consider are:

• Geometry (size)
• RPM (speed)

and all the disks should have the same specs, otherwise size and speed will downgraded to the smaller and slower disk.

Identify Disks

the two (2) Western Digital Purple 4TB are manufacture model: WDC WD40PURZ

The system sees them as:

$ sudo find /sys/devices -type f -name model -exec cat {} ;

WDC WD40PURZ-85A
WDC WD40PURZ-85T

try to identify them from the kernel with list block devices:

$ lsblk

NAME         MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sdc            8:32   0   3.6T  0 disk
sde            8:64   0   3.6T  0 disk

verify it with hwinfo

$ hwinfo --short --disk
disk:
  /dev/sde             WDC WD40PURZ-85A
  /dev/sdc             WDC WD40PURZ-85T

$ hwinfo --block --short

  /dev/sde             WDC WD40PURZ-85A
  /dev/sdc             WDC WD40PURZ-85T

with list hardware:

$ sudo lshw -short | grep disk

/0/100/1f.5/0        /dev/sdc   disk           4TB WDC WD40PURZ-85T
/0/100/1f.5/1        /dev/sde   disk           4TB WDC WD40PURZ-85A

$ sudo lshw -class disk -json | jq -r .[].product

WDC WD40PURZ-85T
WDC WD40PURZ-85A

Luks

Create Random Encrypted keys

I prefer to use random generated keys for the disk encryption. This is also useful for automated scripts (encrypt/decrypt disks) instead of typing a pass phrase.

Create a folder to save the encrypted keys:

$ sudo mkdir -pv /etc/crypttab.keys/

create keys with dd against urandom:

WD40PURZ-85A

$ sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/etc/crypttab.keys/WD40PURZ-85A bs=4096 count=1

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
4096 bytes (4.1 kB, 4.0 KiB) copied, 0.00015914 s, 25.7 MB/s

WD40PURZ-85T

$ sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/etc/crypttab.keys/WD40PURZ-85T bs=4096 count=1

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
4096 bytes (4.1 kB, 4.0 KiB) copied, 0.000135452 s, 30.2 MB/s

verify two (2) 4k size random keys, exist on the above directory with list files:

$ sudo ls -l /etc/crypttab.keys/WD40PURZ-85*

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec  3 08:00 /etc/crypttab.keys/WD40PURZ-85A
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec  3 08:00 /etc/crypttab.keys/WD40PURZ-85T

Format & Encrypt Hard Disks

It is time to format and encrypt the hard disks with Luks

Be very careful, choose the correct disk, type uppercase YES to confirm.

$ sudo  cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sde --key-file /etc/crypttab.keys/WD40PURZ-85A

WARNING!
========
This will overwrite data on /dev/sde irrevocably.

Are you sure? (Type 'yes' in capital letters): YES

$ sudo  cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdc --key-file /etc/crypttab.keys/WD40PURZ-85T

WARNING!
========
This will overwrite data on /dev/sdc irrevocably.

Are you sure? (Type 'yes' in capital letters): YES

Verify Encrypted Disks

print block device attributes:

$ sudo  blkid | tail -2

/dev/sde: UUID="d5800c02-2840-4ba9-9177-4d8c35edffac" TYPE="crypto_LUKS"
/dev/sdc: UUID="2ffb6115-09fb-4385-a3c9-404df3a9d3bd" TYPE="crypto_LUKS"

Open and Decrypt

opening encrypted disks with luks

• WD40PURZ-85A

$ sudo  cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/disk/by-uuid/d5800c02-2840-4ba9-9177-4d8c35edffac WD40PURZ-85A -d /etc/crypttab.keys/WD40PURZ-85A

• WD40PURZ-85T

$ sudo  cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/disk/by-uuid/2ffb6115-09fb-4385-a3c9-404df3a9d3bd WD40PURZ-85T -d /etc/crypttab.keys/WD40PURZ-85T

Verify Status

• WD40PURZ-85A

$ sudo  cryptsetup status   /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A

/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A is active.

  type:         LUKS2
  cipher:       aes-xts-plain64
  keysize:      512 bits
  key location: keyring
  device:       /dev/sde
  sector size:  512
  offset:       32768 sectors
  size:         7814004400 sectors
  mode:         read/write

• WD40PURZ-85T

$ sudo  cryptsetup status   /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T

/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T is active.

  type:         LUKS2
  cipher:       aes-xts-plain64
  keysize:      512 bits
  key location: keyring
  device:       /dev/sdc
  sector size:  512
  offset:       32768 sectors
  size:         7814004400 sectors
  mode:         read/write

BTRFS

Current disks

$sudo btrfs device stats /mnt/data/

[/dev/mapper/western1T].write_io_errs     28632
[/dev/mapper/western1T].read_io_errs      916948985
[/dev/mapper/western1T].flush_io_errs     0
[/dev/mapper/western1T].corruption_errs   0
[/dev/mapper/western1T].generation_errs   0
[/dev/mapper/western1Tb].write_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/western1Tb].read_io_errs     0
[/dev/mapper/western1Tb].flush_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/western1Tb].corruption_errs  0
[/dev/mapper/western1Tb].generation_errs  0

There are a lot of write/read errors :(

btrfs version

$ sudo  btrfs --version
btrfs-progs v5.9

$ sudo  mkfs.btrfs --version
mkfs.btrfs, part of btrfs-progs v5.9

Create BTRFS Raid 1 Filesystem

by using mkfs, selecting a disk label, choosing raid1 metadata and data to be on both disks (mirror):

$ sudo mkfs.btrfs
  -L WD40PURZ
  -m raid1
  -d raid1
  /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A
  /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T

or in one-liner (as-root):

mkfs.btrfs -L WD40PURZ -m raid1 -d raid1 /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T

format output

btrfs-progs v5.9
See http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org for more information.

Label:              WD40PURZ
UUID:               095d3b5c-58dc-4893-a79a-98d56a84d75d
Node size:          16384
Sector size:        4096
Filesystem size:    7.28TiB
Block group profiles:
  Data:             RAID1             1.00GiB
  Metadata:         RAID1             1.00GiB
  System:           RAID1             8.00MiB
SSD detected:       no
Incompat features:  extref, skinny-metadata
Runtime features:
Checksum:           crc32c
Number of devices:  2
Devices:
   ID        SIZE  PATH
    1     3.64TiB  /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A
    2     3.64TiB  /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T

Notice that both disks have the same UUID (Universal Unique IDentifier) number:

UUID: 095d3b5c-58dc-4893-a79a-98d56a84d75d

Verify block device

$ blkid | tail -2

/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A: LABEL="WD40PURZ" UUID="095d3b5c-58dc-4893-a79a-98d56a84d75d" UUID_SUB="75c9e028-2793-4e74-9301-2b443d922c40" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="btrfs"
/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T: LABEL="WD40PURZ" UUID="095d3b5c-58dc-4893-a79a-98d56a84d75d" UUID_SUB="2ee4ec50-f221-44a7-aeac-aa75de8cdd86" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="btrfs"

once more, be aware of the same UUID: 095d3b5c-58dc-4893-a79a-98d56a84d75d on both disks!

Mount new block disk

create a new mount point

$ sudo  mkdir -pv /mnt/WD40PURZ
mkdir: created directory '/mnt/WD40PURZ'

append the below entry in /etc/fstab (as-root)

echo 'UUID=095d3b5c-58dc-4893-a79a-98d56a84d75d    /mnt/WD40PURZ    auto    defaults,noauto,user,exec    0    0' >> /etc/fstab

and finally, mount it!

$ sudo  mount /mnt/WD40PURZ

$ mount | grep WD
/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A on /mnt/WD40PURZ type btrfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,space_cache,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

Disk Usage

check disk usage and free space for the new encrypted mount point

$ df -h /mnt/WD40PURZ/

Filesystem                Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A  3.7T  3.4M  3.7T   1% /mnt/WD40PURZ

btrfs filesystem disk usage

$ btrfs filesystem df /mnt/WD40PURZ | column -t

Data,           RAID1:   total=1.00GiB,  used=512.00KiB
System,         RAID1:   total=8.00MiB,  used=16.00KiB
Metadata,       RAID1:   total=1.00GiB,  used=112.00KiB
GlobalReserve,  single:  total=3.25MiB,  used=0.00B

btrfs filesystem show

$ sudo btrfs filesystem show /mnt/WD40PURZ

Label: 'WD40PURZ'  uuid: 095d3b5c-58dc-4893-a79a-98d56a84d75d
    Total devices 2 FS bytes used 640.00KiB
    devid    1 size 3.64TiB used 2.01GiB path /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A
    devid    2 size 3.64TiB used 2.01GiB path /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T

stats

$ sudo  btrfs device stats /mnt/WD40PURZ/

[/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A].write_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A].read_io_errs     0
[/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A].flush_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A].corruption_errs  0
[/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A].generation_errs  0
[/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T].write_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T].read_io_errs     0
[/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T].flush_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T].corruption_errs  0
[/dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T].generation_errs  0

btrfs fi disk usage

btrfs filesystem disk usage

$ sudo  btrfs filesystem usage /mnt/WD40PURZ

Overall:
    Device size:                  7.28TiB
    Device allocated:             4.02GiB
    Device unallocated:           7.27TiB
    Device missing:                 0.00B
    Used:                         1.25MiB
    Free (estimated):             3.64TiB   (min: 3.64TiB)
    Data ratio:                      2.00
    Metadata ratio:                  2.00
    Global reserve:               3.25MiB   (used: 0.00B)
    Multiple profiles:                 no

Data,RAID1: Size:1.00GiB, Used:512.00KiB (0.05%)
   /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A    1.00GiB
   /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T    1.00GiB

Metadata,RAID1: Size:1.00GiB, Used:112.00KiB (0.01%)
   /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A    1.00GiB
   /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T    1.00GiB

System,RAID1: Size:8.00MiB, Used:16.00KiB (0.20%)
   /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A    8.00MiB
   /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T    8.00MiB

Unallocated:
   /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85A    3.64TiB
   /dev/mapper/WD40PURZ-85T    3.64TiB

Speed

Using hdparm to test/get some speed stats

$ sudo  hdparm -tT /dev/sde

/dev/sde:
 Timing cached reads:    25224 MB in  1.99 seconds = 12662.08 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 544 MB in  3.01 seconds = 181.02 MB/sec

$ sudo  hdparm -tT /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 Timing cached reads:    24852 MB in  1.99 seconds = 12474.20 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 534 MB in  3.00 seconds = 177.85 MB/sec

$ sudo  hdparm -tT /dev/disk/by-uuid/095d3b5c-58dc-4893-a79a-98d56a84d75d

/dev/disk/by-uuid/095d3b5c-58dc-4893-a79a-98d56a84d75d:
 Timing cached reads:   25058 MB in  1.99 seconds = 12577.91 MB/sec
 HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
 Timing buffered disk reads: 530 MB in  3.00 seconds = 176.56 MB/sec

These are the new disks with 5400 rpm, let’s see what the old 7200 rpm disk shows here:

/dev/sdb:
 Timing cached reads:    26052 MB in  1.99 seconds = 13077.22 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 446 MB in  3.01 seconds = 148.40 MB/sec

/dev/sdd:
 Timing cached reads:    25602 MB in  1.99 seconds = 12851.19 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 420 MB in  3.01 seconds = 139.69 MB/sec

So even that these new disks are 5400 seems to be faster than the old ones !!
Also, I have mounted as read-only the problematic Raid-0 setup.

Rsync

I am now moving some data to measure time

• Folder-A

du -sh /mnt/data/Folder-A/
795G   /mnt/data/Folder-A/

time rsync -P -rax /mnt/data/Folder-A/ Folder-A/
sending incremental file list
created directory Folder-A
./
...

real  163m27.531s
user    8m35.252s
sys    20m56.649s

• Folder-B

du -sh /mnt/data/Folder-B/
464G   /mnt/data/Folder-B/

time rsync -P -rax /mnt/data/Folder-B/ Folder-B/
sending incremental file list
created directory Folder-B
./
...

real    102m1.808s
user    7m30.923s
sys     18m24.981s

Control and Monitor Utility for SMART Disks

Last but not least, some smart info with smartmontools

$sudo smartctl -t short /dev/sdc

smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.4.79-1-lts] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
Sending command: "Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode".
Drive command "Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode" successful.
Testing has begun.
Please wait 2 minutes for test to complete.
Test will complete after Thu Dec  3 08:58:06 2020 EET
Use smartctl -X to abort test.

result :

$sudo smartctl -l selftest /dev/sdc

smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.4.79-1-lts] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed without error       00%         1         -

details

$sudo smartctl -A  /dev/sdc

smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.4.79-1-lts] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   253   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   100   253   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   119   119   000    Old_age   Always       -       31
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

Second disk

$sudo smartctl -t short /dev/sde

smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.4.79-1-lts] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
Sending command: "Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode".
Drive command "Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode" successful.
Testing has begun.
Please wait 2 minutes for test to complete.
Test will complete after Thu Dec  3 09:00:56 2020 EET
Use smartctl -X to abort test.

selftest results

$sudo smartctl -l selftest /dev/sde

smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.4.79-1-lts] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed without error       00%         1         -

details

$sudo smartctl -A  /dev/sde

smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.4.79-1-lts] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   253   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   100   253   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   116   116   000    Old_age   Always       -       34
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

that’s it !

-ebal

back in ~2001 I was working part time in my uni lab for some extra cash and a chance to gain some additional knowledge on hardware & linux. I feel that I need to make a disclaimer here and share that prior to christmas of ‘99, I did not own a personal computer or a PC as it is better known.

Our tech lab had to format and repair/clone/restore hard disks on a daily basis, as the majority of PCs were failing on a regular interval. That was the result of having 80 to 160 students on 10/15 PCs per lab, running 10/12 hours a day. No one had a dedicated PC/seat. Hard disks were failing left and right. Tech lab had to format/restore them or in case of total failure, order a replacement disk. We had to make these orders in bulk.

So, we had to investigating this issue and report back with a solution as the backlog and cost was notable from our uni. From what we have noticed, over 50% of students did not want to wait for logout and safely shutdown their machines. After saving homework on their floppy disks, most of them, just turned off the power button on the back of the tower power supply. Imaging doing that, on hard disk 20years ago, for about 10 times a day, every day on a common lab.

After brainstorming about possible solutions and workarounds, finding ways to restore faster these hard disks, making poster with “Please safely shutdown this Computer”, an idea was introduced as an experiment.

How about completely remove hard disks from the PCs?

We knew it was possible to boot linux from the local network, but can we boot into a graphical environment? We also had to convince lab professors that some of the lab courses can run under linux like Pascal/C/Fortran/Lisp etc. In the end we had to have a dedicated lab for those diskless PCs.

Challenge was indeed accepted, and we had to provide and present a PoC (proof of concept). The project was well known as LTSP aka the Linux Terminal Server Project. Half of the team was looking into the server part; the other half was working on the client part.

Let us recap for a moment. A PC without a hard disk/operating system, had to boot from network and start into graphical environment. To boot from the network, your bios should have this option. Not an option back then. Then your network card should get some information from the DHCP about tftpd server. Not an option back then. And last your PC should have a proper graphical card that can indeed run X11 (not Xorg, as Xorg was not yet released back then) and remote login to an X server! On top of that CPU & memory was not so “powerful” back then.

I will not get into tech details, this is not that kind of post, but I will share a few details. First, we had to tell the bios to boot from the network card and then we had to program the ROM of the network card. That was not so easy back then. Mostly because not all network cards had a programmable ROM, those were the expensive ones. After that we had to get the boot image from the server, boot into RAM and load the boot menu. Selecting the proper OS, get the kernel and initramfs (if needed for extra drivers) and (pivot) boot into a linux operating system. Finally, we had to auto start in X11 remote login client that was configured to connect to the X11 Server.

diskless boot, etherboot and EPROM configuration, was the game and floppies were the solution! If not mistaken (I may be, don’t remember everything) I think we had to tell the bios to boot from floppy and set the EPROM configuration of the network card and then boot from network to get the initial boot menu. Get the kernel and run X11, login into the X server and run the lab courses to prove that this is working. That was what indeed do! And for another year and a half, my daily computer in the uni was a diskless PII that was booting from network via a floppy disk!

Nowadays you can remote install/format/repair your laptop through the internet, effortless. And my PC had a Turbo button also!!

many thanks to erethon for his help & support on this article.

Working on your home lab, it is quiet often that you need to spawn containers or virtual machines to test or develop something. I was doing this kind of testing with public cloud providers with minimal VMs and for short time of periods to reduce any costs. In this article I will try to explain how to use libvirt -that means kvm- with terraform and provide a simple way to run this on your linux machine.

Be aware this will be a (long) technical article and some experience is needed with kvm/libvirt & terraform but I will try to keep it simple so you can follow the instructions.

Terraform

Install Terraform v0.13 either from your distro or directly from hashicopr’s site.

$ terraform version
Terraform v0.13.2

Libvirt

same thing for libvirt

$ libvirtd --version
libvirtd (libvirt) 6.5.0

$ sudo systemctl is-active libvirtd
active

verify that you have access to libvirt

$ virsh -c qemu:///system version
Compiled against library: libvirt 6.5.0
Using library: libvirt 6.5.0
Using API: QEMU 6.5.0
Running hypervisor: QEMU 5.1.0

Terraform Libvirt Provider

To access the libvirt daemon via terraform, we need the terraform-libvirt provider.

Terraform provider to provision infrastructure with Linux’s KVM using libvirt

The official repo is on GitHub - dmacvicar/terraform-provider-libvirt and you can download a precompiled version for your distro from the repo, or you can download a generic version from my gitlab repo

ebal / terraform-provider-libvirt · GitLab

These are my instructions

mkdir -pv ~/.local/share/terraform/plugins/registry.terraform.io/dmacvicar/libvirt/0.6.2/linux_amd64/
curl -sLo ~/.local/share/terraform/plugins/registry.terraform.io/dmacvicar/libvirt/0.6.2/linux_amd64/terraform-provider-libvirt https://gitlab.com/terraform-provider/terraform-provider-libvirt/-/jobs/artifacts/master/raw/terraform-provider-libvirt/terraform-provider-libvirt?job=run-build
chmod +x ~/.local/share/terraform/plugins/registry.terraform.io/dmacvicar/libvirt/0.6.2/linux_amd64/terraform-provider-libvirt

Terraform Init

Let’s create a new directory and test that everything is fine.

mkdir -pv tf_libvirt
cd !$

cat > Provider.tf <<EOF
terraform {
 required_version = ">= 0.13"
 required_providers {
     libvirt = {
       source  = "dmacvicar/libvirt"
       version = "0.6.2"
     }
 }
}
EOF

$ terraform init

Initializing the backend...

Initializing provider plugins...
- Finding dmacvicar/libvirt versions matching "0.6.2"...
- Installing dmacvicar/libvirt v0.6.2...
- Installed dmacvicar/libvirt v0.6.2 (unauthenticated)

Terraform has been successfully initialized!

You may now begin working with Terraform. Try running "terraform plan" to see
any changes that are required for your infrastructure. All Terraform commands
should now work.

If you ever set or change modules or backend configuration for Terraform,
rerun this command to reinitialize your working directory. If you forget, other
commands will detect it and remind you to do so if necessary.

everything seems okay!

We can verify with tree or find

$ tree -a
.
├── Provider.tf
└── .terraform
    └── plugins
        ├── registry.terraform.io
        │   └── dmacvicar
        │       └── libvirt
        │           └── 0.6.2
        │               └── linux_amd64 -> /home/ebal/.local/share/terraform/plugins/registry.terraform.io/dmacvicar/libvirt/0.6.2/linux_amd64
        └── selections.json

7 directories, 2 files

Provider

but did we actually connect to libvirtd via terraform ?
Short answer: No.

We just told terraform to use this specific provider.

How to connect ?
We need to add the connection libvirt uri to the provider section:

provider "libvirt" {
    uri = "qemu:///system"
}

so our Provider.tf looks like this

terraform {
  required_version = ">= 0.13"
  required_providers {
    libvirt = {
      source  = "dmacvicar/libvirt"
      version = "0.6.2"
    }
  }
}

provider "libvirt" {
  uri = "qemu:///system"
}

Libvirt URI

libvirt is a virtualization api/toolkit that supports multiple drivers and thus you can use libvirt against the below virtualization platforms

• LXC - Linux Containers
• OpenVZ
• QEMU
• VirtualBox
• VMware ESX
• VMware Workstation/Player
• Xen
• Microsoft Hyper-V
• Virtuozzo
• Bhyve - The BSD Hypervisor

Libvirt also supports multiple authentication mechanisms like ssh

virsh -c qemu+ssh://username@host1.example.org/system

so it is really important to properly define the libvirt URI in terraform!

In this article, I will limit it to a local libvirt daemon, but keep in mind you can use a remote libvirt daemon as well.

Volume

Next thing, we need a disk volume!

Volume.tf

resource "libvirt_volume" "ubuntu-2004-vol" {
  name = "ubuntu-2004-vol"
  pool = "default"
  #source = "https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/focal/current/focal-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk-kvm.img"
  source = "ubuntu-20.04.img"
  format = "qcow2"
}

I have already downloaded this image and verified its checksum, I will use this local image as the base image for my VM’s volume.

By running terraform plan we will see this output:

  # libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol will be created
  + resource "libvirt_volume" "ubuntu-2004-vol" {
      + format = "qcow2"
      + id     = (known after apply)
      + name   = "ubuntu-2004-vol"
      + pool   = "default"
      + size   = (known after apply)
      + source = "ubuntu-20.04.img"
    }

What we expect is to use this source image and create a new disk volume (copy) and put it to the default disk storage libvirt pool.

Let’s try to figure out what is happening here:

terraform plan -out terraform.out
terraform apply terraform.out
terraform show

# libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol:
resource "libvirt_volume" "ubuntu-2004-vol" {
    format = "qcow2"
    id     = "/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol"
    name   = "ubuntu-2004-vol"
    pool   = "default"
    size   = 2361393152
    source = "ubuntu-20.04.img"
}

and

$ virsh -c qemu:///system vol-list default
 Name              Path
------------------------------------------------------------
 ubuntu-2004-vol   /var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol

Volume Size

BE Aware: by this declaration, the produced disk volume image will have the same size as the original source. In this case ~2G of disk.

We will show later in this article how to expand to something larger.

destroy volume

$ terraform destroy
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Refreshing state... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol]

An execution plan has been generated and is shown below.
Resource actions are indicated with the following symbols:
  - destroy

Terraform will perform the following actions:

  # libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol will be destroyed
  - resource "libvirt_volume" "ubuntu-2004-vol" {
      - format = "qcow2" -> null
      - id     = "/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol" -> null
      - name   = "ubuntu-2004-vol" -> null
      - pool   = "default" -> null
      - size   = 2361393152 -> null
      - source = "ubuntu-20.04.img" -> null
    }

Plan: 0 to add, 0 to change, 1 to destroy.

Do you really want to destroy all resources?
  Terraform will destroy all your managed infrastructure, as shown above.
  There is no undo. Only 'yes' will be accepted to confirm.

  Enter a value: yes

libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Destroying... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol]
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Destruction complete after 0s

Destroy complete! Resources: 1 destroyed.

verify

$ virsh -c qemu:///system vol-list default
 Name             Path
----------------------------------------------------------

reminder: always destroy!

Domain

Believe it or not, we are half way from our first VM!

We need to create a libvirt domain resource.

Domain.tf

cat > Domain.tf <<EOF
resource "libvirt_domain" "ubuntu-2004-vm" {
  name = "ubuntu-2004-vm"

  memory = "2048"
  vcpu   = 1

  disk {
    volume_id = libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol.id
  }

}

EOF

Apply the new tf plan

 terraform plan -out terraform.out
 terraform apply terraform.out

$ terraform show

# libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm:
resource "libvirt_domain" "ubuntu-2004-vm" {
    arch        = "x86_64"
    autostart   = false
    disk        = [
        {
            block_device = ""
            file         = ""
            scsi         = false
            url          = ""
            volume_id    = "/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol"
            wwn          = ""
        },
    ]
    emulator    = "/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64"
    fw_cfg_name = "opt/com.coreos/config"
    id          = "3a4a2b44-5ecd-433c-8645-9bccc831984f"
    machine     = "pc"
    memory      = 2048
    name        = "ubuntu-2004-vm"
    qemu_agent  = false
    running     = true
    vcpu        = 1
}

# libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol:
resource "libvirt_volume" "ubuntu-2004-vol" {
    format = "qcow2"
    id     = "/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol"
    name   = "ubuntu-2004-vol"
    pool   = "default"
    size   = 2361393152
    source = "ubuntu-20.04.img"
}

Verify via virsh:

$ virsh -c qemu:///system list
 Id   Name             State
--------------------------------
 3    ubuntu-2004-vm   running

Destroy them!

$ terraform destroy

Do you really want to destroy all resources?
  Terraform will destroy all your managed infrastructure, as shown above.
  There is no undo. Only 'yes' will be accepted to confirm.

  Enter a value: yes

libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm: Destroying... [id=3a4a2b44-5ecd-433c-8645-9bccc831984f]
libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm: Destruction complete after 0s
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Destroying... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol]
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Destruction complete after 0s

Destroy complete! Resources: 2 destroyed.

That’s it !

We have successfully created a new VM from a source image that runs on our libvirt environment.

But we can not connect/use or do anything with this instance. Not yet, we need to add a few more things. Like a network interface, a console output and a default cloud-init file to auto-configure the virtual machine.

Variables

Before continuing with the user-data (cloud-init), it is a good time to set up some terraform variables.

cat > Variables.tf <<EOF

variable "domain" {
  description = "The domain/host name of the zone"
  default     = "ubuntu2004"
}

EOF

We are going to use this variable within the user-date yaml file.

Cloud-init

The best way to configure a newly created virtual machine, is via cloud-init and the ability of injecting a user-data.yml file into the virtual machine via terraform-libvirt.

user-data

#cloud-config

#disable_root: true
disable_root: false
chpasswd:
  list: |
       root:ping
  expire: False

# Set TimeZone
timezone: Europe/Athens

hostname: "${hostname}"

# PostInstall
runcmd:
  # Remove cloud-init
  - apt-get -qqy autoremove --purge cloud-init lxc lxd snapd
  - apt-get -y --purge autoremove
  - apt -y autoclean
  - apt -y clean all

cloud init disk

Terraform will create a new iso by reading the above template file and generate a proper user-data.yaml file. To use this cloud init iso, we need to configure it as a libvirt cloud-init resource.

Cloudinit.tf

data "template_file" "user_data" {
  template = file("user-data.yml")
  vars = {
    hostname = var.domain
  }
}

resource "libvirt_cloudinit_disk" "cloud-init" {
  name           = "cloud-init.iso"
  user_data      = data.template_file.user_data.rendered
}

and we need to modify our Domain.tf accordingly

cloudinit = libvirt_cloudinit_disk.cloud-init.id

Terraform will create and upload this iso disk image into the default libvirt storage pool. And attach it to the virtual machine in the boot process.

At this moment the tf_libvirt directory should look like this:

$ ls -1
Cloudinit.tf
Domain.tf
Provider.tf
ubuntu-20.04.img
user-data.yml
Variables.tf
Volume.tf

To give you an idea, the abstract design is this:

apply

terraform plan -out terraform.out
terraform apply terraform.out

$ terraform show

# data.template_file.user_data:
data "template_file" "user_data" {
    id       = "cc82a7db4c6498aee21a883729fc4be7b84059d3dec69b92a210e046c67a9a00"
    rendered = <<~EOT
        #cloud-config

        #disable_root: true
        disable_root: false
        chpasswd:
          list: |
               root:ping
          expire: False

        # Set TimeZone
        timezone: Europe/Athens

        hostname: "ubuntu2004"

        # PostInstall
        runcmd:
          # Remove cloud-init
          - apt-get -qqy autoremove --purge cloud-init lxc lxd snapd
          - apt-get -y --purge autoremove
          - apt -y autoclean
          - apt -y clean all

    EOT
    template = <<~EOT
        #cloud-config

        #disable_root: true
        disable_root: false
        chpasswd:
          list: |
               root:ping
          expire: False

        # Set TimeZone
        timezone: Europe/Athens

        hostname: "${hostname}"

        # PostInstall
        runcmd:
          # Remove cloud-init
          - apt-get -qqy autoremove --purge cloud-init lxc lxd snapd
          - apt-get -y --purge autoremove
          - apt -y autoclean
          - apt -y clean all

    EOT
    vars     = {
        "hostname" = "ubuntu2004"
    }
}

# libvirt_cloudinit_disk.cloud-init:
resource "libvirt_cloudinit_disk" "cloud-init" {
    id        = "/var/lib/libvirt/images/cloud-init.iso;5f5cdc31-1d38-39cb-cc72-971e474ca539"
    name      = "cloud-init.iso"
    pool      = "default"
    user_data = <<~EOT
        #cloud-config

        #disable_root: true
        disable_root: false
        chpasswd:
          list: |
               root:ping
          expire: False

        # Set TimeZone
        timezone: Europe/Athens

        hostname: "ubuntu2004"

        # PostInstall
        runcmd:
          # Remove cloud-init
          - apt-get -qqy autoremove --purge cloud-init lxc lxd snapd
          - apt-get -y --purge autoremove
          - apt -y autoclean
          - apt -y clean all

    EOT
}

# libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm:
resource "libvirt_domain" "ubuntu-2004-vm" {
    arch        = "x86_64"
    autostart   = false
    cloudinit   = "/var/lib/libvirt/images/cloud-init.iso;5f5ce077-9508-3b8c-273d-02d44443b79c"
    disk        = [
        {
            block_device = ""
            file         = ""
            scsi         = false
            url          = ""
            volume_id    = "/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol"
            wwn          = ""
        },
    ]
    emulator    = "/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64"
    fw_cfg_name = "opt/com.coreos/config"
    id          = "3ade5c95-30d4-496b-9bcf-a12d63993cfa"
    machine     = "pc"
    memory      = 2048
    name        = "ubuntu-2004-vm"
    qemu_agent  = false
    running     = true
    vcpu        = 1
}

# libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol:
resource "libvirt_volume" "ubuntu-2004-vol" {
    format = "qcow2"
    id     = "/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol"
    name   = "ubuntu-2004-vol"
    pool   = "default"
    size   = 2361393152
    source = "ubuntu-20.04.img"
}

Lots of output , but let me explain it really quick:

generate a user-data file from template, template is populated with variables, create an cloud-init iso, create a volume disk from source, create a virtual machine with this new volume disk and boot it with this cloud-init iso.

Pretty much, that’s it!!!

$ virsh  -c qemu:///system vol-list --details  default

 Name              Path                                      Type   Capacity     Allocation
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 cloud-init.iso    /var/lib/libvirt/images/cloud-init.iso    file   364.00 KiB   364.00 KiB
 ubuntu-2004-vol   /var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol   file   2.20 GiB     537.94 MiB

$ virsh  -c qemu:///system list
 Id   Name             State
--------------------------------
 1    ubuntu-2004-vm   running

destroy

$ terraform destroy -auto-approve

data.template_file.user_data: Refreshing state... [id=cc82a7db4c6498aee21a883729fc4be7b84059d3dec69b92a210e046c67a9a00]
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Refreshing state... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol]
libvirt_cloudinit_disk.cloud-init: Refreshing state... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/cloud-init.iso;5f5cdc31-1d38-39cb-cc72-971e474ca539]
libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm: Refreshing state... [id=3ade5c95-30d4-496b-9bcf-a12d63993cfa]
libvirt_cloudinit_disk.cloud-init: Destroying... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/cloud-init.iso;5f5cdc31-1d38-39cb-cc72-971e474ca539]
libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm: Destroying... [id=3ade5c95-30d4-496b-9bcf-a12d63993cfa]
libvirt_cloudinit_disk.cloud-init: Destruction complete after 0s
libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm: Destruction complete after 0s
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Destroying... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol]
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Destruction complete after 0s

Destroy complete! Resources: 3 destroyed.

Most important detail is:

Resources: 3 destroyed.

• cloud-init.iso
• ubuntu-2004-vol
• ubuntu-2004-vm

Console

but there are a few things still missing.

To add a console for starters so we can connect into this virtual machine!

To do that, we need to re-edit Domain.tf and add a console output:

  console {
    target_type = "serial"
    type        = "pty"
    target_port = "0"
  }
  console {
    target_type = "virtio"
    type        = "pty"
    target_port = "1"
  }

the full file should look like:

resource "libvirt_domain" "ubuntu-2004-vm" {
  name = "ubuntu-2004-vm"

  memory = "2048"
  vcpu   = 1

 cloudinit = libvirt_cloudinit_disk.cloud-init.id

  disk {
    volume_id = libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol.id
  }

  console {
    target_type = "serial"
    type        = "pty"
    target_port = "0"
  }
  console {
    target_type = "virtio"
    type        = "pty"
    target_port = "1"
  }

}

Create again the VM with

terraform plan -out terraform.out
terraform apply terraform.out

And test the console:

$ virsh -c qemu:///system console ubuntu-2004-vm
Connected to domain ubuntu-2004-vm
Escape character is ^] (Ctrl + ])

wow!

We have actually logged-in to this VM using the libvirt console!

Virtual Machine

some interesting details

root@ubuntu2004:~# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root       2.0G  916M  1.1G  46% /
devtmpfs        998M     0  998M   0% /dev
tmpfs           999M     0  999M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           200M  392K  200M   1% /run
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs           999M     0  999M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/vda15      105M  3.9M  101M   4% /boot/efi
tmpfs           200M     0  200M   0% /run/user/0

root@ubuntu2004:~# free -hm
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          2.0Gi        73Mi       1.7Gi       0.0Ki       140Mi       1.8Gi
Swap:            0B          0B          0B

root@ubuntu2004:~# ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: tunl0@NONE: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ipip 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0
3: sit0@NONE: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/sit 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0

Do not forget to destroy

$ terraform destroy -auto-approve

data.template_file.user_data: Refreshing state... [id=cc82a7db4c6498aee21a883729fc4be7b84059d3dec69b92a210e046c67a9a00]
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Refreshing state... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol]
libvirt_cloudinit_disk.cloud-init: Refreshing state... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/cloud-init.iso;5f5ce077-9508-3b8c-273d-02d44443b79c]
libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm: Refreshing state... [id=69f75b08-1e06-409d-9fd6-f45d82260b51]
libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm: Destroying... [id=69f75b08-1e06-409d-9fd6-f45d82260b51]
libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm: Destruction complete after 0s
libvirt_cloudinit_disk.cloud-init: Destroying... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/cloud-init.iso;5f5ce077-9508-3b8c-273d-02d44443b79c]
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Destroying... [id=/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-2004-vol]
libvirt_cloudinit_disk.cloud-init: Destruction complete after 0s
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-vol: Destruction complete after 0s

Destroy complete! Resources: 3 destroyed.

extend the volume disk

As mentioned above, the volume’s disk size is exactly as the origin source image.
In our case it’s 2G.

What we need to do, is to use the source image as a base for a new volume disk. In our new volume disk, we can declare the size we need.

I would like to make this a user variable: Variables.tf

variable "vol_size" {
  description = "The mac & iP address for this VM"
  # 10G
  default = 10 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024
}

Arithmetic in terraform!!

So the Volume.tf should be:

resource "libvirt_volume" "ubuntu-2004-base" {
  name = "ubuntu-2004-base"
  pool = "default"
  #source = "https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/focal/current/focal-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk-kvm.img"
  source = "ubuntu-20.04.img"
  format = "qcow2"
}

resource "libvirt_volume" "ubuntu-2004-vol" {
  name           = "ubuntu-2004-vol"
  pool           = "default"
  base_volume_id = libvirt_volume.ubuntu-2004-base.id
  size           = var.vol_size
}

base image –> volume image

test it

terraform plan -out terraform.out
terraform apply terraform.out

$ virsh -c qemu:///system console ubuntu-2004-vm

Connected to domain ubuntu-2004-vm
Escape character is ^] (Ctrl + ])

ubuntu2004 login: root
Password:
Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-1021-kvm x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Sat Sep 12 18:27:46 EEST 2020

  System load: 0.29             Memory usage: 6%   Processes:       66
  Usage of /:  9.3% of 9.52GB   Swap usage:   0%   Users logged in: 0

0 updates can be installed immediately.
0 of these updates are security updates.

Failed to connect to https://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-lts. Check your Internet connection or proxy settings

Last login: Sat Sep 12 18:26:37 EEST 2020 on ttyS0
root@ubuntu2004:~# df -h /
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root       9.6G  912M  8.7G  10% /
root@ubuntu2004:~#

10G !

destroy

terraform destroy -auto-approve

Swap

I would like to have a swap partition and I will use cloud init to create a swap partition.

modify user-data.yml

# Create swap partition
swap:
  filename: /swap.img
  size: "auto"
  maxsize: 2G

test it

terraform plan -out terraform.out && terraform apply terraform.out

$ virsh -c qemu:///system console ubuntu-2004-vm

Connected to domain ubuntu-2004-vm
Escape character is ^] (Ctrl + ])

root@ubuntu2004:~# free -hm
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          2.0Gi        86Mi       1.7Gi       0.0Ki       188Mi       1.8Gi
Swap:         2.0Gi          0B       2.0Gi

root@ubuntu2004:~#

success !!

terraform destroy -auto-approve

Network

How about internet? network?
Yes, what about it ?

I guess you need to connect to the internets, okay then.

The easiest way is to add this your Domain.tf

  network_interface {
    network_name = "default"
  }

This will use the default network libvirt resource

$ virsh -c qemu:///system net-list

 Name              State    Autostart   Persistent
----------------------------------------------------
 default           active   yes         yes

if you prefer to directly expose your VM to your local network (be very careful) then replace the above with a macvtap interface. If your ISP router provides dhcp, then your VM will take a random IP from your router.

network_interface {
  macvtap = "eth0"
}

test it

terraform plan -out terraform.out && terraform apply terraform.out

$ virsh -c qemu:///system console ubuntu-2004-vm

Connected to domain ubuntu-2004-vm
Escape character is ^] (Ctrl + ])

root@ubuntu2004:~#

root@ubuntu2004:~# ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: ens3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 52:54:00:36:66:96 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.122.228/24 brd 192.168.122.255 scope global dynamic ens3
       valid_lft 3544sec preferred_lft 3544sec
    inet6 fe80::5054:ff:fe36:6696/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: tunl0@NONE: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ipip 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0
4: sit0@NONE: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/sit 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0

root@ubuntu2004:~# ping -c 5 google.com
PING google.com (172.217.23.142) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from fra16s18-in-f142.1e100.net (172.217.23.142): icmp_seq=1 ttl=115 time=43.4 ms
64 bytes from fra16s18-in-f142.1e100.net (172.217.23.142): icmp_seq=2 ttl=115 time=43.9 ms
64 bytes from fra16s18-in-f142.1e100.net (172.217.23.142): icmp_seq=3 ttl=115 time=43.0 ms
64 bytes from fra16s18-in-f142.1e100.net (172.217.23.142): icmp_seq=4 ttl=115 time=43.1 ms
64 bytes from fra16s18-in-f142.1e100.net (172.217.23.142): icmp_seq=5 ttl=115 time=43.4 ms

--- google.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4005ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 42.977/43.346/43.857/0.311 ms
root@ubuntu2004:~#

destroy

$ terraform destroy -auto-approve

Destroy complete! Resources: 4 destroyed.

SSH

Okay, now that we have network it is possible to setup ssh to our virtual machine and also auto create a user. I would like cloud-init to get my public key from github and setup my user.

disable_root: true
ssh_pwauth: no

users:
  - name: ebal
    ssh_import_id:
      - gh:ebal
    shell: /bin/bash
    sudo: ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

write_files:
  - path: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    content: |
        AcceptEnv LANG LC_*
        AllowUsers ebal
        ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
        Compression NO
        MaxSessions 3
        PasswordAuthentication no
        PermitRootLogin no
        Port "${sshdport}"
        PrintMotd no
        Subsystem sftp  /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
        UseDNS no
        UsePAM yes
        X11Forwarding no

Notice, I have added a new variable called sshdport

Variables.tf

variable "ssh_port" {
  description = "The sshd port of the VM"
  default     = 12345
}

and do not forget to update your cloud-init tf

Cloudinit.tf

data "template_file" "user_data" {
  template = file("user-data.yml")
  vars = {
    hostname = var.domain
    sshdport = var.ssh_port
  }
}

resource "libvirt_cloudinit_disk" "cloud-init" {
  name           = "cloud-init.iso"
  user_data      = data.template_file.user_data.rendered
}

Update VM

I would also like to update & install specific packages to this virtual machine:

# Install packages
packages:
  - figlet
  - mlocate
  - python3-apt
  - bash-completion
  - ncdu

# Update/Upgrade & Reboot if necessary
package_update: true
package_upgrade: true
package_reboot_if_required: true

# PostInstall
runcmd:
  - figlet ${hostname} > /etc/motd
  - updatedb
  # Firewall
  - ufw allow "${sshdport}"/tcp && ufw enable
  # Remove cloud-init
  - apt-get -y autoremove --purge cloud-init lxc lxd snapd
  - apt-get -y --purge autoremove
  - apt -y autoclean
  - apt -y clean all

Yes, I prefer to uninstall cloud-init at the end.

user-date.yaml

the entire user-date.yaml looks like this:

#cloud-config
disable_root: true
ssh_pwauth: no

users:
  - name: ebal
    ssh_import_id:
      - gh:ebal
    shell: /bin/bash
    sudo: ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

write_files:
  - path: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    content: |
        AcceptEnv LANG LC_*
        AllowUsers ebal
        ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
        Compression NO
        MaxSessions 3
        PasswordAuthentication no
        PermitRootLogin no
        Port "${sshdport}"
        PrintMotd no
        Subsystem sftp  /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
        UseDNS no
        UsePAM yes
        X11Forwarding no

# Set TimeZone
timezone: Europe/Athens

hostname: "${hostname}"

# Create swap partition
swap:
  filename: /swap.img
  size: "auto"
  maxsize: 2G

# Install packages
packages:
  - figlet
  - mlocate
  - python3-apt
  - bash-completion
  - ncdu

# Update/Upgrade & Reboot if necessary
package_update: true
package_upgrade: true
package_reboot_if_required: true

# PostInstall
runcmd:
  - figlet ${hostname} > /etc/motd
  - updatedb
  # Firewall
  - ufw allow "${sshdport}"/tcp && ufw enable
  # Remove cloud-init
  - apt-get -y autoremove --purge cloud-init lxc lxd snapd
  - apt-get -y --purge autoremove
  - apt -y autoclean
  - apt -y clean all

Output

We need to know the IP to login so create a new terraform file to get the IP

Output.tf

output "IP" {
  value = libvirt_domain.ubuntu-2004-vm.network_interface.0.addresses
}

but that means that we need to wait for the dhcp lease. Modify Domain.tf to tell terraform to wait.

  network_interface {
    network_name = "default"
    wait_for_lease = true
  }

Plan & Apply

$ terraform plan -out terraform.out && terraform apply terraform.out

Outputs:

IP = [
  "192.168.122.79",
]

Verify

$ ssh 192.168.122.79 -p 12345 uptime
 19:33:46 up 2 min,  0 users,  load average: 0.95, 0.37, 0.14

$ ssh 192.168.122.79 -p 12345
Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-1023-kvm x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Sat Sep 12 19:34:45 EEST 2020

  System load:  0.31              Processes:             72
  Usage of /:   33.1% of 9.52GB   Users logged in:       0
  Memory usage: 7%                IPv4 address for ens3: 192.168.122.79
  Swap usage:   0%

0 updates can be installed immediately.
0 of these updates are security updates.

       _                 _         ____   ___   ___  _  _
 _   _| |__  _   _ _ __ | |_ _   _|___  / _  / _ | || |
| | | | '_ | | | | '_ | __| | | | __) | | | | | | | || |_
| |_| | |_) | |_| | | | | |_| |_| |/ __/| |_| | |_| |__   _|
 __,_|_.__/ __,_|_| |_|__|__,_|_____|___/ ___/   |_|

Last login: Sat Sep 12 19:34:37 2020 from 192.168.122.1

ebal@ubuntu2004:~$
ebal@ubuntu2004:~$ df -h /
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root       9.6G  3.2G  6.4G  34% /

ebal@ubuntu2004:~$ free -hm
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          2.0Gi        91Mi       1.7Gi       0.0Ki       197Mi       1.8Gi
Swap:         2.0Gi          0B       2.0Gi

ebal@ubuntu2004:~$ ping -c 5 libreops.cc
PING libreops.cc (185.199.108.153) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 185.199.108.153 (185.199.108.153): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=48.4 ms
64 bytes from 185.199.108.153 (185.199.108.153): icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=48.7 ms
64 bytes from 185.199.108.153 (185.199.108.153): icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=48.5 ms
64 bytes from 185.199.108.153 (185.199.108.153): icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=48.3 ms
64 bytes from 185.199.108.153 (185.199.108.153): icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=52.8 ms

--- libreops.cc ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4006ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 48.266/49.319/52.794/1.743 ms

what !!!!

awesome

destroy

terraform destroy -auto-approve

Custom Network

One last thing I would like to discuss is how to create a new network and provide a specific IP to your VM. This will separate your VMs/lab and it is cheap & easy to setup a new libvirt network.

Network.tf

resource "libvirt_network" "tf_net" {
  name      = "tf_net"
  domain    = "libvirt.local"
  addresses = ["192.168.123.0/24"]
  dhcp {
    enabled = true
  }
  dns {
    enabled = true
  }
}

and replace network_interface in Domains.tf

  network_interface {
    network_id     = libvirt_network.tf_net.id
    network_name   = "tf_net"
    addresses      = ["192.168.123.${var.IP_addr}"]
    mac            = "52:54:00:b2:2f:${var.IP_addr}"
    wait_for_lease = true
  }

Closely look, there is a new terraform variable

Variables.tf

variable "IP_addr" {
  description = "The mac & iP address for this VM"
  default     = 33
}

$ terraform plan -out terraform.out && terraform apply terraform.out

Outputs:

IP = [
  "192.168.123.33",
]

$ ssh 192.168.123.33 -p 12345
Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-1021-kvm x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

 System information disabled due to load higher than 1.0

12 updates can be installed immediately.
8 of these updates are security updates.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable

Last login: Sat Sep 12 19:56:33 2020 from 192.168.123.1

ebal@ubuntu2004:~$ ip addr show ens3
2: ens3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 52:54:00:b2:2f:33 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.123.33/24 brd 192.168.123.255 scope global dynamic ens3
       valid_lft 3491sec preferred_lft 3491sec
    inet6 fe80::5054:ff:feb2:2f33/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
ebal@ubuntu2004:~$

Terraform files

you can find every terraform example in my github repo

tf/0.13/libvirt/0.6.2/ubuntu/20.04 at master · ebal/tf · GitHub

That’s it!

If you like this article, consider following me on twitter ebalaskas.

[Original Published at Linkedin on October 28, 2018]

 

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand.

 

Let’s talk about documentation

This is the one big elephant in every team’s room.

TLDR; Increment: Documentation

Documentation empowers users and technical teams to function more effectively, and can promote approachability, accessibility, efficiency, innovation, and more stable development.

Bad technical guides can cause frustration, confusion, and distrust in your software, support channels, and even your brand—and they can hinder progress and productivity internally

 

so to avoid situations like these:

xkcd - wisdom_of_the_ancients

or/and

Optipess - TitsMcGee4782

 

documentation must exist!

 

Myths

• Self-documenting code
• No time to write documentation
• There are code examples, what else you need?
• There is a wiki page (or 300.000 pages).
• I’m not a professional writer
• No one reads the manual

 

Problems

• Maintaining the documentation (up2date)
• Incomplete or Confusing documentation
• Documentation is platform/version oriented
• Engineers who may not be fluent in English (or dont speak your language)
• Too long
• Too short
• Documentation structure

 

Types of documentation

• Technical Manual (system)
• Tutorial (mini tutorials)
• HowTo (mini howto)
• Library/API documentation (reference)
• Customer Documentation (end user)
• Operations manual
• User manual (support)
• Team documentation
• Project/Software documentation
• Notes
• FAQ

 

Why Documentation Is Important

Communication is a key to success. Documentation is part of the communication process. We either try to communicate or collaborate with our customers or even within our own team. We use our documentation to inform customers of new feautures and how to use them, to train our internal team (colleagues), collaborate with them, reach-out, help-out, connect, communicate our work with others.

When writing code, documentation should be the “One-Truth” instead of the code repository. I love working with projects that they will not deploy a new feature before updating the documentation first. For example I read the ‘Release Notes for Red Hat’ and the ChangeLog instead of reading myriads of code repositories.

 

Know Your Audience

Try to answer these questions:

• Who is reading this documentation ?
• Is it for internal or external users/customers ?
• Do they have a dev background ?
• Arey they non-technical people ?

Use personas to create diferrent material. Try to remember this one gold rule:

Audidence should get value from documentation (learning or something).

 

Guidelines

Here are some guidelines:

• Tell a story
• Use a narative voice
• Try to solve a problem
• Simplify - KISS philosophy
• Focus on approachability and usability

Even on a technical document try to:

• Write documentation agnostic - Independent Platform
• Reproducibility
• Not writing in acronyms and technical jargon (explain)
• Step Approach
• Towards goal achievement
• Routines

 

UX

A picture is worth a thousand words

so remember to:

• visual representation of the information architecture
• use code examples
• screencasts
• CLI –help output
• usage
• clear error messages

Customers and Users do want to write nothing.
Reducing user input, your project will be more fault tolerant.

Instead of providing a procedure for a deploy pipeline, give them a deploy bot, a next-next-install Gui/Web User-Interface and focus your documentation around that.

 

Content

So what to include in the documentation.

• How technical should be or not ?
• Use cases ?
• General-Purpose ?
• Article size (small pages are more manageable set to maintain).
• Minimum Viable Content Vs Too much detail
• Help them to understand

imagine your documentation as microservices instead of a huge monolith project.

Usally a well defined structure, looks like this:

• Table of Contents (toc)
• Introduction
• Short Description
• Sections / Modules / Chapters
• Conclusion / Summary
• Glossary
• Index
• References

 

Tools

I prefer wiki pages instead of a word-document, because of the below features:

• Version
• History
• Portability
• Convertibility
• Accountability

btw if you are using Confluence, there is a Markdown plugin.

 

Measurements & Feedback

To understand if your documentation is good or not, you need feedback. But first there is an evaluation process of Review. It is the same thing as writing code, you cant review your own code! The first feedback should come within your team.

Use analytics to measure if people reads your documentation, from ‘Hits per page’ to more advance analytics as Matomo (formerly Piwik). Profiling helps you understand your audience. What they like in documentation?

Customer satisfaction (CSat) are important in documentation metrics.

• Was this page helpful? Yes/No
• Allowing customers to submit comments.
• Upvote/Downvote / Like
• or even let them to contribute in your documentation

make it easy for people to share their feedbak and find a way to include their comments in it.

 

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions should answering questions in the style of:

• What would customers ask ?
• What if
• How to

FAQ or QA should be really straight forward, short and simple as it can be. You are writing a FAQ because you are here to help customers to learn how to use this specific feature not the entire software. Use links for more detail info, that direct them to your main documentation.

Conclusion

Sharing knowledge & shaping the culture of your team/end users. Your documentation should reflect your customers needs. Everything you do in your business is to satisfy your customers. Documentation is one way to communicate this.

So here are some final points on documentation:

• User Oriented
• Readability
• Comprehensive
• Keep it up to date