Category: sysadmin

SSH ChrootDirectory / sftponly not working [FIXED]

I was trying to setup a jail for SSH on Ubuntu 14.04, but it didn’t seem to work. The user I was trying to jail using ChrootDirectory could login with SFTP, but could still see everything. Turns out there were a few issues that were causing this. The summary is: All directories to the ChrootDirectory […]

Keep your home dir in Git with a detached working directory

Many posts have been written on putting your homedir in git. Nearly everyone uses a different method of doing so. I’ve found the method I’m about to describe in this blog post to work the best for me. I’ve been using it for more than a year now, and it hasn’t failed me yet. My method […]

SquashFS: Mountable compressed read-only filesystem

SquashFS is generally used for LiveCDs or embedded devices to store a compressed read-only version of a file system. This saves space at the expense of slightly slower access times from the media. There’s another use for SquashFS: keeping an easily accessible compressed mounted image available. This is particularly useful for archival purposes such as […]

I’ve released cfgtrack v1.0: Get notified of changes on your server

I needed a simple way of being notified when configuration files had been changed on some servers. Nothing fancy. No configuration management, no intrusion detection, no centralised versioning control repositories. Just a simple email saying what’s been changed. I couldn’t find a tool that did just that, and didn’t require massive amounts of configuration, so I […]

Minimalising the Gmail interface

Since a few months I’ve been using the Gmail web interface as my main email client. So far my experience has been pretty good, although it took some getting used to. I’m running it in a separate window instead of my main browser. For this I’m using it as an Application in Chrome (Open Gmail in […]

Keep an archive of all mails going through a Postfix SMTP server

All too often I get asked questions about emails which I can’t answer because I can’t actually see the emails. While mail logging goes a long way, I’d really like to keep an archive of all mails sent via an SMTP server on that machine. Here’s how to do that with Postfix. This was tested […]

Script to start a Chrome browser with an SSH Socks5 proxy

Socks5 proxies are great. They allow you to tunnel all traffic for applications that support Socks proxies through the proxy. One example I frequently use is starting a Chrome window that will do everthing as if it was an a remote machine. This is especially useful to bypass firewalls so you can test websites that […]

BBCloner v1.4: Bitbucket backup tool

I’ve released v1.4 of BBCloner. BBCloner (Bitbucket Cloner) creates mirrors of your public and private Bitbucket Git repositories. It also synchronizes already existing mirrors. Initial mirror setup requires you manually enter your username/password. Subsequent synchronization of mirrors is done using Deployment Keys. This release features a new flag: –tolerant (-t). It prevents bbcloner from complaining about […]

Host inventory overview using Ansible’s Facts

UPDATE: I’ve written a fancier version of the above script as a separate project called ansible-cmdb. It uses templates and can generate a feature-laden HTML version and text versions. It also lets you extend the information from your hosts very easily; even adding completely new hosts. Packages are available for Debian, Redhat and other operating systems. Ansible is a […]

Can’t save imported OpenVPN configuration in Network Manager

I ran into an issue where I couldn’t save an imported OpenVPN (.ovpn) configuration in Network Manager. The “Save” button remains disabled: It turns out I need to enter a password for the Private Key. Ofcourse, this particular private key doesn’t have a password, but you can simply enter a single space as your password. […]

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