Zurgl

August 28, 2017April 9, 2018

Ubuntu/Debian: Installing Nginx/Postfix/Dovecot using LibreSSL

So, let’s say you have a Ubuntu or Debian server, using one or more of Nginx, Postfix, and Dovecot, and you’d like to have them link to LibreSSL instead of the default OpenSSL. (I won’t go much into the possible reasons for it; maybe you’re bothered because modern distros are still sticking with OpenSSL 1.0.x, which is ancient and doesn’t support modern ciphers such as ChaCha20, or you trust the OpenBSD developers more than you trust the OpenSSL ones, or — and there’s nothing wrong with that — you want to do it just for fun. You could also use OpenSSL 1.1.x — check out this (very similar) post.)

So, here’s a relatively simple way, that doesn’t change the system’s default OpenSSL (believe me, that wouldn’t be a good idea, unless you recompiled everything):

Install dependencies:

apt-get install build-essential
apt-get build-dep openssl nginx dovecot postfix

Install LibreSSL:

download the latest portable source from www.libressl.org
compile and install it with:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/libressl --with-openssldir=/usr/local/libressl && make && make install

Install Nginx:

rm -rf /usr/local/src/nginx-libressl
mkdir /usr/local/src/nginx-libressl
cd /usr/local/src/nginx-libressl
apt-get source nginx # ignore the permissions error at the end

edit the file nginx-<versão>/debian/rules: add

-I/usr/local/libressl/include

to the line beginning with “debian_cflags:=“, and:

-L/usr/local/libressl/lib

to the line that begins with “debian_ldflags:“. After that, enter the nginx-<version> directory and compile the packages with the command:

debuild -uc -us -b

install the required packages in the parent directory with “dpkg -i <package names>” (do “dpkg -l | grep nginx” to see which you have installed; typically you’ll want to install the newly created versions of those);

apt-mark hold nginx* # to prevent nginx from being updated from Ubuntu / Debian updates

Done! You can now play around with the Mozilla TLS Guide to add support for modern ciphers to your Nginx’s configuration, and use SSL Labs’s SSL Server Test tool to check if they are correctly enabled.

Install Postfix:

It’s just like Nginx (replacing “nginx” with “postfix” in every command / directory name, of course), except that the changes to debian/rules are these:

find -DHAS_SSL, add -I/usr/include/libressl/include/openssl in front of it;
find AUXLIBS += , add -L/usr/local/libressl/lib in front of it
find the line with dh_shlibdeps -a, add –dpkg-shlibdeps-params=–ignore-missing-info to it
don’t forget the apt-mark hold postfix* at the end.

Install Dovecot:

Again, use the Nginx instructions, using “dovecot” instead of “nginx” everywhere, except that the changes to debian/rules should be:

after the line:

export DEB_BUILD_MAINT_OPTIONS=hardening=+all

add:

export SSL_CFLAGS=-I/usr/local/libressl/include
export SSL_LIBS=-L/usr/local/libressl/lib -lssl -lcrypto

after the section:

override_dh_makeshlibs:
# Do not add an ldconfig trigger; none of the dovecot shared libraries
# are public.
        dh_makeshlibs -n

add:

override_dh_shlibdeps:
        dh_shlibdeps --dpkg-shlibdeps-params=--ignore-missing-info

NOTE: the indentation in the second line needs to be a tab, don’t use spaces.

Again, remember to apt-mark hold dovecot* after installation.

How to check if your new installations of Postfix and/or Dovecot are using LibreSSL instead of the default OpenSSL? You could use ldd to check what SSL / TLS libraries your binaries and/or libraries link to, but the best way is probably to use a tool such as sslscan, which you can use to check what ciphers your SMTP, IMAP, etc. support (including with STARTTLS). If you see ChaCha20 in there, everything is fine. 🙂

If you ever want to go back to “normal” versions of these servers, just do apt-mark unhold nginx* (for instance).

I’ve also added /usr/local/libressl/bin to the beginning of my PATH environment variable, so that the LibreSSL binaries are used by default (e.g. to generate keys, CSRs, etc.), although this isn’t necessary for Nginx, etc. to work.

April 18, 2017April 9, 2018

Linux: create a Volume Group with all newly added disks

Let’s say you’ve just added one or more disk drives to a (physical or virtual) Linux system, and you know you want to create a volume group named “vgdata” with all of them — or add them to that VG if it already exists.

For extra fun, let’s also say you want to do it to a lot of systems at the same time, and they’re a heterogeneous bunch — some of them may have the “vgdata” VG already, while some don’t; some of them may have had just one new disk added to it, while others got several. How to script it?

#!/bin/bash

# create full-size LVM partitions on all drives with no partitions yet; also create PVs for them
for i in b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z; do sfdisk -s /dev/sd$i >/dev/null 2>&1 && ( sfdisk -s /dev/sd${i}1 >/dev/null 2>&1 || ( parted /dev/sd$i mklabel msdos && parted -a optimal /dev/sd$i mkpart primary ext4 "0%" "100%" && parted -s /dev/sd$i set 1 lvm on && pvcreate /dev/sd${i}1 ) ) ; done

# if the "vgdata" VG exists, extend it with all unused PVs...
vgs | grep -q vgdata && pvs --no-headings -o pv_name -S vg_name="" | sed 's/^ *//g' | xargs vgextend vgdata

# ... otherwise, create it with those same PVs
vgs | grep -q vgdata || pvs --no-headings -o pv_name -S vg_name="" | sed 's/^ *//g' | xargs vgcreate vgdata

As always, you can use your company’s automation system to run it on a bunch of servers, or use pssh, or a bash “for” cycle, or…

April 12, 2017April 9, 2018

Linux: find users with full sudo access on many machines

Disclaimer: there are surely many, far better ways to do this — feel free to add them in the comments. This was just a quick and dirty script I came up with yesterday, after a co-worker wondered if there was an easy way to do this on all the servers we administer.

The situation: you administer 1000 or more servers, you and your team are the only users who are supposed to be able to sudo to root (unlike simply running certain specific commands, which is typically OK), but sometimes you have to grant temporary full sudo access to a particular user or group of users who, for instance, are doing the initial application installations, but who are supposed to lose that access when the server enters production.

The problem: it’s easy to forget about those, and so the temporary access becomes permanent (yes, there are other ways around that, such as using a specific syntax for those accesses that includes a comment that you then use a script, called by the “at” daemon, to remove later, but bear with me for now). Wouldn’t it be useful to be able to look at a group of some, or even all, of the servers you administer, and find those unwanted, forgotten sudo accesses?

Continue reading “Linux: find users with full sudo access on many machines”

April 10, 2017April 9, 2018

Red Hat / CentOS: How to list RPMs installed on year X

Paranoid-minded auditor: “I need a list of all RPMs that were installed this year on these servers, stat!”

You: “OK, let’s see here…”

On a single machine:

for i in `rpm -qa`; do rpm -qi $i | grep Install | grep -q 2017 && echo $i; done

If you need to check several servers, you can use a bash “for” cycle, or pssh, or…

April 10, 2017April 9, 2018

How to update Red Hat or CentOS without changing minor versions

If you’re a Linux system administrator or even a “mere” user, you’ve probably noticed that, when using a Red Hat-like system, if you do “yum update” it may well raise the minor version level (e.g. 6.7 to 6.9). In fact, it should move your system to the latest minor version (the number after the dot) of your current major version (the number before it).

You may, then, have wondered if it is possible to update your system and yet remain on your current version. You may even have been asked to do so by a very, very timid boss, or some development/application team (“this is supported only on Red Hat 7.1, we can’t move to 7.2!”).

Before I go on, I have to say that there is absolutely no technical reason to do this (EDIT: not necessarily true any longer, at least for 7.x, see CertDepot’s comment and link. Still true in most cases; the reason for this demand is almost always ignorance, fear, and laziness, not knowledge of any actual change causing incompatibilities). I really hope you’ve arrived here just because a boss, project manager or developer is demanding it (and, sadly, you don’t work at a place where you can say “no, that’s stupid, I won’t do it”… yet 😉 ), or simply because of scientific curiosity, not because you actually think that doing this is a good idea.

Red Hat (or CentOS) minor versions aren’t really” versions” in the usual sense, where new versions of software packages, libraries, etc. are included. Instead, (with a few desktop-related exceptions, such as web browsers) they take pains to only fix security problems and other bugs. If you look at a particular package’s versions, whether you’re on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 or 7.3, those always stay the same, only the “Red Hat” number (e.g. file-5.11-21.el7) increases. Therefore, there is never (EDIT: see above edit) any question of “compatibility”; it may, however, be a question of “officially supported”, which is code for “we tested our product with this version, and can’t be bothered to test it with any others.”

Sorry about the rant. 🙂 So, since you’re obviously a competent sysadmin, I’ll assume you’re being forced to do it. Here’s how:

With Satellite:

To see which releases you have available:

subscription-manager release --list

Example:

# subscription-manager release --list
+-------------------------------------------+
 Available Releases
+-------------------------------------------+
5.11
5Server
6.2
6.7
6.8
6.9
6Server
7.0
7.1
7.2
7.3
7Server

To lock on a release (e.g. 7.1):

subscription-manager release --set=7.1

And to unlock it:

subscription-manager release --unset

(or maybe –set=7Server)

Without Satellite:

For a single update, add –releasever=x.y to your yum command; for instance:

yum --releasever=7.1 update

To set it permanently, add:

distroverpkg=x.y

to the [main] section in your /etc/yum.conf file.

Notes: at least on CentOS, since CentOS 7.x, versions aren’t just “x.y”, they also include a third number, apparently the year and date of release. Browsing on http://vault.centos.org/centos/ , for instance, you see you have these versions available:

[DIR] 6.7/ 21-Jan-2016 13:22 - 
[DIR] 6.8/ 24-May-2016 17:36 - 
[DIR] 6.9/ 10-Apr-2017 12:48 - 
[DIR] 6/ 10-Apr-2017 12:48 - 
[DIR] 7.0.1406/ 07-Apr-2015 14:36 - 
[DIR] 7.1.1503/ 13-Nov-2015 13:01 - 
[DIR] 7.2.1511/ 18-May-2016 16:48 - 
[DIR] 7.3.1611/ 20-Feb-2017 22:23 - 
[DIR] 7/ 20-Feb-2017 22:23 -

and, yes, you have to specify the third number in your command/config file.

You may also have to enable the several entries in your /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Vault.repo file (change enabled=0 to 1).

Sources: 1

April 9, 2017April 9, 2018

Welcome to Zurgl!

Zurgl (est. April 2017) is a blog about answering tech questions, especially about Linux system administration. I will probably write in more detail about this in the (still forthcoming) About Zurgl page, but, basically, I thought of taking advantage of the fact that I often get asked for help at work (as a Linux sysadmin), due to my advanced age… I mean, vast experience. 🙂 Besides helping my co-workers, why not help others on the internet with the same question, for virtually no extra effort on my part. Laziness, after all, is an important sysadmin trait — it’s what drives us to find better ways to do things.

If I myself have some doubt or problem and have to investigate it, I may also post about it. A few short tutorials may also be forthcoming. And, later, I’m thinking of answering reader questions as well — as long as the reply isn’t found in the first search result when googling for that question (where would be the fun in that? 🙂 )

No, “Zurgl” doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a made-up word that is (I think) easy to pronounce and memorize, and whose .com domain happened to be available.