Feb 162022
 

I have a friend of mine, a small business owner, who manages his own linux server.  Its a simple web server using plain jane html … and he loves to manage the server himself.  Except, when he gets locked out because his home ip is dynamic and he is using lfd/csf as a security layer.  He calls me, we chat, the chats always end up with something like “hey, can you reset my ip when you get time” and i love talking to him … he is a great friend, but third time is a charm … meaning, I love helping friends out but if I have to fix the same problem more than once, I am likely going to find a more permanent solution.  And this is what I came up with ….

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Oct 222020
 

So I recently bought a Western Digital PR4100 NAS drive to backup my Linux Desktop and Laptop after losing 2 external usb drives in about 2 years.  I had always used rsnapshot to back them up.  While poking around the WD NAS via ssh, I realized it has a binary for rsnapshot installed on it that is relatively recent.  I couldn’t find any of the config files though and I came up with this solution.

The first thing you need to do is set up the sshd user on the WD NAS so you have shell access.

The second thing you need to do is to configure rsync via ssh from your computer to copy the rsnapshot config files into place.  This will need done daily because the WD NAS drive reboots at 3am EST every day.  That reboot only lasts a few minutes so what I did was created a cron job that passes the sshd users password via sshpass to create a non-interactive shell in order to rsync the files.  You will also need to copy the entire /home/root/.ssh folder and all its files to your local server and also install them using rsync because the mycloud device also deletes those files on reboot.  It looks something like this:

Create file sync-mycloud-confs.sh containing:

rsync --rsh='sshpass -p PASSWORD ssh -l sshd' /path/to/rsnapshot/*.conf MyCloud_hostname_or_IP_Address:/home/root/
rsync --rsh='sshpass -p PASSWORD ssh -l sshd' /path/to/rsnapshot/.ssh/ MyCloud_hostname_or_IP_Address:/home/root/.ssh/

In the above you will need to replace PASSWORD with your sshd users password, replace /path/to/rsnapshot/*.conf with your path to them and MyCloud_hostname_or_IP_Address with whatever method you use to ssh into your mycloud device, I use ip address btw.  I may try to find a better place to store these files so they don’t get deleted on device reboots but for tonight, it works there so thats what I am going with before I forget.

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Jun 222020
 

I had a server with plenty of disk space, like gigs of space but was out of inodes.  This is a seldom ever used server and it didn’t make any sense to me.  It was used for pentesting and had a minimal install of some vulnerable apps running under nginx.  Anywho, this is the command I used to find the two folders using a combined 100% of inodes:

find / -xdev -printf '%h\n' | sort | uniq -c | sort -k 1 -n

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Jun 222020
 

This was driving me crazy and then I figured it out … lets assume you need to edit and existing vpn connection or maybe you imported a new ovpn file and need to edit it, but you can’t because its 2020 and everything else is going wrong so what the hell.  This is how to fix it ….

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Feb 012020
 

I write this script originally in 2014, updated it in 2015, forgot about it and needed it recently again … so its updated current to 2020.  A few things about this script … I don’t recommend you just “block tor exit nodes” unless you have a good reason.  Why have I used this script in the past?  During DDOS attacks that seemed to be using tor addresses, to block hackers from using tor, etc.  When I have blocked tor, it was only for short periods of time maybe a few hours or a day or 2.  If you are under an attack via tor, the attacker can just pivot somewhere else or use some other proxied method so just keep in mind this isn’t a solve-all either.

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Feb 012020
 

How to trap a troll 101 (using psychology of humans)

1) get into a huge online argument with troll
2) create a free tier disposable web server online
3) set up logging to capture all the bits, but mostly x-forwarded-for

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Jun 192019
 
Kelty Redwing Tactical 30 Full Load

First lets define what a get-home bag is … it is the gear you need to get you home in case of an emergency (but mine is designed, outside of food and personal documents, to last me forever away from home in the event I couldn’t return to home for some reason.  It is also designed that in case I do get home and for whatever reason home no longer exists, that I can survive indefinitely on the gear I have on me once I secure additional food.).  Home from where?  Home from wherever you are when you need it!  So while reading this, think about how you travel.  Do you normally drive, take a bus, a cab, uber, fly in a plane, etc?

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Jun 192019
 
Is your family prepared?

I get asked these questions often enough that it deserves to have an actual page I can just refer to instead of retyping the same thing over and over.  With all of the tornado’s this year that has affected people near me, and with many of my closest friends knowing I do a lot of things related to wilderness survival, I keep getting asked “what should I have in a kit to protect myself or my family”.  So here we are … discussing exactly that.

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Jul 242018
 

I have a youtube channel, duh!  I call it “adventures of Ed”.  I have had a youtube channel since youtube practically existed.  It covers a wide range of topics from infosec to gardening to self-sufficiency to living in a rural and very remote area to every day life and a lot of things about hiking (gear, trails, tips, etc).  I never really ever pressed the issue of “getting subscribers” or “getting likes” because i did the entire youtube thing for fun and not a source of income.  Therefore, even though I had a lot of youtube content as a content creator, I don’t rely on any advertising revenue to pay my bills, much like this website I have had for years and you won’t find a single ad on it … that means, i absorb the costs of web hosting, domain name registrations, etc.

So when youtube offered monetization on my channel (basically a share of the revenue generated by the ads they displayed), I decided I would use that money to give back to the people who watched my videos.  I would just randomly add a comment in-video with some sort of trivia and then I would use a random number generator to pick a winner from those who commented with the correct answers.  I never even promoted the give-a-ways because that attracts the people who simply watch 1 video on your channel ever, submit an answer and potentially win some item.  I care about my listeners, so I wanted those dedicated to watching my channel to win whatever It was I was giving away that I purchased with youtubes advertising revenue.

So when youtube demonetized my channel, they didn’t hurt me … they hurt you.  But the really sad thing is that youtube still injects ads into my videos that my supporters watch.  And that means, I am still generating income for youtube aka Google who is too stingy to give small channel creators their fair share of that advertising revenue.