HOWTO: Boxee on 11.04 Natty

These are the steps I took, which is based on the work done by Maxo.

First up, you need the Debian installer from the Boxee website. If you don't already have it go ahead and download it then place it in your home directory. I'm using the AMD64 package, which is called boxee-0.9.22.13692.x86_64.modfied.deb

Login to a console, we will be working only in our home directory.

Run these commands;

dpkg-deb -x boxee-0.9.22.13692.x86_64.modfied.deb boxee
dpkg-deb --control boxee-0.9.22.13692.x86_64.modfied.deb boxee/DEBIAN

Now we need to edit the file that lists the dependencies;

vi boxee/DEBIAN/control

Find libxmlrpc-c3 in this file and append -0 (that's a zero) to the end of it so that it now says "libxmlrpc-c3-0".

That's the only change we need to make but we do need to create a new Debian package file now that we have fixed the dependency problem.

dpkg -b boxee boxee-0.9.22.13692.x86_64.natty.deb

Before we can install Boxee, we will need to manually install all the dependencies;

sudo apt-get install libcurl3 libsdl-image1.2 libsdl-gfx1.2-4 liblzo2-2 \
libdirectfb-1.2-9 libnss3-1d flashplugin-nonfree libhal-storage1 screen \
msttcorefonts libtre5 libmad0 libxmlrpc-c3-0 libnspr4-0d xsel libmms0 libenca0

With our dependencies installed we can now install our modified package;

sudo dpkg -i boxee-0.9.22.13692.x86_64.natty.deb

And with that you should have a working Boxee on your Ubuntu Natty system.

It would be nice if the Boxee guys would update their packages occasionally but I guess the reality is that they want to make you purchase a "Boxee Box" instead.

This is the trouble with being at the mercy of the source code owner I guess. If Boxee were open source somebody would have already rebuilt the packages and we wouldn't have to dick around like this in the first place.

Update: I don't know if this is Natty specific bug, but I ran into another problem where Boxee would play video in black and white. If that happens to you, here is how to fix it.

When Upgrades Go Bad

Recently I decided to do a bit of a hardware refresh on my home server. This involved the purchase of an AMD E-350 based motherboard to replace my old Atom D510.

Unfortunately things went slightly awry when I realised that my existing server used a Compact Flash to IDE adaptor and the new board I had bought had no IDE interface.

DOH!

I ended up having to replace the Compact Flash adapter with a spare SSD that I had lying around and do an entire OS reinstall.

It was then that I struck another problem when I discovered that I couldn't find a 10.04 Server CD anywhere.

So, with my server in pieces and no Internet access I was forced to install Natty 11.04 x64 Desktop to get the thing back up and running.

It was my intention to convert this desktop install to something resembling a server install by installing the server kernel and removing all the Gnome, Unity and X packages.

Then I had another bright idea. I have an Acer Revo running Boxee as a HTPC sitting right next to the server. What if, I thought, I leave the desktop on the server?

If I did that then I could get rid of the Revo and run Boxee directly on the server.

Brilliant!

So, off I go to the Boxee site to get the x64 binary and while there I note that they still haven't updated their packages from over a year ago. That's the sort of thing that really annoys me about closed source software but as yet there is nothing open source that is anywhere near as slick as Boxee, so I guess I'm stuck using it for now.

But I digress.

I also note that the Boxee site only specifies packages for Lucid and Maverick, there is no mention of Natty at all. Hmmmm.

Undaunted, I go ahead and download the Maverick deb package.

However, when I go to install the package I strike my next problem;

"Dependency is not satisfiable: libxmlrpc-c3"

Damn!

A quick google search and I find this site and this site

It seems that some genius at Debian or Ubuntu has decided to rename the package from "libxmlrpc-c3" to "libxmlrpc-c3-0".

I really hate that.

The good news is that you can edit the Boxee deb package to change the dependency so it looks for the new name.

I followed the instructions provided by Maxo but because I was working in a remote ssh session things worked a bit differently. Maxo used Ubuntu Software Centre which worked out all the dependencies for him.

dpkg wouldn't do that. Normally this is OK, because you can simply use apt-get install -f to fix any outstanding unbroken dependencies but in this case all apt-get install -f wanted to do was remove Boxee again. The only way to get things working was to install all the dependencies first and then install Boxee.

Eventually everything worked out OK, and you can do it yourself using the instructions here.

Managing Deluge Daemon

I use Deluge bit torrent client on a couple of headless machines. There's not much to it, you can learn how to set it up here

However up until now I've been manually bringing it up and down at the command line, it's not hard but I thought I'd streamline it a bit by making a script.

Download or copy+paste this script into a file called "torrents" and make it executable;

#!/bin/bash

FLAG="/tmp/torrents_on"
UPDATE_FIREWALL="/store/scripts/firewall"

# Checking for dependancies
if [ ! ${DELUGED=`which deluged`} ] ; then echo "ERROR : Can't find 'deluged' on your system, aborting" ; exit 1; fi
if [ ! ${DELUGE_WEB=`which deluge-web`} ] ; then echo "ERROR : Can't find 'deluge-web' on your system, web interface will be disabled" ; exit 1; fi

DELUGED_PID=`ps ax | grep "${DELUGED}" | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`
if [ "${DELUGED_PID}" = "" ] ; then DELUGED_PID=0 ; fi

DELUGE_WEB_PID=`ps ax | grep "${DELUGE_WEB}" | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`
if [ "${DELUGE_WEB_PID}" = "" ] ; then DELUGE_WEB_PID=0 ; fi

case "$1" in
    start)
 if [ ! $DELUGED_PID -gt "0" ] ; then 
     deluged
     nohup deluge-web > /dev/null 2>&1 &
     touch $FLAG
     $UPDATE_FIREWALL
     exit 0
 else
     echo "Deluged is already running (PID $DELUGED_PID)"
     exit 1
 fi
    ;;

    stop)
 if [ ! $DELUGED_PID = "0" ] ; then 
     kill $DELUGED_PID
     kill $DELUGE_WEB_PID
     rm $FLAG 
     $UPDATE_FIREWALL
     exit 0
 else
     echo "Deluged is not running"
     exit 1
 fi
    ;;

    status)
 if [ $DELUGED_PID -gt "0" ] ; then 
     ps ax | grep deluge | grep -v grep
     exit 0
 else
     echo "Deluged is not running"
        exit 0
 fi
    ;;

    *)
        echo "Usage: torrents {start|stop|status}"
        exit 1
    ;;
esac

The script will open/close ports on your firewall as required assuming you modify the UPDATE_FIREWALL variable with the correct location of your firewall script and modify that script to include something like this;

# Flush tables before re-applying ruleset
sudo /sbin/iptables --flush

# Bittorrent traffic
if [ -f /tmp/torrents_on ] ; then
    sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 58261 -j ACCEPT 
    sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 58261 -j ACCEPT
fi

# 

# Drop all other traffic from WAN
sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i $WAN -j DROP
sudo /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i $WAN -j DROP

The above firewall script is for illustraion purposes and shouldn't be used as is. Make sure you modify use a script that suits your own network.

Once installed, you can now use the script to control deluged and the deluge web interface from the command line using this syntax;

torrents {start|stop|status}

Enjoy!

HOWTO: Configure A Router

Now we get to turn our debian or ubuntu server into a router. Read on!

Prerequisites;
1) A server as per this guide.

2) A working PPPoE or PPPoA based Internet connection. Most consumer ADSL and Cable Internet is provided using one of these protocols, support for which is built into the consumer "router" I am assuming you are currently using.

3) The ISP provided username and password combo for your Internet connection. If you have a "router" that was provided by your ISP they sometimes print these on a label attached to the device, otherwise it will be written on the documentation you received when you signed up (and promptly lost I'm sure). You will have to call your ISP on the actual telephone to retrieve this information if you have lost it.

4) An Ethernet switch and sufficient cables to connect at least two devices. Your current Internet Gateway may currently have the Ethernet switch built in to it. Alternately, you may use a separate switch if you prefer.

5) If you are intending to use a discreet modem (cable or ADSL) and a separate switch then two LAN cards are required. Unless you are one of the incredibly lucky few who have access to FttH you will most likely have some form of ADSL or Cable service with speeds measured in single-figure MegaBits. This means that it is perfectly OK to reuse a discarded old 100baseT adapter (or indeed even a 10baseT if you still have one of those in the antiques cupboard) for your WAN interface. Even the slowest LAN card will be considerably faster than most current Internet connections. If you intend to go down the Router-in-bridged-mode road then a single Ethernet adapter will suffice.

OK, now that you have all the prerequisites in order, and a basic server up and running we can get on with bidness proper.

The first thing we need to do is install a few packages we will need before we disconnect ourselves from the Internet.

apt-get install pppoeconf ppp

Next we configure the LAN side of the network.

Note: I will assume that your LAN adapter is eth0 from this point onwards. If you are using two Ethernet adapters this would make your WAN interface eth1.

Because we are configuring a router, we must use a static IP address for our LAN adapter. If you followed my server guide then you have already done that, otherwise you should backtrack and configure a static IP address as per that guide.

Pro Tip: For testing purposes, I recommend that you configure some other PC on your LAN with a static IP in the 10.1.1.x subnet with a default gateway of 10.1.1.1. We will be using this PC from time to time for testing. This can be either a Linux or Windows PC.

Plug both the server and client hosts into your LAN and check that you can ping the server at 10.1.1.1 from the client.

OK. Once you can ping your server from the test PC we can continue.

The next step varies depending on whether you are using a single adapter and a router in "bridged mode" or a separate modem and 2 Ethernet adapters.

Separate modem and two adapters: You must configure eth1 as per the above instructions for eth0 using any old IP address you like. I suggest you use 192.168.254.254/24. The address will not be used for anything on your network but is required so that the pppoeconf utility in the next section can locate your modem. Make sure you plug your modem into this interface

Consumer router in "bridged" mode: You will need to configure the router in "bridged" mode[1] according to the instructions provided by the manufacturer of the device. On my DG834G it is a simple matter of browsing to http://192.168.0.254/setup.cgi?next_file=mode.htm (where 192.168.0.254 is the address of my gateway) and setting the drop-down box to "Modem Only". I found that info via a Google search here. You should do a Google search for something like my-gw-model-number +"bridged mode" or similar to find instructions on how to configure your particular router.

Once you have your router in bridge mode, we can use the pppoeconf utility to configure a PPP connection to our ISP;

sudo pppoeconf

Go through each screen choosing the default option until you get to the "ENTER USERNAME" screen. Enter the username for your ISP account here.

The next screen asks for your password, enter that too.

In the "USE PEER DNS" screen select "No"

Select the default option on all the remaining screens.

You should now have Internet connectivity on this host. You can check this with the ifconfig command;

ifconfig ppp0
ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:123.4.56.789 P-t-P:123.4.8.1 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1492 Metric:1
RX packets:59687317 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:50606162 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:2967668270 (2.9 GB) TX bytes:2950135549 (2.9 GB)


You should (hopefully) see a ppp0 adapter in the output similar to this. If you do, we should do a few more tests. First, lets check we can ping our DNS server. To find your DNS server type;

cat /etc/resolv.conf

There should be an entry "nameserver" with an IP address in the output.

Let's ping that IP address and see if it works;

ping -c 4 208.67.222.222
PING 208.67.222.222 (208.67.222.222) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=322 ms
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=196 ms
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=281 ms
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=547 ms

--- 208.67.222.222 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 196.763/337.020/547.292/129.589 ms

(The IP above is for OpenDNS)

We can test that DNS is working by pinging by name;

ping -c 4 www.google.com
PING www.l.google.com (74.125.237.18) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=261 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=285 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=24.2 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.237.18: icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=122 ms

If you got this far then that is great, but please be aware that although our Internet connection is now up and working, we have not done enough to get our LAN clients up and on the 'net. For that we need to configure routing, NAT and a firewall.

We can configure routing by issuing editing the following file;

sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf

Find the following line and change it from 0 to 1;

net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

To configure an extremely basic firewall, create a file in a suitable location such as /usr/sbin/ with the following contents;

sudo vi /usr/sbin/firewall
8< - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
#!/bin/bash

WAN=ppp0
LAN=eth0

sudo /sbin/iptables --flush

# Accept ALL packets inbound from our local networks
sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i $LAN -j ACCEPT
sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT

# Do NAT for LAN clients
sudo /sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $WAN -j MASQUERADE

# Allow ping packets
sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT

# Allow returning packets for established sessions
sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
sudo /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

# Allow all traffic out from this host and our LAN clients
sudo /sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -j ACCEPT
sudo /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i $LAN -j ACCEPT

# Drop all other traffic inbound from the Internet
sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i $WAN -j DROP
sudo /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i $WAN -j DROP
8< - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Note: This is not a particularly secure firewall, it basically allows any host on your LAN to send anything out and only drops unwanted packets coming in via the WAN interface (ppp0).

Make the firewall script executable;

chmod +x /usr/sbin/firewall

To make the firewall start at boot simply edit your rc.local file.

vi /etc/rc.local

Add this line to the end (but before the "exit 0" line)

/usr/sbin/firewall

You should reboot your router/server now and redo the ping tests as shown above.

Now that the router has been rebooted and assuming the ping tests have worked OK, you should be able to use your LAN client with the static IP address and ping/browse to the Internet.

That's great, but we don't want to be configuring all our clients with static addresses, so we probably should configure our router as a DHCP server as well.

And while we are at it, why don't you take the next step and turn your router into a funky caching DNS server too.

Or even better, connect your sites together with encrypted VPN's using this super easy Five Minute VPN Guide

[1] AKA "modem" or "modem only" mode.

-

Intellinet 150n USB WiFi key

I had some trouble getting my new "Intellinet 150n Wireless LAN Adapter" working in Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid)

The problem is that one of the other Realtek drivers (rt2800usb) conflicts with the driver we need (rt2870sta)

To fix it you need to stop the rt2800usb driver from loading by blacklisting it.

sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Add this line;

blacklist rt2800usb

Reboot and you should be up and running.

UPDATED: Using SSMTP to send mail via GMail

UPDATED July 2014, to reflect the fact that google smtp servers are on port 587 now.

Often you will have a bash script that requires the ability to send emails out, such as alerts and status updates. Or perhaps you just want to get the normal alerts that all Unix servers attempt to send from time to time.

Out of the box Linux systems don't send email unless they are configured to do so. You can muck about configuring sendmail to use a "smarthost" if you like or you can do what I do and use a simple little smtp service that is quick and easy to configure to send mails via a GMail account.

Note:

If you have your own domain then it is probably better to use sendmail to send mails direct rather than relaying mail via the Big G

Obviously, for this all to work you will need a GMail account of your own. Is GMail still invite only? I have no idea. If it is and you need an invite then enter a comment below with your email address and I will be happy to send you one!

OK, let's get started.

First we need to remove sendmail and install ssmtp

sudo apt-get remove sendmail
sudo apt-get install ssmtp mailutils

SSMTP requires a little configuring so edit /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf;

sudo vi /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

Enter the details for the following fields;

mailhub = smtp.gmail.com:587
rewritedomain = tuxnetworks.com
AuthUser=myusername@gmail.com
AuthPass=mypassword
UseSTARTTLS=YES
UseTLS=YES

Note:

You should replace "tuxnetworks.com" with your own domain as well as provide the details for your GMail account. Using 'myusername' and 'mypassword' is a recipe for FAIL

Testing to see if things work.

Send an email from the command line like this;

mail -s "test config" myusername@gmail.com

To see if it was sent you can check /var/log/mail.log;

tail -f /var/log/mail.log

You should see your email logged as "SENT" in the output there.

Here is a sample ssmtp.conf for your convenience;

#
# Config file for sSMTP sendmail
#
# The person who gets all mail for userids < 1000
# Make this empty to disable rewriting.
root=postmaster

AuthUser=myusername@gmail.com
AuthPass=mypassword
UseSTARTTLS=YES
UseTLS=YES

# place where the mail goes. The actual machine name is required no 
# MX records are consulted. Commonly mailhosts are named mail.domain.com
mailhub=smtp.gmail.com

# Where will the mail seem to come from?
rewriteDomain=tuxnetworks.com

# The full hostname
hostname=myserver.tuxnetworks.com

# Are users allowed to set their own From: address?
# YES - Allow the user to specify their own From: address
# NO - Use the system generated From: address
FromLineOverride=yes

And that's it! Simples!

[ Tested and confirmed on Lucid and Natty servers ]