Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

March 6, 2023

Resolving Citrix error: “No active policy is found in Secondary authentication cascade” when connecting via Android client

Filed under: Computer Tips,Knowledgebase — Suramya @ 8:37 PM

I was try to connect to Citrix using an android device and after authentication, I got the following error message: “No active policy is found in Secondary authentication cascade. Please contact your administrator.”

I tried doing a search for the error message but none of the solutions were applicable in my case. I was accessing the log in page using Firefox mobile and on a hunch I switched the view to “Desktop Site” by clicking on the three dots on the top right corner of the browser (See screenshot below). Once I did that and resubmitted the page, things automatically started working without any errors.


Enable Desktop Site in Firefox

My guess is that the mobile view doesn’t allow the server to run secondary validation checks because of the limitations in the mobile view. Switching to Desktop mode removes the limitations so things start automagically working again.

– Suramya

February 20, 2023

Fixing SSL error 61 on Citrix Workspace on Debian

Was trying to connect to a Citrix Workspace and kept getting the following error “You have not chosen to trust “Entrust Root Certification Authority – XX”, the issuer of the security certificate (SSL error 61)“. I have hit this error in the past and had fixed it but couldn’t find my notes from how I had fixed it back then, so I had to resort to searching on the web based on vague memories of how I had fixed. After a bit of effort I found two solutions that people had suggested:

Solution 1:

Create a symbolic link pointing the /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts directory to /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/ , using the command below as root:

mv /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts.bak
ln -s /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/ /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts 

Unfortunately, this didn’t resolve the problem for me.

Solution 2:

The second solution people recommended was to link /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts directory to the /etc/ssl/certs/ directory, using the command below as root:

mv /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts.bak
ln -s /etc/ssl/certs/ /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts 

After I linked the directory to /etc/ssl/certs things immediately started working without errors. This time I am blogging about it so that the next time I don’t waste time trying to find the solution.

– Suramya

January 17, 2023

I hacked the Tamil Nadu eGovernment site and all I got was this lousy blog post

Filed under: Computer Security,Computer Tips,Tech Related — Suramya @ 1:20 AM

Finally doing a writeup of how I found that the eGovernment portal of Tamil Nadu had a major bug with a huge privacy impact as it leaked user documents with sensitive information (Personally Identifiable
Information) to the public. This issue was reported and has been fixed as well so am sharing this information so that others are aware of this issue and help them avoid similar problems in sites they manage going forward.

This whole saga started when I had to apply for an epass to enter Tamil Nadu and noticed that the link sent to download the PDF copy of the pass did not require any password to access. The link to download the data was something like: https://tnegov.in/xxxxxx where xxxxxx was a 6 character code. It looked like they might be vulnerable to an parameter enumeration attack so I wrote a quick script to try calling the URL with various sequential codes starting with AAAAAA and moving up. To my surprise within 30 seconds of me running the script I found another person’s personal document (https://tnegov.in/AAAABY) accessible over the web without any authentication. This URL gave me a PDF file that contained a “First Graduate Certificate” (Given to the first person in a family that graduates) for a lady in Virudhunagar District in Tamil Nadu.

Since I had proven that the private information was being leaked, I immediately killed the script and reported it to the Tamil Nadu CERT team using their web form and the same was also sent via email to info.cert@tn.gov.in on 12th March 2021.

A day later I got a call from the CERT team asking for more details. The lady I spoke with asked me a few questions about what I found and wanted additional information about me. The question she got stuck at was “Where are you currently working?” As I was on a work break since I doing my Degree in Cyber security I told her that I was not working anywhere but was a student. She was really confused and kept asking the question in different ways. After a few attempts she finally believed that I was studying Cyber Security and told me that they would look into this.

I expected them to take immediate action since this was a major privacy blunder but nothing happened and it was complete radio silence from them so I emailed them again a month later (29th April) asking for an update with another followup email sent in May with no response to either.

On 21st May I looped India CERT in the mail chain to escalate and wasn’t too hopeful of a quick response. Interestingly they replied within 24 hours asking for a PoC and screenshot of the issue, so I responded with a copy of the script I had written along with the PDF file containing the PII that I had found.

After that I didn’t get any communication from the team and I got busy with exams and classes so I didn’t follow up. However, every so often I would try to access the URL and it would still give me a PDF download. In October over 7 months after I first reported it I finally got an error when trying to download the data from the site. Now I get a 404 message stating that the page can’t be found. (The site gives too much detail in the error message but that is a different story and something for me to look at when I get some free time).

The overall experience was quite poor as in spite of the immediate response to the first notification of the issue they didn’t give me any details on the ETA for the fix or let me know once the issue was resolved. Which would have made it more streamlined and I wouldn’t have had to check frequently that the issue was resolved. If nothing else an email thanking for reporting the issue would have been nice, although I have seen that other agencies / sites giving bug bounty to people reporting such issues.

If you are hosting a site that allows users to generate data/files that can be downloaded the following should be kept in mind:

  • When creating links to the generated files, don’t use sequential ID’s for the files as it makes it easy to iterate through. Instead create long randomized strings for the ID’s to make them harder to guess
  • Add some form of authentication before allowing the download, something like a emailed link or SMS OTP to validate identity before allowing a download. For example the Nagaland Government site for ILP forces you to authenticate with an OTP before allowing you access to the document
  • Add some checks for bruteforce attempts to guess file paths and block them.

Well this is all for now. I have a few more of these that I will be sharing over the next few months once I verify that the issue is resolved and safe to disclose.

– Suramya

October 21, 2022

Disable Dark Theme in the Private Browsing mode in Firefox 106

Filed under: Computer Software,Computer Tips,Knowledgebase,Tech Related — Suramya @ 10:09 AM

A lot of people like Dark themes for their apps but I am not one of them. For me the Dark mode strains my eyes more so I usually disable it as soon as possible. In the latest Firefox update (v106), Firefox changed a bunch of defaults and one of the changes is that when you open a window in incognito mode it uses the Dark theme by default. As per the release notes this is a conscious decision:

We also added a modern look and feel with a new logo and updated it so Private Browsing mode now defaults to dark theme, making it easier to know when you are in Private Browsing mode.

The dark theme really annoys me so I started looking for ways to disable it. Unfortunately, it can’t be disabled without having to change my default Theme (which is to use the System Defaults) which I didn’t want to do and a quick internet search didn’t return any useful results. So I decided to check out the about:config section to see if there is a hidden setting and lo-behold it was there. A quick change disabled the theme for the Private browsing mode and things were back to normal.

The steps to disable the dark theme in incognito mode are as follows:

  • Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter.
  • A warning page may appear. Click Accept the Risk and Continue to go to the about:config page.
  • Search for “theme” in the Search preference name box at the top of the page and you will see an entry for “browser.theme.dark-private-windows”
  • Double click on “True” for the entry to change the value to false.
  • The entry should look like the following. Then you can close the tab and you are done.


To revert the change, just repeat the steps and set the value back to True.

– Suramya

October 2, 2022

Upgrading Debian Unstable – How to avoid obvious problems

Filed under: Computer Tips,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

If you are using Debian Unstable there is a possibility that your system might not work correctly after an upgrade, because as the name states it is an ‘unstable’ distribution that might have bugs. I use it because Debian Stable has older versions of the software available and I want to the latest versions if possible. Plus I don’t mind tinkering with the system if things break so that helps as well. Over the years I have found some easy ways to prevent the most obvious problems when upgrading and I will share them here.

First option is to upgrade the system regularly. You can decide what the frequency of the upgrade is but do it regularly. I upgrade twice a month and that ensures that the system has the latest updates and we are not so far out of sync that we need to download a ton of files for the upgrade. This is very useful when you don’t have much free space available in the root partition as the longer you wait the more files you have to download and the less free space we have for the actual upgrade.

Another thing I do that has helped me a lot is to ensure that you look at the packages being upgraded, specifically any packages being removed. Don’t upgrade if there are a lot of packages being removed without updated versions being installed. To give an example, I tried upgrading my system yesterday and it told me that it was going to “457 upgraded, 11 newly installed, 297 to remove and 0 not upgraded.” Looking at the packages it was going to remove I found that if I had blindly allowed the upgrade to proceed it would have ended up uninstalling my entire KDE install, VPN server and a whole bunch of other stuff. I waited for a day and tried again and the bug that was causing the system to insist on removing KDE during the upgrade was resolved and I was able to upgrade successfully.

I also pipe the output from the apt-get dist-upgrade command to a log file so that I have a log of what was changed and any errors are logged so I can look at it later in case there are issue. The command I use for that is as below:

apt-get dist-upgrade 2>&1 |tee ~suramya/Documents/Suramya/Computer\ Update\ Logs/StarKnight/2022/10032022

I keep all the logs from the upgrades so I can see exactly what was changed on the system and when. Makes it a lot easier to troubleshoot issues caused due to an upgrade.

If you have multiple systems, then I recommend you don’t upgrade all of them at the same time. I stagger them by a day or two so that in case of issues I have a working system. This has saved my sanity a few times.

Well, this is all for now. Do share any tips you might have for avoiding issues during an upgrade.

– Suramya

August 12, 2022

Multiple Linux Live CDs on a single USB Drive

Filed under: Computer Tips,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 6:55 PM

Portable Boot disks are a life saver for a techie and I usually carry one with me most of the time (Its part of my keychain 🙂 ) However, the issue I would face was that I could only carry one live CD at a time on a USB stick and if I wanted another one then I would either have to search for the pendrive where I had already installed it or burn another one to the drive which was annoying, especially when I had to switch between OS’s frequently.

So I started searching for an alternative, something similar to the Ultimate Boot CD that allowed you to have multiple diagnostic tools on a CD but for Live Distros and installation media. Tried a bunch of ways but the easiest way I found was to use Ventoy to create a bootable USB.

You can download Ventoy from their GitHub Releases page, and the installation of the tool is as easy as extracting the file to a folder on your system and then running the correct executable for your system (They have executable’s for all architectures). Once you run the file as root, select the USB disk you want to use and click install. It takes about a minute for the software to install on the drive and once completed, it creates two partitions on the disk. The first partition named VTOYEFI is reserved for the boot files by Ventoy so ensure that you don’t change anything in that partition.

The second partition called Ventoy, is an exFAT partition and this is where we will copy all the ISO files for the distributions we want the disk to support. Installing a new OS/Tool/CD is as simple as copying the ISO file for the CD on to the partition. Once we have copied the files to the partition all you have to do is unmount the partition and your new disk is ready to use.

I installed the Debian Installer, Kali Live CD and Kali Installed on a 8GB drive with no issues. When I boot from the disk, I get a menu asking me to select the ISO I want to boot into and then the system boots into the boot menu for that image. So now I can carry one pen-drive with all the OS’s I would need to troubleshoot a system or reinstall the OS. I think you should be able to boot into windows installer as well using this method but I haven’t tried it yet so can’t confirm for sure.

Well, this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

July 30, 2022

Identifying the least used packages on Debian

My main system was running low on disk space in the root partition and I wanted to clean out some of the unused software from the system. In order to do that I thought that I should find out what the least used applications on my system were and then remove them. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any existing way of doing this so it was a dead end. However, the problem remained stuck in my head and I came up with a quick and dirty way of identifying the packages and when they were last used.

The way it works is:

  • Get a list of all files on the system (using locate, since its already there so why duplicate effort)
  • For each file figure out what package it belongs to using dpkg-query -S
  • If the file belongs to a package, get the last access time (using stat) and log it
  • Once we do this for all files, sort the results.

This gives us a list of packages and the latest access date for each package (based on the latest access date for any of the files in it). Since this is a quick and dirty implementation, it is slow as molasses, doesn’t have any error checking or anything but still gets the job done. Would love to get some feedback. The code is available at: https://github.com/suramyatomar/leastUsedPackage.

The output of the script looks like:

...
...
xz-utils | 2022-07-18
yelp-xsl | 2022-04-05
yelp-xsl | 2022-04-05
youtube-dl | 2022-07-17
zim | 2022-07-17
zip | 2022-07-17
zlib1g-dev | 2022-07-17
zlib1g-dev | 2022-07-17
zlib1g-dev | 2022-07-17
zstd | 2022-07-18

Feel free to try it out if you have a similar usecase. Let me know if you have any suggestions on improving the script or if you found it useful.

– Suramya

July 9, 2022

Some lesser known Useful Linux commands

Filed under: Computer Tips,Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 7:15 AM

In this post I am sharing some useful Linux commands originally posted by Traw on Twitter. As it is almost impossible to find stuff on Twitter (even if you favorite it) I am consolidating the entire thread here as a blog post for my reference:

lsmem:

lsmem lists the ranges of available memory with their online status. The listed memory blocks correspond to the memory block representation in sysfs. The command also shows the memory block size, the device size, and the amount of memory in online and offline state. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lsmem
RANGE                                  SIZE  STATE REMOVABLE  BLOCK
0x0000000000000000-0x00000000cfffffff  3.3G online       yes   0-25
0x0000000100000000-0x000000052fffffff 16.8G online       yes 32-165

Memory block size:       128M
Total online memory:      20G
Total offline memory:      0B

lsusb

lsusb lists all the USB buses in the system and the associated devices connected to them. A good way to figure out what USB devices are connected and what the vendor ID and the product ID associated with them. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lsusb
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 032: ID 03f0:3b17 HP, Inc LaserJet M1005 MFP
Bus 005 Device 029: ID 8564:4000 Transcend Information, Inc. microSD/SD/CF UHS-II Card Reader [RDF8, RDF9]
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0b05:18f3 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. AURA LED Controller
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 8087:0029 Intel Corp. AX200 Bluetooth
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 05e3:0610 Genesys Logic, Inc. Hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 413c:2113 Dell Computer Corp. KB216 Wired Keyboard
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0951:16bc Kingston Technology HyperX Pulsefire FPS Gaming Mouse
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

lsb_release

The lsb_release command displays LSB (Linux Standard Base) information about your specific Linux distribution, including version number, release codename, and distributor ID. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux bookworm/sid
Release:        testing/unstable
Codename:       n/a

lsfd

lsfd is a replacement for lsof and lists the file descriptors On Linux systems, it is tailored to the Linux kernel and supports Linux-specific features such as namespaces etc. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lsfd |more
COMMAND            PID    USER  ASSOC MODE TYPE              SOURCE MNTID      INODE NAME
syncthing         1134 suramya    exe  ---  REG                sda5     0     265927 /usr/bin/syncthing
syncthing         1134 suramya    cwd  ---  DIR                sda5     0          2 /
syncthing         1134 suramya    rtd  ---  DIR                sda5     0          2 /
syncthing         1134 suramya cgroup  ---  REG                 0:4     0 4026531835 cgroup:[4026531835]
syncthing         1134 suramya    ipc  ---  REG                 0:4     0 4026531839 ipc:[4026531839]
syncthing         1134 suramya    mnt  ---  REG                 0:4     0 4026533012 mnt:[4026533012]
syncthing         1134 suramya    net  ---  REG                 0:4     0 4026531840 net:[4026531840]
syncthing         1134 suramya    pid  ---  REG                 0:4     0 4026531836 pid:[4026531836]
syncthing         1134 suramya  pid4c  ---  REG                 0:4     0 4026531836 pid:[4026531836]
syncthing         1134 suramya   time  ---  REG                 0:4     0 4026531834 time:[4026531834]
syncthing         1134 suramya time4c  ---  REG                 0:4     0 4026531834 time:[4026531834]
syncthing         1134 suramya   user  ---  REG                 0:4     0 4026531837 user:[4026531837]
syncthing         1134 suramya    uts  ---  REG                 0:4     0 4026531838 uts:[4026531838]
syncthing         1134 suramya    mem  r-x  REG                sda5     0     265927 /usr/bin/syncthing
syncthing         1134 suramya    mem  r--  REG                sda5     0     265927 /usr/bin/syncthing
syncthing         1134 suramya    mem  rw-  REG                sda5     0     265927 /usr/bin/syncthing

lsof

The command lsof stands for List Of Open Files. This command displays a list of files that have been opened. Essentially, it provides information to determine which files are opened by which process. The output looks like:

root@StarKnight:/tmp# lsof |more
COMMAND      PID    TID TASKCMD               USER   FD      TYPE             DEVICE    SIZE/OFF       NODE NAME
systemd        1                              root  cwd       DIR                8,5        4096          2 /
systemd        1                              root  rtd       DIR                8,5        4096          2 /
systemd        1                              root  txt       REG                8,5     1841792     277271 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5      161864     280226 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgpg-error.so.0.33.0
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5     3081088     264360 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.1.1
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5       26984     273912 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcap-ng.so.0.0.0
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5      633512     270536 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre2-8.so.0.11.0
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5     1321424     264366 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm-2.33.so
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5      158400     279628 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5.2.5
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5      751840     263041 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libzstd.so.1.5.2
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5      137568     269425 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblz4.so.1.9.3
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5       35280     262500 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libip4tc.so.2.0.0
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5     1332480     262198 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcrypt.so.20.4.1
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5       18768     264301 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl-2.33.so
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5      202680     264320 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypt.so.1.1.0
systemd        1                              root  mem       REG                8,5       38864     267169 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcap.so.2.44

lscpu

lscpu gathers CPU architecture information from sysfs, /proc/cpuinfo, and any architecture-specific libraries that are applicable (e.g. librtas on Powerpc). The command output can be optimized for parsing or human readability. This can include the number of CPU’s, threads, cores, etc. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lscpu
Architecture:            x86_64
  CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
  Address sizes:         43 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
  Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                  16
  On-line CPU(s) list:   0-15
Vendor ID:               AuthenticAMD
  Model name:            AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor
    CPU family:          23
    Model:               113
    Thread(s) per core:  2
    Core(s) per socket:  8
    Socket(s):           1
    Stepping:            0
    Frequency boost:     enabled
    CPU(s) scaling MHz:  52%
    CPU max MHz:         4558.8862
    CPU min MHz:         2200.0000
    BogoMIPS:            7786.11
    Flags:               fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc cpuid extd_apicid aperfmperf rapl pni pclmulqdq monitor ssse
                         3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt tce topoext perfctr_core perfctr_nb bpext perfctr_llc mwaitx cpb cat_l3 cdp_l3 hw_p
                         state ssbd mba ibpb stibp vmmcall fsgsbase bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 cqm rdt_a rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb sha_ni xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves cqm_llc cqm_occup_llc cqm_mbm_total cqm_mbm_local clzero irperf xsaveerptr rdpru wbnoinvd arat npt lbr
                         v svm_lock nrip_save tsc_scale vmcb_clean flushbyasid decodeassists pausefilter pfthreshold avic v_vmsave_vmload vgif v_spec_ctrl umip rdpid overflow_recov succor smca sme sev sev_es
Virtualization features: 
  Virtualization:        AMD-V
Caches (sum of all):     
  L1d:                   256 KiB (8 instances)
  L1i:                   256 KiB (8 instances)
  L2:                    4 MiB (8 instances)
  L3:                    32 MiB (2 instances)
NUMA:                    
  NUMA node(s):          1
  NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-15
Vulnerabilities:         
  Itlb multihit:         Not affected
  L1tf:                  Not affected
  Mds:                   Not affected
  Meltdown:              Not affected
  Spec store bypass:     Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Spectre v1:            Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Spectre v2:            Mitigation; Retpolines, IBPB conditional, STIBP conditional, RSB filling
  Srbds:                 Not affected
  Tsx async abort:       Not affected

lslogins

lslogins displays information about known users in the system. It examines the wtmp and btmp logs, /etc/shadow (if necessary) along with /etc/passwd to get the desired data.

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lslogins
  UID USER              PROC PWD-LOCK PWD-DENY  LAST-LOGIN GECOS
    0 root               306                   Apr06/15:36 root

lspci

lspci is a command on Unix-like operating systems that prints detailed information about all PCI buses and devices in the system. It is based on a common portable library libpci which offers access to the PCI configuration space on a variety of operating systems. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse Root Complex
00:00.2 IOMMU: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse IOMMU
00:01.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:01.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse GPP Bridge
00:02.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:03.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:03.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse GPP Bridge
00:04.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
...
0b:00.4 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse HD Audio Controller

lsipc

lsipc shows information on the System V inter-process communication facilities for which the calling process has read access. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lsipc
RESOURCE DESCRIPTION                                              LIMIT USED  USE%
MSGMNI   Number of message queues                                 32000    0 0.00%
MSGMAX   Max size of message (bytes)                                 8K    -     -
MSGMNB   Default max size of queue (bytes)                          16K    -     -
SHMMNI   Shared memory segments                                    4096    4 0.10%
SHMALL   Shared memory pages                       18446744073692774399 1728 0.00%
SHMMAX   Max size of shared memory segment (bytes)                  16E    -     -
SHMMIN   Min size of shared memory segment (bytes)                   1B    -     -
SEMMNI   Number of semaphore identifiers                          32000    0 0.00%
SEMMNS   Total number of semaphores                          1024000000    0 0.00%
SEMMSL   Max semaphores per semaphore set.                        32000    -     -
SEMOPM   Max number of operations per semop(2)                      500    -     -
SEMVMX   Semaphore max value                                      32767    -     -

lslocks

lslocks lists information about all the currently held file locks in a Linux system. It also lists OFD (Open File Description) locks which are not associated with any process (PID is -1). OFD locks are associated with the open file description on which they are acquired. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lslocks |more
COMMAND            PID  TYPE  SIZE MODE  M      START        END PATH
pipewire          1483 FLOCK       WRITE 0          0          0 /run/user/1000/pipewire-0.lock
firefox-bin      18608 POSIX       WRITE 0          0          0 /mnt/data/Configs/.mozilla/firefox/6hzbxva3.default/.parentlock
firefox-bin      18608 POSIX       READ  0          0          0 /tmp/MozillaUpdateLock-CBDE0CC28E6567B7
plasmashell       1742 POSIX   88K READ  0 1073741826 1073742335 /home/suramya/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database
plasmashell       1742 POSIX   32K READ  0        128        128 /home/suramya/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database-shm
systemsettings    2116 POSIX   88K READ  0 1073741826 1073742335 /home/suramya/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database
systemsettings    2116 POSIX   32K READ  0        128        128 /home/suramya/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database-shm
cron               900 FLOCK       WRITE 0          0          0 /run...
kactivitymanage   1754 POSIX   88K READ  0 1073741826 1073742335 /home/suramya/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database
kactivitymanage   1754 POSIX   32K READ  0        128        128 /home/suramya/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database-shm
firefox-bin      18608 POSIX   75M WRITE 0 1073741826 1073742335 /mnt/data/Configs/.mozilla/firefox/6hzbxva3.default/places.sqlite
firefox-bin      18608 POSIX 74.3M WRITE 0 1073741826 1073742335 /mnt/data/Configs/.mozilla/firefox/6hzbxva3.default/favicons.sqlite
kactivitymanage   1754 POSIX   32K READ  0        124        124 /home/suramya/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database-shm

lsmod

lsmod shows the current status of loaded modules in the Linux Kernel. It nicely formats the contents of the /proc/modules , showing what kernel modules are currently loaded. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
loop                   32768  0
dm_crypt               61440  0
dm_mod                172032  1 dm_crypt
mptcp_diag             16384  0
tcp_diag               16384  0
udp_diag               16384  0
raw_diag               16384  0
inet_diag              24576  4 tcp_diag,mptcp_diag,raw_diag,udp_diag
unix_diag              16384  0
af_packet_diag         16384  0
netlink_diag           16384  0
uinput                 20480  0
xfrm_user              49152  2
xfrm_algo              16384  1 xfrm_user
...
...
twofish_generic        20480  0
twofish_avx_x86_64     53248  0
twofish_x86_64_3way    32768  1 twofish_avx_x86_64

lsirq

lsirq is a utility to display kernel interrupt information. The output looks like:

IRQ     TOTAL NAME
LOC 438495596 Local timer interrupts
RES 395250211 Rescheduling interrupts
CAL 244198954 Function call interrupts
TLB  50704087 TLB shootdowns
 43  36669756 IR-PCI-MSI 2621443-edge enp5s0-tx-0
 44  33219249 IR-PCI-MSI 2621444-edge enp5s0-tx-1
 42  29631348 IR-PCI-MSI 2621442-edge enp5s0-rx-1
 41  24214613 IR-PCI-MSI 2621441-edge enp5s0-rx-0
 63   5830480 IR-PCI-MSI 3670016-edge ahci[0000:07:00.0]
 45   4564010 IR-PCI-MSI 3147776-edge xhci_hcd
105   4129317 IR-PCI-MSI 4718592-edge nvidia
 64   3354988 IR-PCI-MSI 4194304-edge ahci0
 69   1788338 IR-PCI-MSI 4194309-edge ahci5
 65    157846 IR-PCI-MSI 4194305-edge ahci1
104     27444 IR-PCI-MSI 5775360-edge snd_hda_intel:card1
..
..

lsns

The lsns command lists information about all currently accessible namespaces or a given namespace. The namespace identifier is an inode number. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lsns
        NS TYPE   NPROCS    PID USER    COMMAND
4026531834 time       87   1134 suramya /usr/bin/syncthing serve --no-browser --no-restart --logflags=0
4026531835 cgroup     87   1134 suramya /usr/bin/syncthing serve --no-browser --no-restart --logflags=0
4026531836 pid        87   1134 suramya /usr/bin/syncthing serve --no-browser --no-restart --logflags=0
4026531837 user       75   1134 suramya /usr/bin/syncthing serve --no-browser --no-restart --logflags=0
4026531838 uts        87   1134 suramya /usr/bin/syncthing serve --no-browser --no-restart --logflags=0
4026531839 ipc        76   1134 suramya /usr/bin/syncthing serve --no-browser --no-restart --logflags=0
4026531840 net        76   1134 suramya /usr/bin/syncthing serve --no-browser --no-restart --logflags=0
4026531841 mnt        85   1454 suramya /lib/systemd/systemd --user
4026532954 user        1 267290 suramya /usr/local/firefox/firefox-bin -contentproc -parentBuildID 20220705093820 -prefsLen 44808 -prefMapSize 237085 -appDir /usr/local/firefox/browser 267229 true socket
4026532955 ipc         1 267290 suramya /usr/local/firefox/firefox-bin -contentproc -parentBuildID 20220705093820 -prefsLen 44808 -prefMapSize 237085 -appDir /usr/local/firefox/browser 267229 true socket
...
...

lsattr

lsattr lists the file attributes on a second extended file system. The chattr command modifies the attributes of files, and lsattr lists (displays) them. File attributes are flags which affect how the file is stored and accessed by the filesystem. They are metadata stored in the file’s associated inode. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lsattr
--------------e------- ./node_modules
--------------e------- ./Temp
--------------e------- ./Screenshot_20220704_122444.png
--------------e------- ./go
--------------e------- ./LinkedIn

lsblk

lsblk is used to display details about block devices and these block devices(Except ram disk) are basically those files that represent devices connected to the pc. It queries /sys virtual file system and udev db to obtain information that it displays. And it basically displays output in a tree-like structure. This command comes pre-installed with the util-Linux package. The output looks like:

suramya@StarKnight:~$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda      8:0    0 111.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   3.7G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda2   8:2    0     1K  0 part 
├─sda5   8:5    0  18.6G  0 part /
└─sda6   8:6    0  89.4G  0 part /mnt/data
sdb      8:16   0   2.7T  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   0   2.7T  0 part /mnt/Backup
sdc      8:32   0 223.6G  0 disk 
└─sdc1   8:33   0 223.6G  0 part /mnt/storage
sdd      8:48   0  12.7T  0 disk 
└─sdd1   8:49   0  12.7T  0 part /mnt/repository

There are a lot more useful Linux commands and no blog post can possibily list all of them. But some of these were new to me so I thought I should share.

– Suramya

January 21, 2022

nerd-dictation: A fantastic Open Source speech to text software for Linux

After a long time of searching I finally found a speech to text software for Linux that actually works well enough that I can use it for dictating without having to jump through too many hoops to configure and use. The software is called nerd-dictation and is an open source software. It is fairly easy to setup as compared to the other voice-to-text systems that are available but still not at a stage where a non-tech savvy person would be able to install it easily. (There is effort ongoing to fix that)

The steps to install are fairly simple and documented below for reference:

  • pip3 install vosk
  • git clone https://github.com/ideasman42/nerd-dictation.git
  • cd nerd-dictation
  • wget https://alphacephei.com/kaldi/models/vosk-model-small-en-us-0.15.zip
  • unzip vosk-model-small-en-us-0.15.zip
  • mv vosk-model-small-en-us-0.15 model

nerd-dictation allows you to dictate text into any software or editor which is open so I can dictate into a word document or a blog post or even the command prompt. Previously I have used tried using software like otter.ai which actually works quite well but doesn’t allow you to edit the text as you’re typing, so you basically dictate the whole thing and the system gives you the transcription after you are done. So, you have to go back and edit/correct the transcript which can be a pain for long dictations. This software works more like Microsoft dictate which is built into Word. Unfortunately my word install on Linux using Crossover doesn’t allow me to use the built in dictate function and I have no desire to boot into windows just so that I can dictate a document.

This downloads the software in the current directory. I set it up on /usr/local but it is up to you where you want it. In addition, I would recommend that you install one of the larger dictionaries/models which makes the voice recognition a lot more accurate. However, do keep in mind that the larger models use up a lot more memory so you need to ensure that your computer has enough memory to support the larger models. The smaller ones can run on systems as small as a raspberry pi, so depending on your system configuration you can choose. The models are available here.

The software does have some quirks, like when you are talking and you pause it will take it as a start of a new sentence and for some reason it doesn’t put a space after the last word. So unless you’re careful you need to go back and add spaces to all the sentences that you have dictated, which can get annoying. (I started manually pressing space everytime I paused to add the space). Another issue is that it doesn’t automatically capitalize the words when you dictate such as those at the beginning of the sentence or the word ‘I’. This requires you to go back and edit, but that being said it still works a lot better than the other software that I have used so far on Linux. For Windows system Dragon Voice Dictation works quite well but is expensive. I tested it out by typing out this post using it and for the most part it does work it worked quite well.

Running the software again requires you to run commands on the commandline, but I configured shortcut keys to start and stop the dictation which makes it very convenient to use. Instructions on how to configure custom shortcut keys are available here. If you don’t want to do that, then you can start the transcription by issuing the following command (assuming the software is installed in /usr/local/nerd-dictation):

/usr/local/nerd-dictation/nerd-dictation begin --vosk-model-dir=/usr/local/nerd-dictation/model  --continuous

This starts the software and tells it that we are going to dictate for a long time. More details on the options available are available on the project site. To stop the software you should run the following command:

/usr/local/nerd-dictation/nerd-dictation end

I suggest you try this if you are looking for a speech-to-text software for Linux. Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

Thanks to Hacker News: Nerd-dictation, hackable speech to text on Linux for the link.

– Suramya

June 11, 2021

Dangers of online ‘free’ html editing services: Your site is now part of SEO scam for shady services

Filed under: Computer Tips,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 10:52 PM

There are a lot of free services available online for various tasks that historically required you to download and install software. For example, if you want to convert a .doc file to pdf or if you wanted to edit your image or even clean up / optimize your HTML files, you can use online free services for it. As with anything you need to take a look at who is running the site before you decide to upload your personal data to it. In addition it might be a good idea to take a look at the privacy policy & data retention policy of any such sites before you use them. If a site doesn’t have a privacy policy/data retention policy and wants you to upload your private data/files to it then it is a red flag.

Most recent case of such a misuse came into my notice a few days ago, where a few of the highly-ranked online tools for editing / cleaning your html code were secretly injecting scam/spam links into the code being edited to push themselves and their affiliated sites up the search engine rankings. SEO or Search Engine Optimization gives extra weight to sites that are linked to from other legitimate sites and when a html cleaner program adds links to their solutions into each site/page that they are editing they get a leg up on every other product because their have a lot more weighted links than their competition. (Links to the site are not the only thing SEO use to raise their profile but SEO optimization is a huge topic that I won’t be covering here in this post).

Caspar over at casparwre.de found this out while trying to figure out why he couldn’t be the top result for ‘online scoreboard’ on Google. You can check out the full write up here

For instance, I saw a blog post from the German Football Association containing a link to Scorecounter. The word that was linked was “score” – yet having a link here made absolutely no sense in the context of the article. What was going on? 🤔

Here are some more examples of links I found on random domains (you need to search for “score” on the page).

Macworld Shop
NBC Washington
RICE University (The link has now been removed)
Intuit Quickbooks (The link has now been removed)


So that was the secret: the creators of Scorecounter also made an online HTML editor which injects links for certain keywords. The beauty of this scam is that by injecting links to their own HTML editor, they have created a brilliant positive feedback loop: the higher the editor rises in the search rankings, the more people use it and the more secret links they can inject.

In one way this is a fantastic (if shady) way to ensure that your product is at the top of any search for a given text/question. But usually it is only a matter of time before people figure it out and then you loose a lot of goodwill and get a reputation for shady practices. How many people will continue to use their product if they knew that their site will be used to hawk products that they personally have not selected/validated?

I took a look at the privacy policy and the general website over at: html-cleaner.com and they don’t have any note letting people know that the site introduces links to it’s own services and other sites into your text. This is shady behavior. Some of the reputable sites that I have seen in the past, let you know that they will be adding a subtext or a note at the bottom of the page being edited stating that it was created using xyz service. Adding the links into the text of the site makes it seem that the owner of the site is endorsing the service, which obviously isn’t the case here.

To close the post, I just want to say you need to be careful where you upload data or what program you are using to edit/create things because if it is created by people with bad ethics they can and often do steal your private data or modify your data or use it for purposes other than what you intended when uploading it.

– Suramya

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