Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

August 16, 2022

Debian: My Favorite Linux Distro turns 29!

Filed under: Linux/Unix Related,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 9:23 PM

Debian, one of the most popular Linux Distributions that has served as the base for over 100 derivative distributions (See here for the partial list) is celebrating it’s 29th Birthday! I have been using it since 2003, so it’s been 19 years since I started using it and I have to say the OS has been improving constantly over the years while keeping the core values/stability.

I have tried other distro’s in the middle: Ubuntu, Mint, Knoppix but keep coming back to Debian because of the stability and functionality. I do use Kali as the primary OS on my laptop as I use that for my security research/testing but all other systems run Debian. I even managed to get it to work on my Tablet. 🙂

One note of caution/advice is to always look at the packages being changed/removed when you are upgrading esp if you are on the Unstable branch as things can break in that branch. Usually if I see that packages are being removed that I want to keep I just have to wait for a few days and the issue gets resolved. It is not the best distribution if you are looking for ‘newbie friendly’ but is one that will let you learn Linux the fastest. (Linux from Scratch will get you to learn more about Linux internals than you ever wanted if you can manage to get it to work and have the time required to install/configure it. For me the effort spent for the gain wasn’t worth it, but your mileage may vary.

In any case, I think I will be sticking with Debian for the foreseeable future. Here’s to another 30 years!

– 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

Filed under: Computer Software,Computer Tips,Linux/Unix Related,Software Releases — Suramya @ 4:14 AM

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

June 26, 2022

Learning Bash by playing bashcrawl

Filed under: Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 9:19 PM

If you have been wanting to learn how to use a Linux/Unix commandline but find most of the tutorials too boring and dry, then I suggest you check out bashcrawl. It is a D&D type text based adventure that is actually quite fun to play. If you just want to try it out and don’t mind losing your progress then you can play it online by visiting here. Once you click Wait a few seconds to a minute until the launcher appears and then click on the Terminal icon to start.

It is pitch black in these catacombs.
You have a magickal spell that lists all items in a room.
To see in the dark, type: ls
To move around, type: cd
Try looking around this room.
Then move into one of the next rooms.

EXAMPLE:

$ ls
$ cd cellar

Remember to cast “ls“ when you get into the next room!

Thanks to Hack a Day for the link.

– Suramya

April 28, 2022

Microsoft finds a Linux flaw that grants root access to untrusted users

Filed under: Computer Security,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:30 AM

Now that is not a heading I thought I would ever write… I mean 20 years ago imagining that Microsoft would be working with Linux to the point where it would find and report a bug in Linux was unimaginable. For the longest time MS considered Linux to be a massive danger to it’s operations which is why former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously branded Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches” back in 2001. However that has now changed and Windows now has a Windows Subsystem for Linux (wsl) that allows users to run Linux programs from within Windows seamlessly.

This particular flaw which is tracked as CVE-2022-29799 and CVE-2022-29800 combine threats including directory traversal, symlink race, and time-of-check time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition to gain root access. It was found when a Microsoft researcher Jonathan Bar Or was examining the code for a component known as “_run_hooks_for_state”. The flow to exploit would look something like the following (Thanks ARS Technica for the walkthrough):

Prepare a directory ”/tmp/nimbuspwn” and plant a symlink ”/tmp/nimbuspwn/poc.d“ to point to “/sbin”. The “/sbin” directory was chosen specifically because it has many executables owned by root that do not block if run without additional arguments. This will abuse the symlink race issue we mentioned earlier.
For every executable filename under “/sbin” owned by root, plant the same filename under “/tmp/nimbuspwn”. For example, if “/sbin/vgs” is executable and owned by root, plant an executable file “/tmp/nimbuspwn/vgs” with the desired payload. This will help the attacker win the race condition imposed by the TOCTOU vulnerability.
Send a signal with the OperationalState “../../../tmp/nimbuspwn/poc”. This abuses the directory traversal vulnerability and escapes the script directory.
The networkd-dispatcher signal handler kicks in and builds the script list from the directory “/etc/networkd-dispatcher/../../../tmp/nimbuspwn/poc.d”, which is really the symlink (“/tmp/nimbuspwn/poc.d”), which points to “/sbin”. Therefore, it creates a list composed of many executables owned by root.
Quickly change the symlink “/tmp/nimbuspwn/poc.d” to point to “/tmp/nimbuspwn”. This abuses the TOCTOU race condition vulnerability—the script path changes without networkd-dispatcher being aware.
The dispatcher starts running files that were initially under “/sbin” but in truth under the “/tmp/nimbuspwn” directory. Since the dispatcher “believes” those files are owned by root, it executes them blindly with subprocess.Popen as root. Therefore, our attacker has successfully exploited the vulnerability.

The vulnerability has been patched in the networkd-dispatcher and users running vulnerable systems should patch immediately.

Source: Microsoft finds Linux desktop flaw that gives root to untrusted users

– Suramya

April 18, 2022

Oracle releases a ‘free’ version of Oracle Solaris 11.4 for opensource developers and non-production personal use

Filed under: Linux/Unix Related,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 2:59 AM

Last month Oracle released a ‘free’ version of Oracle Solaris 11.4 for opensource developers and non-production personal use. The key point to note is that this doesn’t mean that there is a free/opensource version of the OS now available because unlike the Open Solaris project (that was released in 2008 but was discontinued) this build is a similar to a beta release and contains pre-release builds of a particular SRU (which I think means a release version). To me it sounds like they want the opensource community to perform free testing for their releases while getting some positive publicity.

I don’t think I will be trying it out because I don’t really trust Oracle. They are notorious for their bad takes and really aggressive enforcement of their IP rights. Plus their history with opensource projects has been bumpy and you never know when they will change their mind and go in a different direction.

My first experience with Unix/Linux was SunOS 4.1 followed by Solaris 5. I even had a Sparc machine at one point but it got lost during one of the many moves I made over the years. I loved the OS and since I couldn’t run it on my machines I started using Linux which was a great alternative. When OpenSolaris was released I received installation CDs to try it out, unfortunately life got in the way and I never really tested it out (other than the initial install). It was disappointing when the project went defunct & shutdown. I took a look at the OpenSolaris Wikipage and it looks like none of the derivative projects that were supposed to take over really went anywhere. So that sucks.

I don’t think that Unix does anything that Linux can’t do and even then if you want to run Unix on your machines I would recommend you go for FreeBSD instead of this ‘free’ version.

Thanks to HackaDay: Solaris Might Be Free If You Want It for the initial link.

– Suramya

April 16, 2022

Debian Project leader talks about How Debian is doing on the mailing list

Filed under: Linux/Unix Related — Suramya @ 5:28 AM

I use Debian as my primary OS and have been doing so since 2002 onwards. I switched from Redhat to Debian because RH8 was an attempt to make the OS easier for new users which meant that a lot of functionality was no longer exposed to the user without having to jump through hoops and I just didn’t like the new look and feel anymore. After looking at the available options I switched to Debian 3.0 that had released earlier that year. It worked great for the most part for me and I have been using it since. I did explore Mint and Ubuntu for a bit in the middle but have mostly been using Debian for my home systems. (Work wise most companies I have been with have been on RHEL, CentOS and Fedora).

After running for such a long time and with the constant changes over the past few years, it is obvious to wonder how the Debian project is doing and recently Jonathan Carter who is the current Debian Project Leader sent an email giving a high level overview of the current status, what went well, the current challenges and future scope. It is an interesting read and you should check it out here: Question to all candidates: how is Debian doing?.

Some of the points I found interesting are listed below:

  • The project has managed to release every 2 years since 2005
  • The finances are also really good, with over $1m in available funds
  • Debian gained secureboot support
  • The debian.social project
  • Consumer computing products are going to continue being more locked down and this is causing problems with the installers

There are more points but as Jonathan put it “I think Debian is doing ok. It’s not doing great, but it is ok. “. For me it works as I want it & how I want it so I am happy with it and it is good to know that the project is stable and will continue to be around for a while.

– Suramya

April 12, 2022

How not to ask for help on Online Forums

Filed under: Linux/Unix Related,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 1:12 AM

It is quite normal to be stuck while exploring a new operating system, or a new programming language or anything new to be honest and one of the great advantages we have now is the ability to go online & search for answers on the Internet and if you are unable to find a fix then you can request for help on forums. There are forums specific to all sorts of niche areas and some of them are quite active. I doubt that it will be a surprise to many that I am part of multiple Linux Forums and in this post I am going to talk about a specific post on one of them that is a masterclass on how not to ask questions/how not to ask for help/how to ensure your questions are never answered.

Let’s start with the post, then we can dig into each line of this gem (The first line is the subject of the post and the rest are the contents). 

Linux is bad
Dear Linux users,

Here is the top 3 reasons, I think Linux is bad:
1- Hard.
2- NVIDIA drivers.
3- I don't know how to write shell scripts.

My friend told me that I don't need to, the community is very helpful.
So I thought I should test them and see if they can help me finish my simple shell homework.

Sorry for the bait. I will switch to Linux if I get help, but you probably don't care.
Hopefully there is a weirdo who will think this is fun.

I have a hard time believing this is not some troll posting crap just to get a rise out of people but if that is not the case then this goes out of it’s way to ensure people react badly to the request, so without further ado lets dig in. 

Here is the top 3 reasons, I think Linux is bad:
1- Hard.
2- NVIDIA drivers.
3- I don't know how to write shell scripts.

Ok, not a great start. You are posting on a linux forum stating that it is bad because you find it hard, and don’t know how to write shell scripts. (I will partially give them the point about NVIDIA drivers because historically they have been a pain.) How is it Linux’s fault that you don’t know how to write shell scripts? Did you honestly believe that the creator of the OS should have come to your house to teach you shell scripting so that you don’t find it ‘hard’? There are multiple resources online that teach shell scripting, including some great courses on Udemy, YouTube, Coursera etc etc. All you have to do is be willing to put in the effort.

To the other point about Linux being hard, it is not. It is different than Windows and does things differently, that doesn’t make it hard. It’s just what you are used to, I use Linux for my primary OS and when I have to troubleshoot my wife’s Windows 11 laptop there is usually a lot of cursing involved. When I started with Linux it was the other way round, for the longest time I kept trying to do things the ‘Windows way’ and it didn’t always work. However, once you take time and explore the system the flexibility it gives you is fantastic. Don’t like the Desktop UI, change to a different one, don’t like the file manager, use a different one etc etc.

My friend told me that I don't need to, the community is very helpful.
So I thought I should test them and see if they can help me finish my simple shell homework.

Umm, who do you think you are that you need to test the community. Plus ‘testing’ by having them do your homework is not testing. This is called negging, where you give backhanded compliments and generally making comments that express indifference toward another person (in this case an Operating System) in an attempt to get them to go out of their way to impress you/do things for you. It is a tactic used by pickup artists to get women by putting them down so that they would go out with them/sleep with them to gain their approval. Sorry, that only works with emotionally distressed folks and not folks on a technical forum. We have no need to gain your approval.

Someone on the forum had the perfect answer for this: “The community is helpful, but you seem to have put more effort into trying to get someone else to do your homework for you, than into actually doing it yourself. We aren’t going to do your homework for you (and if you bothered to check the LQ Rules and “Question Guidelines” you’d see that), but we will help you if you’re stuck. “

Sorry for the bait. I will switch to Linux if I get help, but you probably don't care.

Yes we don’t care and why should we care that you swtich to Linux? Do you think you are someone important? This person needs to realize that they are not the center of the universe and that it is irrelevant to others if they decide to switch to Linux or not. Honestly speaking I don’t care if you use Linux or not. Linux users (for the most part) are no longer the anti-Microsoft zealots who will try to force you to use Linux. In my opinion you should use it if you like it, if you feel Windows or Mac works better for you, use that. 

Hopefully there is a weirdo who will think this is fun.

What a way to encourage people to help you! As calling people names is sure to make them want to help you… Right? No? How is that possible??? I thought I was the center of the universe and all the lesser people would fall over themselves to help me as they should feel honored that I am allowing them to help me.

Nope, it doesn’t work that way. It only works like that in movies (and maybe in some of the schools/colleges) where the Jocks/popular kids are treated like divine beings and others fall over themselves to help them so that they can bask in the glory of having interacted with the cool kids. Real life doesn’t work like that and most places you will be laughed out if you try to do this nonsense at work.

If you want help it helps to be humble, talk about what you have already tried, what specific portion is giving you problems and stow the attitude.

Interestingly enough people on the forum still gave hints on how they could approach the problem and pointed them to resources that can help if they put in the effort.

What do you think? Is it ok to post for help like this? Would you answer this person if you came across the post?

Original forum post in all it’s glory: linux is bad for reference.

– Suramya

January 21, 2022

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

Filed under: Computer Software,Computer Tips,Linux/Unix Related,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 9:17 AM

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

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