Author: Miguel

I’m a bilingual Network Engineer. I have over 20 Years of Professional experience in Computer Science & Information Technology. I currently own and operate Web Semantics (www.websemantics.com) in Vancouver, Washington. I provide bilingual (English & Spanish) enterprise-level IT support to small and medium-sized businesses across the West Coast. *** Soy un ingeniero de redes bilingüe. Tengo más de 20 años de experiencia profesional en ciencias de la computación y tecnología de la información. Actualmente poseo y opero Web Semantics (www.websemantics.com) en Vancouver, Washington. Proporciono soporte de IT/Informática bilingüe (inglés y español) a nivel empresarial a pequeñas y medianas empresas en toda la costa oeste.

Install Syncthing on Debian 11 or Proxmox LXC container

Syncthing on the Debian 11

If you’re on this page I am going to assume you already know what Syncthing is.

This same setup should work on any of the latest Debian-flavor distros, no need to include additional Apt sources or GPG keys, Syncthing has been included in the Debian 11 apt repository as of 2/22/23.

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y
apt-get install apt-transport-https -y

then

apt-get install syncthing -y

to make sure it has been installed…

syncthing --version

you should get something similar to:

syncthing v1.12.1-ds1 "Fermium Flea" (go1.15.9 linux-amd64) debian@debian 2021-07-23 20:27:51 UTC

This confirms that it is indeed installed.

Now we need to create a service file for systemd to start our Syncthing automatically as a system service. This configuration will allow you to access your Sycthing dashboard from any computer on your local network. YOU WILL STILL NEED TO ADD CREDENTIALS TO YOUR SYNCTHING GUI.

You can use vim or nano as your editor of choice.

nano /etc/systemd/system/syncthing@.service

Add the following lines to your syncthing@.service service file. The service file makes your Syncthing install accessible over the local network by default. By default, Syncthing uses port 8384, feel free to change it to your liking.

[Unit]
Description=Syncthing - BAMF Open Source File Synchronization for %I
Documentation=man:syncthing(1)
After=network.target

[Service]
User=%i
ExecStart=/usr/bin/syncthing -no-browser -gui-address="0.0.0.0:8384" -no-restart -logflags=0
Restart=on-failure
SuccessExitStatus=3 4
RestartForceExitStatus=3 4

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save and close the file when you are finished. Then, reload the systemd daemon to apply the changes.

systemctl daemon-reload

Next, start the Syncthing service with the following command:

systemctl start syncthing@root

To access the server over your network you can simply get your local network address using

ip r

You should get a response like, the last value is your local network address:

default via 192.168.1.1 dev eth0
192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.10

We access our Syncthing dashboard by opening our browser of choice and entering http://192.168.1.10:8384 , note that, by default, Syncthing runs on port 8384. Depending on your application, if you’re server is a firewall running on it, you will need to update your settings to allow traffic on those ports or whatever ports you decide to use later.

Once logged into your dashboard you will want to update your GUI access settings. After securing your Syncthing dashboard you can then further customize your settings to your preferences.

Mounting A Windows Shared Folder/Drive For Syncthing Storage

If you have a NAS and want to mount a Windows shared drive as a storage option for Syncthing:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y
apt-get install cifs-utils -y

Assuming you already have a Shared Windows Folder/Drive setup, we create a folder in our standard mnt directory:

mkdir /mnt/Syncthing

To test our connection, we mount our Windows Share drive:

mount -t cifs -o username=windowsUsername,password=windowPassword //COMPUTER_IP/SharedFolderName /mnt/Syncthing

If successful you can see your mounted folder’s content via /mnt/Syncthing

Due to the nature of Linux, this drive mount will not persist after reboot . In order to add persistence to the mount you will need to do some additional configuration to fstab.

Before we add details to our fstab, let’s create a file to store our Windows share credentials, storing in the root folder will also protect from other possible non-root users accessing the file. You can change this folder to whatever you like just keep in mind that if you have multiple users and don’t want them to see the contents of the file you will need to add additional permissions to the credentials file.

Create the local credentials file like this:

vim /root/windows_credentials

We then enter the corresponding details, don’t be a noob and actually enter windowsUsername and windowsPassword, enter your actual share details…

username=windowsUsername
password=windowsPassword

Save the file.

Now we edit our fstab

vim /etc/fstab

We add the following line:

//COMPUTER_IP/SharedFolderName  /mnt/Syncthing  cifs  credentials=/root/windows_credentials,file_mode=0755,dir_mode=0755 0       0

Save the file.

Mount the share:

mount /mnt/Syncthing

Tired of the mounted folder? Simply unmount it like this:

unmount /mnt/Syncthing

If you do unmount, don’t forget to remove the line from your fstab.

General note: when mounting folders, always mount to a new folder, don’t try to mount to an existing folder or you’re going to have fun figuring out what happened to the files you had in it…

Installing MariaDB + PHPMyAdmin on Debian 11/Debian 11 Proxmox LXC Container

Installing MariaDB 10.5

apt update; apt upgrade -y
apt -y install curl software-properties-common gnupg2

then

curl -LsS -O https://downloads.mariadb.com/MariaDB/mariadb_repo_setup
bash mariadb_repo_setup --mariadb-server-version=10.5

then

apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client -y

then

mariadb-secure-installation

when prompted…

Switch to unix_socket authentication [Y/n]    (Answer: n)
Change the root password? [Y/n]               (Answer: n)
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]                 (Answer: y)
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]           (Answer: n)
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]  (Answer: y)
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]            (Answer: y)

Install Apache2

apt install apache2 -y

Install PHP

We are using this server strictly for MariaDB, to make things simple, we can install our OS’s native PHP version, in Debian 11’s case that would be PHP 7.4. If needed PHP8 will also work.

apt install php php-common php-mysql php-gd php-cli -y
service apache2 restart

Install PHPMyAdmin

apt install phpmyadmin -y

log into MariaDB and create our Database Administrative user.

mysql -u root -p

once you’ve logged in, we create our new Administrative user via MySQL/MariaDB cli, take note of the bold words, don’t forget to use unique values if copy and pasting.

CREATE USER Administrator@localhost IDENTIFIED BY "mysecretpassword";
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO Administrator@localhost WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

exit

once outside MariaDB’s cli and back into Debian’s terminal

service mysql restart

Install Vim (text editor)

apt install vim -y

Adding SSL/HTTPS Support to Apache/PHPMyAdmin

a2enmod ssl
a2enmod rewrite

Prepare our apache folder for SSL cert storage

mkdir /etc/apache2/certs/ssl

then

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/apache2/certs/ssl/ssl.key -out /etc/apache2/certs/ssl/ssl.crt

once completed with cert detail prompts you will want to edit apache’s defaut site config

vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

Add the following three lines of code before the </VirtualHost> closing tag.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]

Finally we enable our ssl configuration and restart our apache services

a2ensite default-ssl.conf && systemctl restart apache2

to get your local server IP address, inside terminal use the following

ip addr

once you have your server’s local network address you should be able to access it from any computer on the same subnet using putty.

For this example, the server sits on the same local network. If you wanted to host the server remotely and access phpmyadmin you would likely use certbot to autogenerate validated ssl certs.

Fake Online Pet Store Scams Are On The Rise

Anyone considering buying a pet via a website should be wary of making any payments until you have done aggressive research on the facility/kennel!

Over the past year, and due to covid lockdowns, there has been an increase in websites selling pets. In some cases, these sites are entirely fake. This type of scam is particularly crueler, much like the popular scams targeting the less tech-savvy using fake refund/bank/amazon login sites.

The scam goes a little like this:

Attackers setup a fake website, usually using something like WordPress.
Attackers then go to various websites and steal images of real dogs belonging to other kennels/sellers.
Attackers then set up a fake marketplace utilizing the stolen content.
Attackers then optimize their websites to rank higher then real kennels.

Due to the nature of how idiotic SEO algorithms are, buyers are funneled in directly to the fake site via search engines. Once on the site, the attackers use multiple metrics to optimize their profiles and ultimately scam their targets.

How To Avoid Being Scammed By Fake Pet Store Sites

Do Your Research, Call, Visit (if you can), ask for a Zoom, Skype, Duo, or Facetime video call.
If You are paying a premium price for a high-end breed, Look up the kennel club’s information, the American Kennel Club Is a first good step.
Take the profile picture of the site’s pet profile and do a quick Google Image Search, make sure it’s not a stock photo or a stolen image from another site.
Watch out for foreign accents.
Ask for a license, visit their state’s or local municipality’s website and verify their license. You should be able to call a customer service line as well.
Don’t use giftcards, cryptocurrency, zell, cash, check. Use PayPal or a Credit Card which offers better protection from such scams.

As a previous pet owner, I know how falling for a scam like this can upset anyone. Hopefully, these quick tips will have helped someone trying to get a pet do it a bit more safely and, most importantly, not fall for a potential scam.

When your new pet gets home, don’t forget to buy them lots of treats!

The Inherit Dangers Of Nextdoor And How It’s Really Facebook 2.0

Like any other person, at first, I was intrigued by the idea of getting to know your neighbor. So I decided to sign up and check out the site nextdoor.com. After a few minutes, I noticed a similar pattern, and no, it was not the complete ripoff of Facebook’s wall design (American “innovation” nowadays). It Was happening everywhere, people ranting, complaining, whining, everyone’s an “expert,” you know, the same mental disease that is rampant across all self-proclaimed “social” networks. This problem got worse during the holidays, the hyper-feminine neighborhood soyboys felt entitled to their ways, and every neighbor had to comply.

During my testing, I began to post random rants and content to test out and study their algorithms’ flagging and censorship mechanics, which ended up basic, mob, or moderator rule. At some point, an appointed neighborhood “Lead” or snitch was introduced as a tertiary mechanism. As time progressed, the site became a mouthpiece for local governments, mandated posts you can’t comment on, flag, or remove. A Flood of COVID ads everywhere primarily sponsored the local municipalities and shoved down your throat with no way to opt-out. If you asked the wrong questions about COVID or any “sensitive” subject for that matter, you would get a canned notice the next time you log in. The warning was generalized or vague, only highlighting misinformation. If you’d continue, you could safely assume your account would be suspended indefinitely to protect the idiocracy. For me, this was a huge red flag, especially when recognizing the same evolving pattern from Facebook, pretending to be a place for people to meet and have discourse. At the same time, a single narrative is being propagated and used to manipulate behavior, all thanks to their centralized ivory tower.

After a month of being active on the platform, I concluded that Nextdoor is again for the self-absorbed sheep that didn’t learn from Facebook and probably never will. Plain and simple, the platform presents a clear and present danger to any country that uses it. Why would I say that? Because they mimic Facebook in every way, except their local content/data is more accurate. Nextdoor is also much better at staying under the radar while being more aggressive; they have quietly mapped out all US communities or countries with access. They then give or sell unknown access to the highest bidder, which could then monitor the local community’s opinions, sentiment, dissent. They can use various datasets from others users to create algorithms to find patterns within their ecosystem. That data can then be weaponized to identify a specific category, people, targets, or forecast behavior. As with Facebook, the possibilities are endless.

Before deactivating my test account, I requested a copy of my user dataset. After a few minutes, I had a nice zip file with my partial history in various .csv files:

Comments
Days Active
Devices
Email Notification Preferences
Invitations Sent
Posts
Private Messages
Profile Information
Push Notification Preferences
Reactions
Recommendations
Seasonal Activities
Targets Ads
Topics
Verification Information

When I had the chance, I did not use their app as the permissions it was asking for were ridiculous and out of context of what would be necessary to interact with the platform. In other words, it was invasive privacy-wise. If I had used their app, I would probably have another file called Tracking with a log of geolocations pings, unless, of course, that is part of what you don’t get to see. For your safety, of course…

The Danger Of A Malicious User Or State-Actor

During my time testing the platform with a fake account, I built a simple python script that would scrape the entire neighborhood. After only a few hours, I was able to :

Identify and Categorize Neighbors based on Race
Identify Neighbors with Metal Disease/Issues
Identify and Categorize Complainers
Identify Trolls
Identify Violent Neighbors
Areas with most crime
Veterans

With more time, and a little ML, the possibilities would have been endless. Map, identify, correlate, you name it. My advice is to stay off any social network that is not decentralized, period, or be ready to have your profile open-sourced to the highest bidder.

Install Redis NoSQL/Object Cache on Ubuntu Server 18 & 20 LTS

This post is a quick post to serve as a note. Don’t expect long redundant explanations of Redis, NoSQL, Object Caching, or deployment suggestions. I would suggest a visit to their site for more detailed information. For this scenario, we are simply installing Redis on the same local machine as Apache; the following settings should be secure as long as Redis is bound to the localhost. For dedicated setups, you will require some additional configuration in the form of authentication, interface bindings, firewall permissions, and more aggressive hardware specs, specifically RAM. If you encounter any issues, feel free to leave a comment below.

*** Note: No, Redis does not automagically take a PHP application and auto-populate it with objects From a MySQL database. This optimization is done through application logic, in other words, Redis can only be taken advantage of if an application has built-in support for it. This support varies from application to application; from a typical LAMP stack, an application can leverage Redis’s in-memory database to offload or mitigate common queries/datasets from your traditional RDBMS. PHP has a Redis module like MySQL’s PDO module, which has a built-in class that can safely interact with Redis. You can learn more about it using Redis in your PHP app here.***

Step 1: Bash Into root User

sudo bash ("sudo -su" if you prefer)

Enter your password to enter the root superuser account.

Step 2: Preparation

As root enter

apt-get update -y && apt-get upgrade -y && apt-get dist-upgrade -y && apt-get autoremove -y && apt-get autoclean -y

Step 3: Installing Redis

apt-get install redis-server -y

Once the command completes its cycle, proceed to edit redis.conf

vim /etc/redis/redis.conf

Assuming your configuration is clean, you will need to edit the following lines:

#Line 147: change default to: 
supervised systemd

#Line 559: change default to: 
maxmemory 128mb

#Line 590: change default to: 
maxmemory-policy allkeys-lru

Step 4: Testing The Install

To test the Redis install log into Redis’s command-line interface, enter the following command in your terminal window:

redis-cli

To check if you have any data/keys set:

keys *

The last command should have returned 0 or nothing. So let’s make sure Redis can record data, still inside your Redis CLI, enter the following command:

SET dude "BRO"

Let’s query Redis for our stored keypair, inside Redis CLI:

GET dude

You should have gotten a response of “BRO”, if not, 50 pushups noob. You can find a list of all the commands for Redis here.

Step S: Disable Transparent Huge Pages

Transparent Huge Pages support is enabled by default in Ubuntu. Like some database environments, it is recommended to disable THP where Redis is installed.

Inside the terminal run the following command:

echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled

add the same command to a new line inside /etc/rc.local

vim /etc/rc.local

Save and reboot.

shutdown -r now (only cool kids use "reboot")

Step 5 (Optional): Install PHP Module

Redis (Native PHP)

apt-get install php-redis

Redis (PHP8)

apt-get install php8.0-redis

Questions, comments, memes, below.

Install PiHole With SSL On Apache Running Ubuntu Server 20 LTS

This is another quick post to serve as a general note. This post will cover the install of PiHole with SSL on Apache. The guide should work for most Debian-based Linux distributions. We are running PHP7.4 as it’s native to the OS and does not require any PPA addons. You can install PHP8/+ if you like.

Step 1: Bash Into root

sudo bash

Enter your password.

Step 2: Install Apache2

apt-get install apache2 -y

Step 3: Install PHP 7.4

apt-get install php -y

apt-get install php-common php-mysql php-xml php-curl php-cli php-imap php-mbstring php-opcache php-soap php-zip php-intl php-sqlite3 -y

Step 4: Install PiHole

curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

During the course of the install, you will be prompted ~5 times. At the last prompt, you will be asked if you want to install the Lighttpd web server. At this point, you want to select no and complete the install process.

Once completed your PiHole setup should work. and should be accessible via ip/domain.com/admin/

Step 5 Cleanup:

As of today, I have noticed a rare glitch that will cause the folder structure to be odd after the pihole install. This can be easily fixed with the following details.

The default install will create folders like this:

pihole folder: /var/www/html/pihole
admin folder: /var/www/html/admin

Although not a big deal, this causes a problem when trying to access the admin dashboard from the default pihole URL (http://ip/pihole), the link on the page that is supposed to link to the admin page will be broken. At this point, you can update the page link manually in pihole/index.php to forward to the correct URL or you can change/move folders to your liking.

To fix this issue, as root, first we move the folder to the correct directory.

mv /var/www/html/admin /var/www/html/pihole

Second, we update the default pihole root index file links

vim /var/www/www/html/pihole/index.php

We want to edit three lines 77, 81, and 83 to reflect the new URL structure.

#Line 77: 
<link rel='shortcut icon' href='/pihole/admin/img/favicons/favicon.ico' type='image/x-icon'>

#Line 81:
<img src='/pihole/admin/img/logo.svg' alt='Pi-hole logo' id="pihole_logo_splash">

#Line 83:
<a href='/pihole/admin/'>Did you mean to go to the admin panel?</a>

Once done you can consider the process complete.

Step S: Installing SSL on PiHole:

To keep things classy, if not already, bash into root:

sudo bash

Let’s enable the PHP’s SSL module and make our SSL folder to house our certs.

a2enmod ssl

mkdir /etc/apache2/certs/pihole

Now let’s generate our self-signed cert:

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/apache2/certs/pihole/piholio.key -out /etc/apache2/certs/pihole/piholio.crt

Edit our default SSL virtual hosts config:

vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl.conf

Replace lines 32 and 33 with the following lines

SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/certs/pihole/piholio.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/certs/pihole/piholio.key

Save and exit.

Next, enable SSL and restart the apache service:

a2ensite default-ssl.conf && systemctl restart apache2

At this point, you’ve successfully installed PiHole with SSL. We have another issue, by default apache does not reroute to SSL so you will still be able to visit the non-SSL URL. To fix this we need to enable the Rewrite module and enter our conditions into our domain’s virtual host configuration (or .htaccess).

Let’s enable that rewrite module:

a2enmod rewrite

systemctl restart apache2

Let’s edit our default virtual host file:

vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

Add the following three lines of code before the </VirtualHost> closing tag.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]

Save the file and restart Apache.

systemctl restart apache2

Your PiHole install should now be “running in SSL”. If anyone viewing my notes has questions feel free to leave a comment.

Install PHP8 on Ubuntu Server 18 & 20 LTS Running Apache

This post is a quick post to serve as a note, don’t expect long explanations of general LAMP stack design concepts. If you encounter any issues feel free to leave a comment below.

Step 1: Bash Into root User

sudo bash 
#("sudo -su" if you prefer)

Enter your password to enter the root superuser account.

Step 2: Preparation

As root enter

apt-get update -y && apt-get upgrade -y && apt-get dist-upgrade -y && apt-get autoremove -y && apt-get autoclean -y

Step 3: Adding PHP8 Repository

apt-get install ca-certificates apt-transport-https software-properties-common -y

Once the command above completes its process:

add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php -y && apt-get update -y

Step 4: Installing PHP8

apt-get install php8.0 libapache2-mod-php8.0 -y && systemctl restart apache2

apt-get install php8.0-fpm libapache2-mod-fcgid

Enable default PHP8 FastCGI manager module and config:

a2enmod proxy_fcgi setenvif

a2enconf php8.0-fpm

Restart Apache:

systemctl restart apache2

You might need these as well… MySQL, MBString, and MailParse

apt-get install php8.0-mbstring php8.0-mailparse php8.0-mysql php8.0-xml php8.0-zip -y

WordPress Modules

apt-get install php8.0-imagick -y

*****

To get jiggy with it… (installs all PHP modules, typically reserved for DevOps/Sandboxing)

apt-get install php8.0-dev

*****

Once you’re done with installing any additional modules, although not required, it’s recommended you reboot your machine. Let’s do a little cleanup in case something unnecessary (like previous PHP7 packages) was left behind.

apt-get update -y && apt-get upgrade -y && dist-upgrade -y && apt-get autoclean -y && apt-get autoremove -y && reboot

Step 5 (Optional): Additional Caching Modules

Memcached

apt-get install php8.0-memcached

Redis

apt-get install php8.0-redis

ODROID-C2 Headless Ubuntu 20 Image

This is a quick post for anyone who was looking to get a headless image from HardKernal but couldn’t actually find it (It doesn’t exist). This guide will use their hosted image for general security reasons.

Why would you want to do this? If you don’t plan on using it as a desktop. Also, why not save ~100MB of RAM and have an even more stable system.

If you haven’t already you can download the official HardKernal Odroid-C2 Ubuntu Image for your Odroid-C2 here.

Skipping The Install Process…

It’s 2021, I’m not going over the install process. This guide assumes you already have a clean Ubuntu 20 installed (from the OFFICIAL repository) and running on your C2. If your ODROID starts auto-patching security updates as soon as you connect it to your network, let it complete before starting.

(Optional)

You can install whatever ssh server you like for your C2, it will make the process much easier to copy and paste commands.

sudo apt-get install openssh-server -y

Removing Mate

sudo apt-get purge $(dpkg --list | grep MATE | awk '{print $2}')

Once the command above completes, continue removing additional traces left behind

sudo apt-get purge libmate-sensors-applet-plugin0 -y && sudo apt-get purge libmateweather-common libmateweather1:amd64 -y && sudo apt-get purge mate-accessibility-profiles -y && sudo apt-get purge mate-notification-daemon -y && sudo apt-get purge mate-notification-daemon-common -y && sudo apt-get purge plymouth-theme-ubuntu-mate-logo -y && sudo apt-get purge plymouth-theme-ubuntu-mate-text -y

Finally Remove The LightDM “Screen Greeter”

sudo apt-get remove lightdm -y

Additional Apps You Might Want To Remove

This is what I chose to remove, feel free to remove any apps you also wont be using without any desktop GUI.

sudo apt-get remove firefox -y

Finish cleaning up

sudo apt-get autoclean -y && apt-get autoremove -y && reboot

That should pretty much sum up the process, let me know if you encounter any issues.

Solving the PHP Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect (Connection timed out)

If you’ve worked with APIs you’ve probably gotten this error and know how annoying it is. All because the native function never returns any actionable error for its request timing out. The best way to detect if the fsockopen() function request is timing out is to use a error control operator. The idea is to suppress the timeout warning with a @ prefix, so the function only returns true if it completes its cycle/request. You can review the example PHP code below.


if($fp = @fsockopen($host, $port, $errno, $errstr, $timeout)) {   

return true;

}else{
  
return false;

}

Issues? leave your questions.