Linux on the iPAQ H4150

This applies to all H4000 series iPAQs (although there may be specific issues here and there).

The files you will need can be downloaded here: http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/releases/2007.12/images/h4000/

You will only need a SD Card for this. It must be 256MB or bigger (total file size is around 180MB).

Download the following files

Angstrom-boot-2.6.21-hh20-r6-h4000.exe
Angstrom-x11-image-glibc-ipk-2007.12-h4000.rootfs.tar.gz
startup.txt
zImage-2.6.21-hh20-r6-h4000.bin

We do this instead of using the “liveramdisk” image in order for wireless to work, and to be able to hard reset your device without losing any linux files/settings.

Using cfdisk or a graphical partition editor create two partitions.

A first (smaller) FAT partition in order to store the *.exe, *.bin and *.txt file(s).

The second (larger) EXT2 partition to store the filesystem. (rootfs)

Mount the ext2 partition, and do the following

tar xpzf Angstrom-x11-image-glibc-ipk-2007.12-h4000.rootfs.tar.gz -C /media/disk2

Where /media/disk2 is your mounted ext2 partition.

You need to edit a file for wireless to work.

/etc/modprobe.d/acx.conf

Remove/blank this file, for some reason the acx module is blacklisted. Perhaps it causes some issues with other 4000 devices?

You should also check out

/etc/network/interfaces

to add some wireless networks.

You should also get rid of some startup programs (if you don’t need them)

Move the following to a safe place (/root?)

/etc/rc5.d/S10dropbear

/etc/rc5.d/S20syslog

/etc/rc5.d/S23bluetooth

This will disable bluetooth support, logging and remote SSH access.

In order for wireless to work after suspend, you need to make two files.

/etc/apm/suspend.d/S50ifdown

case $1 in
start)
ifdown wlan0
rmmod -f acx
;;
esac

/etc/apm/resume.d/S50ifup

case $1 in
start)
modprobe acx
sleep 1
ifup wlan0
;;
esac

Set up your /etc/network/interfaces file (or use the GUI) for ifdown/ifup to work.

You might also want to remove /etc/apm/resume.d/50-gpe-bluetooth-resume

In Windows, browse to your ‘Storage Card’ and run the exe file. Choose the second of the three options for booting linux, and if all goes well you’ll running linux in no time! You will lose all your Windows settings.

If anything goes wrong, do the following to perform a ‘hard reset’

1. Hold down the power button

2. Use the stylus to press down the reset button on the side of the PDA

3. Let go of the power button while still pressing the reset button

4. Let go of reset. Device should boot into Windows.

Other issues/Comments

For some reason, my battery is not detected under Windows 2003 (can’t tell there’s a battery, nor the charge). Works with Linux, so not sure what’s up with that.

Wireless so far has performed flawlessly. I get the same latency I get from my laptop when pinging yahoo.com, and see 2-4ms latency on the same network. Very surprising, since on Windows internal network latency would be around 20-40, with outside networks having horrible (100-200) latency.

All in all, I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with this device. And for around $80 on ebay, it’s not a bad deal.

Speed up network transfers with ssh and tar

When you use sftp/scp to transfer directories, you notice it ends up taking a long time. It works on files one at a time and they can often take a small amount of time to start and finish. A solution is to use tar to stream the file over ssh (so you have one continuious stream, without starting/stopping a lot).

ssh [email protected] “tar cf – big_dir/” | tar xf –

I timed transferring a 330MB directory with more than 3600 files in it.

Transferring over 10/100 Ethernet over SMBFS with ‘cp -r’

real    2m45.495s
user    0m0.100s
sys     0m4.424s

Transferring over 54mb WiFi (at 70% signal strength) using ssh/tar

real    2m8.800s
user    0m12.377s
sys     0m10.501s

Transfering over 10/100 Ethernet using ssh/tar

real    0m37.929s
user    0m5.628s
sys     0m4.068s

It took 37 less seconds over wireless (pretty impressive, especially when dealing with only 330MB). It was a full 2 MINUTES (and 8 seconds) faster over the same kind of connection.

This is useful both in a LAN enviornment and over the internet.

Debian: IPtables and net protection should be enabled by default

As I come across network security issues in Linux, I can’t help but wish that Debian had decent default firewall rules (and kernel network protection in general) like many other distros.

This applies to both Debian 4.0 and Ubuntu 7.10.

By default, a Ubuntu or Debian install of Linux is vulnerable to a SYN flood. If behind a router, chances are there won’t be a problem. But if it’s a standalone Linux machine connected to the internet, the machine is vulnerable to a DoS attack.

It’s a simple fix.

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies

or

iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp –tcp-flags ALL ACK,RST,SYN,FIN -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp –tcp-flags SYN,FIN SYN,FIN -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp –tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN,RST -j DROP

The second should probably be used if it’s a server. The first way may still have quite a few open SYN connections.

You may just want to block the IP(s) that are conducting a SYN flood on you (keep an eye on netstat or iptables.log). A script that does this would be pretty useful; I wonder if there are any out there (or if I have to write one?).

iptables -I -s ip.to.ban -j DROP

Along with rules to help protect against flooding, it seems like it would be a good idea to block all ports by default.

iptables -A INPUT -m limit –limit 100/second –limit-burst 150 -j RETURN

One solution could be to have a folder called /etc/security/iptables that contains files that get passed to iptables at startup (in the same way /etc/rc2.d gets read in numeric order). So you could have files like 22ssh, 23ftp, etc. with iptable rules in each file. You could also have an ‘ENABLED’ variable like some files in /etc/default have (so that ports wouldn’t be opened by default; the user would have to manually enable them for the port to be opened).

Then they’d just run /etc/init.d/iptables restart and the port would be opened (flush the rules, reapply).

I’ve put together a proof-of-concept for this; feel free to check it out. Extract it somewhere, and check out the source. Then try the following

tar xvzf debian-iptables.tar.gz -C /

Which will create and fill /etc/security/iptables and put an init file in /etc/init.d and a link in /etc/rc2.d

It hasn’t been tested as much as I’d like, but it should work.

Please do this at the computer itself; if you do it over the network you might be locked out.

http://bbis.us/debian-iptables.tar.gz

iptables logging (the good way) in Debian Etch

When using iptables to log, you generally make a ‘LOG’ chain, and then

iptables -A INPUT -j LOG

iptables -A INPUT -j DROP

To log and then drop.

LOG has some disadvantages though. Using LOG, information will fill up the output of the ‘dmesg’ command as well as the kern.log file. Using Debian Etch, I was unable to get iptables to log to any other file but kern.log.

A better solution is ULOG.

You can clear your dmesg output with ‘dmesg -c’

apt-get install ulogd

iptables -N DROPLOG
iptables -A DROPLOG -j ULOG -m limit –limit 2/hour –ulog-nlgroup 1 –ulog-qthreshold 20

iptables -A DROPLOG -j REJECT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -i eth0 –dport 22 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -j DROPLOG

This will drop and log all incoming traffic except for port 22.

You shouldn’t need to edit /etc/ulogd.conf, but you might want to check it out.

All information should get logged to /var/log/ulog/syslogemu.log

Remote Syslogd Logging

There are some issues with remote logging using syslogd. By default, anyone can write logs to syslod if it is accepting connections. This can be an issue if someone wants to fill your /var/log with junk.

On a default install of Debian (or just about any distro) you should have all the tools you need already.

On log server edit /etc/default/syslog

SYSLOGD=”-r”

iptables -I INPUT -p udp –dport 514 -s CLIENTIP -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -i eth1 –dport 22 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -j DROP

You will want these iptables rules to be loaded on statup. How you do this will vary on your distro, but a simple start/stop script in /etc/rc2.d is the easiest way to go on debian.

On log client edit /etc/syslod.conf

auth.alert @server

mail.* @server

The client’s logs will end up in whatever file auth.alert gets logged to on the server.

Debian / Ubuntu NFS Server

apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap

By default, portmap is only accessiable on localhost. This seems to have changed for Etch, but it doesn’t hurt to double check.

Remove the line ‘-i 127.0.0.1’ option from ARGS in the file /etc/default/portmap or comment it out.

Restart it with /etc/init.d/portmap restart

Edit /etc/exports

/usr/local 192.168.1.(rw,no_root_squash,async)
/stuff 192.168.1.(ro,async)

This will make nfs-kernel-server complain about ‘no_subtree_check’; feel free to add it.

no_root_squash means that the ‘root’ user on a client system going to this directory will be root on the server share as well. This is something you’ll only want to use in a protected LAN. Otherwise, ‘root’ will be ‘nobody’ while in the shared directory.

NEVER ALLOW NFS TO BE SHARED ACROSS THE INTERNET.

NFS is unencrypted by default (I believe you can only encrypt it using Kerebos).

I highly suggest you use tcpwrappers.

/etc/hosts.allow

portmap: 192.168.1.
lockd: 192.168.1.
rquotad: 192.168.1.
mountd: 192.168.1.
statd: 192.168.1.
nfs: 192.168.1.

/etc/hosts.deny

portmap:ALL
lockd:ALL
mountd:ALL
rquotad:ALL
statd:ALL
nfs:ALL

To make everything easier, edit your /etc/hosts file. This should be the same on all linux machines.

192.168.1.100 laptop
192.168.1.101 server
192.168.1.104 workstation

Restart NFS.

/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Mount on the client machine now:

mount server:/usr/local /mnt/server-local

You’ll probably want to add this to /etc/fstab.

server:/usr/local /mnt/sever-local nfs rsize=8192 0 0

On a desktop machine, I like these options

server:/usr/local /mnt/server-local nfs rsize=8192,user,noauto 0 0

This will allow your user to mount the share by double-clicking ‘server-local’ in “Computer” (located in Places on Ubuntu)

Passwordless SSH Authentication

This will show you how to log into SSH without having to use a password.

From the machine you want to be able ssh without a password from

ssh-keygen -t dsa

Default password, and empty passphrase.

From the same machine

cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh user@remote “cat – >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys”

ssh user@remote

You should now be in without having to be asked a password. There are some obvious security implications here; nothing you should have to worry about if you have a strong password and good permissions on /home/user.

This is very useful for automated backups using scp/rsync.

scp -r -p ~/Important user@remote:~/backups/`date +%F`

The above command will backup /home/user/Important to /home/user/backups/2008-01-18

I’ll deal with rsync in a different post; lots of nifty stuff there. 😉

Debian 4.0 (Etch) LDAP Server

LDAP still gets me from time to time. I’ve set up multiple Debian LDAP servers now, and each time it seems like something new gets me. I’m going to try to put together a set-by-step LDAP guide that is sure to work (with Debian Etch). If you have any problems, please post! This setup has been tested on x86 and amd64 Debian variants.There seem to be some bugs with debian’s default ldap install (missing .so files, config files that don’t work, not remembering settings from the setup screens). However, once everything works it’s rock solid.

apt-get install slapd ldap-utils libnss-ldap libpam-ldap nscd migrationtools


Add your admin password, and accept default ldapi for now. Replace example and net with your domain/hostname (where each “.” is a “dc=”).

libnss-ldap and libpam-ldap are set up the same way, use identical answers (passwords are saved in /etc/*.secret make sure permissions are 600!)

When prompted, replace ‘manager’ with ‘admin’ and example/net with your domain/hostname


Make root local database admin = yes

Database require login = no

Uncomment “rootdn” in /etc/ldap/slapd.conf and make sure all suffix’s are your domain and not a debian default (for example, localdomain or example.net)

Place a “rootpw password” entry under rootdn

/etc/nsswitch.conf should look like:

passwd: compat ldap
group: compat ldap
shadow: compat ldap

hosts: files dns
networks: files

protocols: db files
services: db files
ethers: db files
rpc: db files

netgroup: ldap

cd /usr/share/migrationtools

Edit migrate_common.ph and replace “padl.com” with your domain

./migrate_base.pl > /tmp/base.ldif

./migrate_passwd.pl /etc/passwd /tmp/passwd.ldif

./migrate_group.pl /etc/group /tmp/group.ldif

/etc/init.d/slapd restart

ldapadd -x -W -D 'cn=admin,dc=example,dc=net' < /tmp/base.ldif

ldapadd -x -W -D 'cn=admin,dc=example,dc=net' < /tmp/passwd.ldif

ldapadd -x -W -D 'cn=admin,dc=example,dc=net' < /tmp/group.ldif

cp -p /usr/share/doc/libpam-ldap/examples/pam.d/* /etc/pam.d

apt-get install libpam-cracklib

ln -s /lib/security/pam_unix.so /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so

You may have to remove the first block of text in base.ldif (ldap should already have it)

As far as I can tell, pam_ldap.conf and libnss-ldap.conf are broken by default. Do this to fix them.

echo > /etc/pam_ldap.conf

vim /etc/pam_ldap.conf

base dc=example,dc=net

uri ldap://127.0.0.1/

ldap_version 3

rootbinddn cn=admin,dc=example,dc=net

port 389

pam_password crypt

cp /etc/pam_ldap.conf /etc/libnss-ldap.conf

/etc/init.d/slapd restart

/etc/init.d/nscd restart

You might want to remove a test user from /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow that has been imported to ldap.

su – username

Is a good test. Check /var/log/auth.log if you have problems. If nothing is there, try

/etc/init.d/slapd stop

slapd -u openldap -g openldap -d 999

That will have slapd run as the users it’s supposed to, and be very verbose.

At this point, everything should be working (if not, don’t go forward yet!). Now we can use encryption, to increase the security of our ldap server.

cd /etc/ldap

mkdir ssl

openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -out ldap.pem -keyout ldap.pem -days 3650

chmod 640 ssl/ldap.pem

chmod 750 ssl

chown -R root:openldap ssl

At the very top of /etc/ldap/slapd.conf put

TLSCACertificateFile /etc/ldap/ssl/ldap.pem
TLSCertificateFile /etc/ldap/ssl/ldap.pem
TLSCertificateKeyFile /etc/ldap/ssl/ldap.pem
TLSCipherSuite HIGH:+MEDIUM:!LOW

SSLVerifyClient none

Find the "access"lines near the bottom of slapd.conf and change them like this

access to attrs=userPassword,shadowLastChange
by tls_ssf=128 ssf=128 dn="cn=admin,dc=example,dc=net" write
by tls_ssf=128 ssf=128 anonymous auth
by tls_ssf=128 ssf=128 self write
by * none

and

access to *
by tls_ssf=128 ssf=128 dn="cn=admin,dc=example,dc=net" write
by * read

Make sure you restart

/etc/init.d/slapd restart

Assuming all goes well, you should still be able to "su - username" to your ldap-only user with the added benefit of encryption.

Additionally, if you find that SSL isn't working for you, try doing this.

Add the following to /etc/ldap/ldap.conf

TLS_CACERT /etc/ldap/ssl/ldap.pem
TLS_REQCERT demand

Add this to both pam_ldap.conf and libnss-ldap.conf

ssl start_tls

tls_checkpeer no

tls_cacertfile /etc/ldap/ssl/ldap.pem

After further investigation, 'ssl start_tls' is the way to go. Make sure ldap.conf has your SSL stuff in it and restart slapd and nscd.

http://bbis.us/etch-ldap.tar.gz

Top 7 uses for a shell account

1. Always-on IRC client

screen

irssi

#Control+A D

Using screen (a back-groundable terminal that can be easily resumed at any time) and irssi you can stay connected to IRC at all times, quietly sitting there… logging everything. 🙂

2. Website

Apart from everything else you can do with a shell account, having a personal website on the same machine as the programs and services you run can be very nifty.

Accessing your IRC logs via your website (so even at work/school/etc. you can check IRC quickly and easily) is one example.

3. Anonymous Browsing

Want a secure, anonymous way to browse? On Linux:

ssh user@server -D 9050

Will create a SOCKS port (9050) on your local machine. Point firefox/whatever at localhost:9050 (SOCKS) and browse away!

Windows clients support this too.

4. File Storage

Obviously I’m not saying you should back up your home harddrive to a shell, but doing minor backups can be very useful.

Got a few MBs of source code you want to have backed-up offsite? Why not put it on your shell?

Been writing some papers that are more important than a dead hard drive? Why not back them up every now and then?

scp -r /path/to/folder [email protected]:~

Will copy all files/folders in /path/to/folder to your home directory on shell.com. Using ssh keys for password-less authentication allows you to have a simple, one-line backup script.

5. E-Mail, FTP and other network services

Behind a restrictive connection? If you have outbound access to port 22 (you can always request other ssh ports be used on st0rage.org ;)) you can access any port on that machine.

Check email, use ftp/etc, and choose whether it stays on the shell or if you download it for your machine.

6. Encryption

How can we not mention encryption?

How would you like to be able to store sensitive information remotely and encrypted? Keeping a list of passwords or financial information encrypted with gpg is easy and effective.

gpg –gen-key

#Fill out info, accept defaults.

#Select (O)kay instead of (Q)uit to enter your passphrase

#This can take some time. A lot.

gpg -e file-to-encrypt

#enter your name from the step above.

#push enter again to exit

gpg -d file-to-encrypt.gpg

#contents will be displayed on the screen

gpg -d file-to-encrypt.gpg > file-to-encrypt

#will put the contents in a file

Google will give you some more advanced stuff with gpg, have faith the above is the hardest part. 😛

7. Scheduled Tasks

Cron is a powerful tool. With it, you can run commands at pre-determined re-occurring intervals.

For example, want to email yourself a reminder a week in advance for certain people’s birthdays? Easy!

crontab -e

0 0 11 3 * mutt -s “Birthday Reminder!” [email protected] < ~/reminders/julie.txt
0 0 26 1 * mutt -s “Birthday Reminder!” [email protected] < ~/reminders/sarah.txt

mkdir ~/reminders

echo “Julie’s birthday is on 3-11-`date +%Y`” > ~/reminders/julie.txt

echo “Sarah’s birthday is on 1-26-`date +%Y`” > ~/reminders/sarah.txt

Already use the shell for screen+irssi? Why not email yourself a daily log of what was said (or lines containing your name)?

58 23 * * * cat ~/irclogs/*`date +%F`* | grep nickname > ~/daily.log

59 23 * * * mutt -s “IRC Log” [email protected] -i ~/daily.log

Ignoring snoopy logs with logcheck

snoppy is an awesome tool available on the debian archives. It allows you to see what commands your users have run (by default logs to /var/log/auth.log). It acts like a beefed up .bash_history that users cannot disable/delete/etc.

logcheck scans your logs for weird things, and emails them to you.

By default, these two programs do not get along. snoopy entries show up in logcheck’s emails (which can get very, very big). This sort of defeats the purpose of logcheck, since you get sent massive emails with the important stuff hidden between giant blocks of snoopy logs.

To disable this

echo ‘^w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ snoopy.*’ > /etc/logcheck/violations.ignore.d/snoopy

chmod 644  /etc/logcheck/violations.ignore.d/snoopy

ln -s /etc/logcheck/violations.ignore.d/snoopy /etc/logcheck/ignore.d.server/snoopy

Now test it

sudo -u logcheck logcheck

To make more logcheck ignore rules, test your file(s) by:

egrep -f logcheck-file /var/log/auth.log

It will display only what will be ignored.

Make sure the file(s) are 644 (rw r r) or logcheck won’t be able to ignore what’s in the file.