Friday, May 26, 2017

Redhat 7 root password recovery

This is really a note for myself... since it is so terse with no pictures, but may be helpful to someone else. At the boot menu press "e" to edit the boot option find the vmlinuz line and after the root= entry find the ro entry and prior to this enter rw init=sysroot/bin/sh Press Control X and after it boots in single user mode... type chroot /sysroot passwd root passwd mount -o remount / touch /.autorelabel

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

HPUX NTP setup

/etc/hosts
192.168.1.4. ntp1
192.168.1.5  ntp2

/etc/ntp.conf
server 127.127.1.0  #Local clock
fudge 127.127.1.0 stratum 10

server ntp1 prefer
server ntp2

/etc/rc.config.d/netdaemons
export NTPDATE_SERVER=ntp1
export XNTPD=1
export XNTPD_ARGS="-l /var/adm/xntpd.log"

NTP Pool as alternate external NTP if ports are open:  north-america.pool.ntp.org

My recommendation is for NTP entries to be in DNS as cname records and then just reference the cname records in your configuration files... so if you ever need to change the NTP server you do not have to edit hundreds of client NTP client files.  Just update the DNS entries for NTP1 NTP2 etc.

The reason you update /etc/ntp.conf as well as ntpdate in the netdaemons file... is that ntpdate is intended for a single use on boot up... then from that point on... it gets updated from xntpd running from the /etc/ntp.conf configuration.  The reason for this is that xntpd will refuse to start if the local clock is off by more than 1000 seconds off from the NTP server you wish you get time from and if this happens the xntpd won't start and time will be way off until someone notices... manually runs ntpdate and then starts xntpd again.  Be careful not to cause your clock to go backwards or jump ahead after a database or application is running if it is sensitive to time.  Be sure to read about setting the options to SLEW the clock if you have things like a database running when you need to affect a large time change.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Remove Nvidia Proprietary Driver to avoid crashing

Ug... best not to purchase one of these in the first place.  Buy a different card if you can.  Nvidia is the worst.
Symptom:  Running Ubuntu 16.04 and after loading the proprietary Nvidia driver and rebooting login would fail and loop back to the login screen again.
Removed using the following:
Ctrl+Alt+F1 so you can get to a tty prompt
sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
echo "nouveau" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
sudo reboot
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean


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Thursday, May 19, 2016

Mounting 64 GB SDCard on Linux

64 gig cards are likely to use the exfat file system which is not natively supported on Linux.


UPDATED:  Add the Universe repository and then run the following:
sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils


OLD Info:
I'm running Ubuntu so I ran the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:relan/exfat
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fuse fuse-exfat exfat-utils

mkdir /media/sdcard
mount -t exfat -o uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1003,gid=1003,iocharset=utf8,namecase=0,errors=remount-ro,umask-0077 /dev/sde1 /media/sdcard


Initial Error Message:
Error mounting /dev/sde1 at /media/sdcard: Command-line `mount -t "exfat" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1003,gid=1003,iocharset=utf8,namecase=0,errors=remount-ro,umask=0077" "/dev/sde1" "/media/sdcard"' exited with non-zero exit status 32: mount: unknown filesystem type 'exfat'


Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Using Ekiga Softphone with Google Hangout on Linux or Windows

In Ekiga... go to "Edit Accounts" or use Ctrl-E.
Then under "Accounts" in the pulldown menu... (There are no options to add an account in the popup window... you have to find them in the pulldown menu (Unity on Ubuntu).  Some people even think you can't use Ekiga with non Ekiga SIP accounts since they can't get past this step and even rated it low based on this, but the software is good.  I have not used their pay service yet, but since they are generous enough to offer free accounts, and free software it might be worth giving them a look and buying some VOIP minutes if you need to call landlines.

Name:  Google Hangout    (Whatever you want to call it)
User:  <YourEmailAddress@gmail.com>
Server:  talk.google.com
Port:  5222
Resource: Ekiga
Password:  <YourPassword>
 

Once finished under the accounts tab you should see a status of "connected".

http://www.Ekiga.net

Thursday, June 11, 2015

How to Determine if an HP-UX Account is Locked

/usr/lbin/getprpw -l <account>
/usr/lbin/modprpw -k <account>

You need to know if accounts are locked
System may be a "trusted" system which means that it has higher security
enabled.
On a non-trusted system the /etc/passwd file will contain the information:
man passwd:
-s name Display some password attributes associated with the
specified name. Superuser privilege and non-trusted
mode is required if the files repository is specified.
The format of the display will be:
name status mm/dd/yy min max warn


or, if password aging information is not present
(#### e.g. that info is held in tcb directories ###)
name status
where status means: PS =passworded; LK =locked; and NP=no password.
passwd -s -a:
PS =passworded; LK =locked; and NP=no password
on a trusted system the /tcb directory structure holds the lock info;
man getprpw:
lockout returns the reason for a lockout in a "bit" valued string, where 0 = condition not present, 1 is present.

The position, left to right represents:
Google Voice and Video Chat Installer for Google Hangouts  "The Installer encountered error 1625:  This installation is forbidden by system policy.  Contact your system administrator".

1 past password lifetime
2 past last login time (inactive account)
3 past absolute account lifetime
4 exceeded unsuccessful login attempts
5 password required and a null password
6 admin lock
7 password is a *
(If the user is NOT locked, all bits will be 0)

getprpw:
for USER in `awk -F: '{print $1}' /etc/passwd`
do
printf $USER
printf " "
/usr/lbin/getprpw -m lockout,alock $USER
done

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SOLVED: Kickstart (system-config-kickstart) - Could not read video driver database

After I updated to Ubuntu 14.04 I tried to launch the Kickstart Configurator GUI and it wouldn't load.

Error Message: "Could not read video driver database"

# system-config-kickstart

(system-config-kickstart.py:18686): IBUS-WARNING **: The owner of /home/user/.config/ibus/bus is not root!
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/system-config-kickstart/system-config-kickstart.py", line 92, in <module>
    kickstartGui.kickstartGui(file)
  File "/usr/share/system-config-kickstart/kickstartGui.py", line 131, in __init__
    self.X_class = xconfig.xconfig(xml, self.kickstartData)
  File "/usr/share/system-config-kickstart/xconfig.py", line 80, in __init__
    self.fill_driver_list()
  File "/usr/share/system-config-kickstart/xconfig.py", line 115, in fill_driver_list
    raise RuntimeError, (_("Could not read video driver database"))
RuntimeError: Could not read video driver database
# 

This resolved my issue:
# apt-get remove hwdata
# wget ftp://mirror.ovh.net/mirrors/ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/h/hwdata/hwdata_0.234-1_all.deb
# dpkg -i hwdata_0.267-1_all.deb
# apt-get install system-config-kickstart 
Hope this helps you.

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