Finding a live chat solution – and picking cSupport

Posted by on Jan 16, 2012 in HelpSoft, Iværksætter, Nerdy | 0 comments

How I found out

In my company HelpSoft we run various websites either selling products, offering free stuff and we also own a web portal where women can find new friends.

For all of these we wanted a live chat solution. Simplicity, functionality and pricing were three factors in this process. You see Zopim everywhere, so we looked at that. We did try to sign up for a beta, unfortunately they don’t seem to like new customers because the required activation e-mail never arrived.

Sometimes in these cases, the forgotten password button is a help, but that failed too. No e-mail arrived. And ironically, their live chat support were not online.   I’m not a man who enjoys waiting a lot, if I want something I want it now, not tomorrow or whenever they feel like responding to a support ticket. So they were trashed and the whole idea of Zopim was out.

I visited one of my favorite web sites, alternativeTo and did a search for Zopim.  Some very irrelevant products showed up and so did cSupport.

I had fallen in love with IM integration I read about on Zopim. cSupport did that too, limited to XMPP, but I can live with that since that’s my favorite IM protocol anyway. And a 14-day trial with no credit card required, I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?

Getting started

It was simple, really. I clicked the “Start trial” button and inserted a name, an e-mail address and a username. I picked the “Premium” plan, it seemed to fit our needs fine.

Updated set of must-have apps for your Mac

Posted by on May 1, 2011 in Mac | Comments Off

Back in 2009 I wrote a post about the apps you must have for your Mac. Time changes, new apps are born and I discover new stuff. So this is my new updated list of the Must-Have apps I will recommend you to get if you do not already have them.

1Password

This software is simply awesome! 1Password makes it possible for you to store all your passwords securely and gives you the ability to easily use those logins from your browser. Furthermore you can store credit card information in it, and it will be able to fill that out for you too.

Adium

I still think that Adium is the best instant messating app for your Mac. It supports most IM protocols, and that’s about what there i to day.

BetterZip

For unpacking a wide range of archives, BetterZip really gets the job done easily.

Camtasia

If you make instruction video or any other kind of screencast, Camtasia is without doubt the best application for recording these sessions I have used. Not only is it very easy to start recording, it also offers to record your mic and/or the system audio. Also, editing your work afterwards is very easy.

CoRD

While I think that Windows is a useless OS, CoRD is the best app for remote controlling those computers/servers running Windows via RDP.

Divvy

Being and old GNU/Linux desktop user, there were some things I have missed on OS X in regard to managing application windows. Divvy really makes this task easier. It gives you the ability to arrange your windows very easily and with a click on a keyboard shortcut.

Hands Off!

Control which applications has access to the internet and to write files on your disk. If you’re a security paranoid like me, you will love this.

iStat Menus

Keep an eye on your CPU, Disk, memory and network usage at all times right in your menu bar. Highly customizable and has a nice simple design.

LimeChat

The IRC client to rule them all. The themes are created using standard CSS. It also gives you a small preview window which shows you everything going on in all channels you are joined in. Great if you’re curious.

Keynote

PowerPoint.. seriously..met… the boss! Nuff’ said.

NaviCat (for MySQL)

If you manage MySQL databases and you’d like something a little nicer than phpMyAdmin and you’d like something to use for building and testing queries easily, this is the tool you want.

Transmit

Connect to FTP/SFTP/DAV/S3 either in Transmit or mount them as a drive. This just works beautifully and is extremely easy to use. Panic really did a great job here!

SFTP only chroot users with OpenSSH in Debian

Posted by on Dec 28, 2010 in Hosting, Nerdy, Security | Comments Off

From OpenSSH version 4.9 and up it is now possible to create chrooted SFTP-only users with OpenSSH without the need for any add-ons.

In my example i want all users within the “sftp” group to hit /srv/sftponly.  This can be done on userlevel or on group level. I will be using groups.

At first, use your favorite editor to ecit /etc/ssh/sshd_config and find the line starting with “Subsystem sftp” (usually at the bottom) – change it so it looks like this:

Subsystem sftp internal-sftp

Next, we need to add the rule to match users. Add this to your sshd_config at the bottom:

Match Group sftp
PasswordAuthentication yes
ChrootDirectory /srv/sftponly
AllowTCPForwarding no
X11Forwarding no
ForceCommand internal-sftp

Now add the sftp group:

groupadd sftp

Add our first user:

useradd -d /srv/sftponly -g sftp -s /bin/false <username>
passwd <username>

Now, restart openssh:

/etc/init.d/ssh restart

And you should be all set. Use your favorite SFTP editor to test. Also try logging on via SSH to make sure that the user does not have access to do that.

Troubleshooting

Along your way some problems might occur. I will try to address the most common ones here. At first what you want to do is enable debugging in openssh so you can see in the logs what happens. Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_server – find “LogLevel” and change the setting to “DEBUG” – and restart ssh. The problems below are shown either in these logs or in the output of the “sftp” command from the client. When using the sftp client be sure to add the “-v” flag for verbose output.

Problem: fatal: bad ownership or modes for chroot directory component “/”
Fix: chmod 755 /

Problem: fatal: bad ownership or modes for chroot directory “/srv/sftponly”
Fix: Folders in the path along the way must be owned by root:root and must not be writable by anyone but root. This is because the directory we are going to use will be the root of the new users.  In my example the fix would be: chown root:root /srv ; chown root:root /srv/sftponly ; chmod 755 /srv ; chmod 755 /srv/sftponly”

Problem: Everything seems to be OK.. The users just don’t get access.
Fix: Make sure that you don’t have any whitespaces in your sshd_config after the configuration lines. In my case this caused a real pain.

Hit me a comment if you experience anything strange.

Setting UMASK for SFTP users

Add this line to /etc/pam.d/sshd:

session    optional     pam_umask.so umask=0002

This particular line will make new files/folders user and group writable.

Do you make backup? – If you do, is your backup strategy safe?

Posted by on Dec 11, 2010 in Hosting, Security | Comments Off

I think server backups here.

As a server administrator, there are a lot of concerns and one of the bigger ones is security. I know a whole lot of server administrators, and when I did a Q&A to know about their backups I was astonished to find out that more than 30% of them did not even take backup. I got a lot of responses and there are many ways of handling your backup, but a lot of them are very very wrong and will not do you any good in case of an emergency.

Do you even back up?

If you do not back up your data, what will you do in case of a hardware failure? Sure, you might be running a RAID, but a RAID is no guarantee, a RAID can break and then you will loose the game.

If you do not take backup, what will you do in the event of a fire breaking loose and destroying everything where ever your server is placed? Is your data valuable to you?

How do you back up?

Making backup is good. But how do you save your backup on the remote host? A few common ways of making backup is via FTP/SFTP/rsync. So, now you’re safe, right? If a fire breaks out, water disaster, disks die and so on, you will have your backup. And that’s good.

If your backup is automated, then your client somehow authorized to the backup server. In most of the above mentioned cased that authentication gives you full access to the backup data! Why is that bad?  It is because an attacker that has success gaining access to your server, will be able to emulate the authentication of the automated backup and therefore be able to delete both production data AND backup data.

How much is your backup worth now?

Howto: APC UPS and Debian

Posted by on Nov 25, 2010 in Hosting, Nerdy | Comments Off

So, I have a couple of NAS boxes and a laptop as server running at home. It’s all good until thunder appears. There are multiple risks with this. If the lightning strikes it can cause large surges of electricity that will destroy your equipment, if a power loss occurs it can cause the two RAID5 setups to die and it will cause major data loss.

A couple of days ago I bought a UPS and set it up and now I figured I should also set it up. So I did some reading and this is my result served to make it easier for you.

In this guide, this setup is used:
- Computer with GNU/Linux Debian Lenny
-  APC Back-UPS 800

The software I use is apcupsd which is in the Debian repository. Start by installing it:

apt-get update && apt-get install -y apcupsd

The next thing is to configure it. I did a whole lot of reading the manual for apcupsd to make sure I did things right. When your UPS is set up, hook the USB cable into your server.

Go to /etc/apcupsd and edit the file apcupsd.conf

My UPS and most of the newer UPS’es form APC uses USB to interface with the server, and that makes it easier for us to talk to it. These are the parameters I have set:

UPSCABLE usb

Define that we use a USB connection to the UPS.

UPSTYPE usb
DEVICE

Set the type to usb and leave the DEVICE property empty. By that it will find out where it is located by itself, and since we use USB it can do that.
ONBATTERYDELAY 5
BATTERYLEVEL 10
MINUTES 10
These three you should set to fit your needs. How generous you can be really depends on the amount of power you have versus the amount of power you use. My setup uses up around 85 watts, and since I have 800 VA I can keep it running for quite a while. On the product page for your UPS (if it is a APC) you will find a graph that tells you how long you can have it running depending on how much power you use. If you do not have any idea whatsoever about your power usage, you should get an energy meter and measure it first. If you have an idea, buy an appropriate UPS and set the levels as above. Later I will test the communication to the UPS and that will tell you how long it can keep you running – which also means you will know how to set your thresholds.
Now, these were all the customizations I did to the config file. Edit the file /etc/default/apcupsd:
ISCONFIGURED=yes
If you do not do this, it will refuse to start. Next, start it:
/etc/init.d/apcupsd start
Now, you can issue the command “apcaccess” and it will talk to the UPS and show you some information. You should see something similar to this (and more)
# apcaccess
APC      : 001,044,1076
DATE     : Thu Nov 25 10:20:32 CET 2010
HOSTNAME : natalie
RELEASE  : 3.14.4
VERSION  : 3.14.4 (18 May 2008) debian
UPSNAME  : natalie
CABLE    : USB Cable
MODEL    : Back-UPS BR  800
UPSMODE  : Stand Alone
STARTTIME: Wed Nov 24 20:30:05 CET 2010
STATUS   : ONLINE
LINEV    : 230.0 Volts
LOADPCT  :  13.0 Percent Load Capacity
BCHARGE  : 100.0 Percent
TIMELEFT :  53.0 Minutes
I made three of then bold, as they will tell you something you need to know. Check that it got the MODEL right. Next, check that STATUS is ONLINE.  Check that LOADPCT is less than 90 (it’s good to have a buffer). Now, on the TIMELEFT it will tell you how long it is able to run on the batteries. If you need now, edit the conf file again and adjust the parameters to fit this, so that you have time to shut down the systems nicely.
Now your UPS setup is working. I know it can be hard, but try pulling the plug for 10 seconds and the connect it again.  You should see a couple of broadcasts on your server. Also, if you view the file /var/log/apcupsd.events you will see all the events that the UPS system logs.
This is a sample of my log (I also tested the shutdown process by making it shut down machines quickly after a power loss.)
Wed Nov 24 20:22:50 CET 2010  Power failure.
Wed Nov 24 20:22:56 CET 2010  Running on UPS batteries.
Wed Nov 24 20:23:57 CET 2010  Reached run time limit on batteries.
Wed Nov 24 20:23:57 CET 2010  Initiating system shutdown!
Wed Nov 24 20:23:57 CET 2010  User logins prohibited
Wed Nov 24 20:24:16 CET 2010  apcupsd exiting, signal 15
Wed Nov 24 20:24:16 CET 2010  apcupsd shutdown succeeded

Make NAS’es shutdown too!

In my case I have 2 NAS’es and I want them to shutdown too. It’s pretty easy to do that (when you figure it out).
This is what I did:
1) ssh-keygen -t rsa
2) mkdir /etc/apcupsd/keys
3) mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa /etc/apcupsd/keys
4) chmod 600 /etc/apcupsd/keys/id_rsa
5) cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Mark and copy the public key.
Log on to your NAS as root/admin account and do “ls -la” – if a .ssh folder is already there, go to it. if not, create it. Check if there is a file called “authorized_keys” – if not, then create it and put the key from your clipholder in it. Now go back to your server and issue this command:
ssh -i /etc/apcupsd/keys/id_rsa -l <username_for_nas> <ip_for_nas> ‘ps’
When you run that, it should show you a process list without any trouble. this process list is from the NAS – this means you can run commands on the NAS via SSH remotely now. In my case the NAS runs busybox, so to shut it down I need to run “/sbin/poweroff” so this will be the full command for me to use:
ssh -i /etc/apcupsd/keys/id_rsa -l admin <ip> ‘/sbin/poweroff’
Test it by running this command and see if your NAS shuts down.
Next thing you need to do is to make apcupsd do this when it shuts down. Do this by editing the file “/etc/apcupsd/apccontrol”
Find the “doshutdown” option and simply add your command BEFORE the ${SHUTDOWN} line. This is mine:
echo “UPS ${2} initiated Shutdown Sequence” | ${WALL}
echo “Will now shutdown NAS systems before killing server” | ${WALL}
/usr/bin/ssh -l admin -i /etc/apcupsd/keys/id_rsa <NAS1_IP> ‘/sbin/poweroff’
/usr/bin/ssh -l admin -i /etc/apcupsd/keys/id_rsa <NAS2_IP> ‘/sbin/poweroff’
${SHUTDOWN} -h now “UPS ${2} initiated shutdown”
And voila! If a power outage occurs your NAS and server will now shut down safely.