Category: Console

Enable the serial console for custom Linux VM image on Azure

To enable the serial console for your custom Linux VM image, enable console access in the file /etc/inittab to run a terminal on ttyS0.

For example: S0:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 115200 console vt102.

You may also need to spawn a getty on ttyS0 and this can be done with systemctl start serial-getty@ttyS0.service.

more info here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/virtual-machines/troubleshooting/serial-console-linux?WT.mc_id=docs-azuredevtips-micrum

Sudo copy files as root

To allow user01 to copy any files as root from /from/directory/ to /to/directory/ add the following to /etc/sudors file:

user01 ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/cp /from/directory/* /to/directory/

And this one is for the multi commands:

user01 ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/cp /from/directory/* /to/directory/, /bin/rm -rv /to/directory/*, /bin/ls -la /to/direcotry/*

Boot Single User Mode – Resetting forgotten root user account password in RHEL/CentOS 7

As soon as the boot process starts, press ESC to bring up the GRUB boot prompt. You may need to turn the system off from the control panel and then back on to reach the GRUB boot prompt. You will see a GRUB boot prompt – press “e” to edit the first boot option. Find the kernel line linux16 or linuxefi or linux (Each menuentry block that represents an installed Linux kernel contains linux on 64-bit IBM POWER Series, linux16 on x86_64 BIOS-based systems, and linuxefi on UEFI-based systems. Then the initrd directives followed by the path to the kernel and the initramfs image respectively) and add init=/bin/sh at the end of the line and then press CTRL-X to boot.
System will boot and you will see the root prompt. Type mount -rw -o remount / and then passwd to change the root password and then touch /.autorelabel and then exec /sbin/init

In short:
init=/bin/sh – In case of VMWare like KVM or VirtualBox use rb.break instead of inti=/bin/sh
# mount -o remount,rw /
# passwd root
[Enter New Password]
[Re-enter New Password]
# touch /.autorelabel
# exec /sbin/init

It should look like this one:
–cut
1:
2: linux16 /vmlinuz-3.10.0-229.7.2.e17.x86_64 root=/dev/mapper/centos-root ro rd.lvm.lv=centos/root rd.lvm.lv=centos/swap crashkernel=auto rhgb quiet LANG=en_IE.UTF-8 systemd.debug init=/bin/sh
3: initrd16 /initramfs-3.10-0-229.7.2.el7.x86_64.img
4:
–cut

OpenVPN in OpenVZ/VServer

# Allow OpenVPN
iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW -m udp --dport 1194 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -s 192.168.88.0/24 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
# iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.88.0/24 -o venet0:0 -j MASQUERADE
# in OpenVZ/VServers you may need the following instead the lane above
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.88.0/24 -j SNAT --to-source 198.50.149.196

OpenVPN and OpenVZ tun issue.

After the upgrade Debian 7 to Debian 8 on OpenVZ platform on OVH the OpenVPN service stopped working. The problem was that the “TUN” device was missing, so the command below will temporary fix this problem.

root# mkdir -p /dev/net
root# mknod /dev/net/tun c 10 200
root# chmod 600 /dev/net/tun

Also you can add this to a script at start up.

Send a file as a mail attachment using mail command.

The simplest way to send a file as a mail attachment is shown by the following examples:

# uuencode snoopy1.jpeg snoopy1.jpeg | mail user@dump.4network.org

If user uses a current mail reader like Mozilla, Netscape Messenger or Microsoft Exchange, she/he will see a mail containing just one file attachment: the file “snoopy1.jpeg”.

This way we can include text, too:

# (cat mailtext; uuencode snoopy1.jpeg snoopy1.jpeg) | mail user@dump.4network.org

The file called “snoopy1.jpeg” again appears twice on the uuencode command line: the first time to specify the input file name, the second time for the remote extraction file name.

or

echo -e "text in line1 ntext in line2"| mail -s "Subject of an e-mail" -r "User1<user1@dump.4network.org>" -a "/tmp/abc.zip" name@domian.com