antipaucity

Via the rands-leadership Slack (in the #i-wrote-something channel), I found an article written on ChealseaTroy.com that was [the last?] in her series on course design.

While I found part 9 interesting, I was bummed there were no internal links to the other parts of the series (at least to previous parts (even if there may be future parts not linked in a given post)).

To rectify that for my 6 readers, and as a resource for myself, here is a table of contents for her series:

1. What will students learn?
2. How will the sessions go?
3. What will we do in a session?
4. Teaching methods for remoteness
5. Why use group work?
6. Dividing students into groups
7. Planning collaborative activities
8. Use of surveys
9. Iterating on the course

She also has some other related, though not part of the “series”, posts I found interesting:

1. Learning to teach a course
2. Planning and surviving a 3-hour lecture
3. Resources for programming instructors
4. Syllabus design

If you notice future entries to this series (before I do), please comment below so I can add them 🤓

I found out about sshuttle from a random tweet that happened to catch my eye.

Here’s the skinny (from the readme):

• Your client machine (or router) is Linux, FreeBSD, or MacOS.
• You have access to a remote network via ssh.
• You don’t necessarily have admin access on the remote network.
• The remote network has no VPN, or only stupid/complex VPN protocols (IPsec, PPTP, etc). Or maybe you are the admin and you just got frustrated with the awful state of VPN tools.
• You don’t want to create an ssh port forward for every single host/port on the remote network.
• You hate openssh’s port forwarding because it’s randomly slow and/or stupid.
• You can’t use openssh’s PermitTunnel feature because it’s disabled by default on openssh servers; plus it does TCP-over-TCP, which has terrible performance.

Here’s how I set it up on my Mac

Install homebrew:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

Install sshuttle (as a regular user):

brew install sshuttle

Test the connection to a server you have:

sudo sshuttle -r <user>@host.tld -x host.tld 0/0 -vv

I also made sure that my target server could be connected-to via certificate for my local root user – but you can use a password if you prefer.

Check your IP address:

curl https://ipv4.cf

Once you make sure the connection works, Ctrl-C to end the session.

Then setup an alias in your shell’s .profile (for me, it’s .bash_profile):

alias vpn='sudo sshuttle -r <user>@domain.tld -x domain.tld 0/0'

Other things you can do

According to the full docs, there are a lot more things you can do with sshuttle – including running it on your router, thereby VPN’ing your whole LAN through an endpoint! You can also run it in server mode.

This is a super useful little utility!

After a friend of mine told me he wanted to deploy Jitsi on my main webserver, and me saying “sure”, I decided I wanted to get it up and running on a new server both so I knew how to do it, and to avoid the latency issues of videoconferencing from central North America to Germany and back.

Before I go into how I got it working, let me say that the official Quick Start guide is good – but it doesn’t cover anything but itself.

Here’s the basic setup:

• CentOS 7
• Docker
• Apache 2.4

What To Do:

Once you have your new CentOS instance up and running (I used Vultr), here’s everything you need to install:

yum -y install epel-release && yum -y upgrade && yum -y install httpd docker docker-compose screen bind-utils certbot git haveged net-tools mod_ssl

I also installed a few other things, but that’s because I’m multi-purposing this server for Squid, and other things, too.

Enable Apache, firewalld, & Docker:

systemctl enable httpd && systemctl enable docker && systemctl enable firewalld

Now get your swap space setup:

fallocate -l 4G /swapfile && chmod 0600 /swapfile && mkswap /swapfile && swapon /swapfile

Add the following line to the bottom of your /etc/fstab:

/swapfile swap swap default 0 0

Restart your VPS:

shutdown -r now

Get your cert from Let’s Encrypt (make sure you’ve already setup appropriate CAA & A records for your domain and any subdomains you want to use):

certbot -t -n --agree-tos --keep --expand --standalone certonly --must-staple --rsa-key-size 4096 --preferred-challenges dns-01,http-01 -m <user>@<domain.tld> -d <jitsi.yourdomain.tld>

Create a root crontab entry to run certbot frequently (I do @weekly ~/renew-le.sh)

Go to the home directory of whatever user you plan to run Jitsi as:

su - <jitsi-user>

Begin the Quick Start directions:

• git clone https://github.com/jitsi/docker-jitsi-meet && cd docker-jitsi-meet
• mv env.example .env
• Change the timezone in .env from Europe/Amsterdam if you want it to show up in a sane timezone (like Etc/UTC)
• mkdir -p ~/.jitsi-meet-cfg/{web/letsencrypt,transcripts,prosody,jicofo,jvb}
• docker-compose up -d

Now configure Apache for SSL. Start with this reference I posted.

But in the [sub]domain-specific conf file z-[sub]domain-tld.conf, add proxy and authentication lines (so that only people you allow to use your video conference can actually use it):

ProxyPreserveHost on
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8000/ nocanon
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8000/
ProxyRequests       off
ServerAdmin warren@warrenmyers.com
AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode
<Proxy http://localhost:8000/*>
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
    Authtype Basic
    Authname "Password Required"
    AuthUserFile /etc/httpd/.htpasswd
    Require valid-user
</Proxy>
RewriteEngine       on
RewriteRule        ^/meetwith/(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [P]
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath /meetwith /

Reload your configs, and make sure they’re happy, fixing any errors that may exist:

apachectl graceful

Setup at least one user who’ll be able to access the site:

htpasswd -B -c /etc/httpd/.htpasswd <user>

You should also configure firewalld to allow only what you want (http, https, ssh):

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=http && firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=https && firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=ssh

With any luck, when you now navigate to https://[sub.]domain.tld in your web browser, and enter your username and password you created with htpasswd, you’ll get the Jitsi welcome page!

Other Resources:

• Check out the Jitsi subreddit – r/jitsi
• Jitsi on Twitter: @jitsinews

After combing through the docs and several how–tos on deploying the Squid proxy server – none of which really did everything I wanted, of course – I’ve finally gotten to the format below.

Installing Squid is easy-peasy – it’s in the standard package repos for the major platforms (CentOS/Fedora/RHEL, Ubuntu/Debian, etc) – so just run yum install squid or apt install squid on your platform of choice (my exact install command on Ubuntu 18.04 was apt -y install squid net-tools apache2-utils).

What I wanted was an “open” (password-protected) proxy server with disk-based caching enabled that would cover all of the ports I could reasonably expect to run into.

Why “open”? Because I want to be able to turn it on and off on various mobile devices which may (or may not) have stable-ish public IPs.

Here is the config as I have it deployed, minus sensitive/site-specific items (usernames, passwords, port, etc), of course:

A working /etc/squid/squid.conf

acl SSL_ports port 443
acl SSL_ports port 8443
acl Safe_ports port 80		# http
acl Safe_ports port 21		# ftp
acl Safe_ports port 443		# https
acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535	# unregistered ports
acl Safe_ports port 280		# http-mgmt
acl Safe_ports port 488		# gss-http
acl Safe_ports port 777		# multiling http
acl Safe_ports port 8080
acl CONNECT method CONNECT

auth_param basic program /usr/lib/squid/basic_ncsa_auth /etc/squid/.htpasswd
auth_param basic children 15
# after "realm", put some descriptive, clever, or otherwise-identifying string that will appear when you login
auth_param basic realm Insert Incredibly Witty Title Here
auth_param basic credentialsttl 5 hours
acl password proxy_auth REQUIRED
http_access allow password

# Deny requests to certain unsafe ports
http_access deny !Safe_ports

# Deny CONNECT to other than secure SSL ports
http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports

# Only allow cachemgr access from localhost
http_access allow localhost manager
http_access deny manager

#http_access allow localnet
http_access allow localhost

# And finally deny all other access to this proxy
# commented-out to allow "open" use (ie password authenticated)
#http_access deny all

# Squid normally listens to port 3128
# change this line if you want it to listen on something other port
http_port 3128

# Uncomment and adjust the following to add a disk cache directory.
#cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 100 16 256
# format is      
cache_dir ufs /etc/squid/squid-cache 768 16 256

# Leave coredumps in the first cache dir
coredump_dir /var/spool/squid

# Add any of your own refresh_pattern entries above these.
#
refresh_pattern ^ftp:		1440	20%	10080
refresh_pattern ^gopher:	1440	0%	1440
refresh_pattern -i (/cgi-bin/|\?) 0	0%	0
refresh_pattern (Release|Packages(.gz)*)$      0       20%     2880
refresh_pattern .		0	20%	4320

via off
forwarded_for off

request_header_access Allow allow all 
request_header_access Authorization allow all 
request_header_access WWW-Authenticate allow all 
request_header_access Proxy-Authorization allow all 
request_header_access Proxy-Authenticate allow all 
request_header_access Cache-Control allow all 
request_header_access Content-Encoding allow all 
request_header_access Content-Length allow all 
request_header_access Content-Type allow all 
request_header_access Date allow all 
request_header_access Expires allow all 
request_header_access Host allow all 
request_header_access If-Modified-Since allow all 
request_header_access Last-Modified allow all 
request_header_access Location allow all 
request_header_access Pragma allow all 
request_header_access Accept allow all 
request_header_access Accept-Charset allow all 
request_header_access Accept-Encoding allow all 
request_header_access Accept-Language allow all 
request_header_access Content-Language allow all 
request_header_access Mime-Version allow all 
request_header_access Retry-After allow all 
request_header_access Title allow all 
request_header_access Connection allow all 
request_header_access Proxy-Connection allow all 
request_header_access User-Agent allow all 
request_header_access Cookie allow all 
request_header_access All deny all

Finalize your Squid server system settings

Things you need to do once you do the above (prepend sudo to each command below if you’re not logged-in as root:

1. Enable Squid to start at boot: systemctl enable squid
2. Create the cache directories: squid -z
3. Create a DNS entry for your proxy host (if you want it usable outside your home network, and don’t want to reference it by IP address only)
4. Create the authentication file (/etc/squid/.htpasswd in this example): touch /etc/squid/.htpasswd
5. Create a username and password: htpasswd -c /etc/squid/.htpasswd (don’t forget this username/password combination!)
6. Start Squid: systemctl start squid

Configure your browser to use your new proxy

Here’s where you need to go and what you need to change in Firefox:

1. Navigate to about:preferences
2. Click on Settings… under Network Proxy
   
3. Enter your proxy host details:
   

To verify your proxy settings are correct, visit IPv4.cf with both the proxy off, and then again with it on.

If your reported IP address changes between visits (with the second check being your Squid server IP) – congratulations! You have successfully deployed a Squid proxy caching server.

I came across pi-hole recently – an ad blocker and DNS service that you can run on a Raspberry Pi in Raspian (or any Debian or Ubuntu (ie Debian-like)) system. Using pi-hole should obviate the need for running ad-blockers in your browser (so long as you’re on a network that is running DNS queries through pi-hole).

I’ve seen some people running it on CentOS – but I’ve had issues with that combination, so am keeping to the .deb-based distros (specifically, I’m running it on the smallest droplet size from Digital Ocean with Ubuntu 16.04).

First the good – it is truly stupidly-simple to get setup and running. A little too simple – not because tools should have to be hard to use, but because there’s not much configuration that goes in the automated script. Also, updating the blacklist and whitelist are easy – though they don’t always update via the web portal as you’d hope.

Second, configuration is almost all manual: so, if you want to use more than 2 upstream DNS hosts (I personally want to hit both Google and Freenom upstream), for example, there is manual file editing. Or if you want to have basic auth enabled for the web portal, you need to not only add it manually, but you need to re-add it manually after any updates.

Third, the bad. This is not a pi-hole issue, per se, but it is still relevant: most devices that you would configure to use DNS for your home (or maybe even enterprise) want at least two entries (eg your cable modem, or home wifi router). You can set only one DNS provider with some devices, but not all. Which goes towards showing how pi-hole might not be best run outside your network – if you run piggy-back DHCP and DNS both off your RPi, and not off the wireless router you’re probably running, then you’re OK. But if your wireless router / cable modem demands multiple DNS entries, you either need to run multiple pi-hole servers somewhere, or you need to realize not everything will end up going through the hole.

Pi-hole sets up lighttpd instance (which you don’t have to use) so you can see a pretty admin panel:

I added basic authentication to the admin subdirectory by adding the following lines to /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf after following this tutorial:

#add http basic auth
auth.backend = "htdigest"
auth.backend.htdigest.userfile = "/etc/lighttpd/.htpasswd/lighttpd-htdigest.user"
auth.require = ("/admin" =>
( "method" => "digest",
"realm" => "rerss",
"require" => "valid-user" )
)

I also have 4 upstream DNS providers in /etc/dnsmasq.d/01-pihole.conf:

server=80.80.80.80
server=8.8.8.8
server=8.8.4.4
server=80.80.81.81

I still need to SSLify the page, but that’s coming.

The 8.8.* addresses are Google’s public DNS. The 80.80.* addresses are Freenom’s. There are myriad more free DNS providers out there – these are just the ones I use.

So what’s my tl;dr on pi-hole? It’s pretty good. It needs a little work to get it more stable between updates – but it’s very close. And I bet if I understood a little more of the setup process, I could probably make a fix to the update script that wouldn’t clobber (or would restore) any custom settings I have in place.

Starting from a tutorial I found recently, I want to share how to change your default font in Windows 10 – but in a shorter edition than that long one (and in, I think, a less-confusing way).

Back in the Good Ole Days™, you could easily change system font preferences by right-clicking on your desktop, and going into the themes and personalization tab to set whatever you wanted however you wanted (this is also where you could turn off (or back on) icons on your desktop (like My Documents), set window border widths, colors for everything, etc).

Windows 10 doesn’t let you do that through any form of Control Panel anymore, so you need to break-out the Registry Editor^*.

0^th, Start regedit

WindowsKey-R brings up the Run dialog – type regedit to start the Registry Editor

NOTE: you should back-up any keys you plan to edit, just in case you forget what you did, want to revert, or make a mistake.

1^st, Navigate to the right key area

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes

&&

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

Are where you’ll need to be to make these changes.

2^nd, Blank entries for Segoe UI

For all of the “Segoe UI” entries in Fonts, change their Data field to blank (“”)

3^rd, Add a Segoe UI substitute font

In FontSubstitutes, click Edit->String Value. Name it “Segoe UI” (without the quotes). In the “Value data” field, enter your preferred font name. I used Lucida Console.

4^th, Logout, or reboot, and login again to see your changes take effect.

^{* _{You can also download my registry keys, which have the substitution already done here. And you can pick any other font instead of Lucida Console you like – just edit the key file in your favorite text editor (I like TextPad) before merging into your Registry.}}

After running my new server for a while, I was noticing an unusually-high level of bogus email arriving in my inbox – mail that was being spoofed to look like it was coming from myself (to myself).

After a great deal of research, I learned there is a component of the DNS specification that allows for TEXT or SPF records. Sender Policy Framework was developed to help mail servers identify whether or not messages are being sent by authorized servers for their representative domains.

While there is a huge amount of stuff that could be added into a SPF record, what I am using for my domains is:

"v=spf1 mx -all"

Note: some DNS providers (like Digital Ocean) will make you use a TEXT record instead of a dedicated SPF record (which my registrar / DNS provider Pairnic supports).

If they require it be via TEXT record, it’ll look something like this: TXT @ "v=spf1 a include:_spf.google.com ~all"

Starting with this old how-to I found for CentOS 6, I added the policy daemon for Postfix (though it’s now in Python and not Perl) thusly:

yum install pypolicyd-spf

(I already had the EPEL yum repository installed – to get it setup, follow their directions, found here.)

Then I edited the master.cf config file for Postfix, adding the following at the bottom:

policy unix - n n - 0 spawn user=nobody argv=/bin/python /usr/libexec/postfix/policyd-spf

Note: those are actually tabs in my config file – but spaces work, too.

When you’re done with your edits and record additions, restart Postfix:

systemctl restart postfix

Then you’ll see messages like this in your /var/log/maillog file:

Apr 23 18:58:59 khopesh postfix/smtpd[18199]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from unknown[197.27.40.169]: 550 5.7.1 <warren@datente.com>: Recipient address rejected: Message rejected due to: SPF fail - not authorized. Please see http://www.openspf.net/Why?s=mfrom;id=warren@datente.com;ip=197.27.40.169;r=warren@datente.com; from=<warren@datente.com> to=<warren@datente.com> proto=ESMTP helo=<[197.27.40.169]>

And if you follow the directive to go visit the “Why” page on OpenSPF, you’ll see something like this explanation:

Why did SPF cause my mail to be rejected?

What is SPF?

SPF is an extension to Internet e-mail. It prevents unauthorized people from forging your e-mail address (see the introduction). But for it to work, your own or your e-mail service provider’s setup may need to be adjusted. Otherwise, the system may mistake you for an unauthorized sender.

Note that there is no central institution that enforces SPF. If a message of yours gets blocked due to SPF, this is because (1) your domain has declared an SPF policy that forbids you to send through the mail server through which you sent the message, and (2) the recipient’s mail server detected this and blocked the message.

warren@datente.com rejected a message that claimed an envelope sender address of warren@datente.com. warren@datente.com received a message from 197.27.40.169 that claimed an envelope sender address of warren@datente.com.

However, the domain datente.com has declared using SPF that it does not send mail through 197.27.40.169. That is why the message was rejected.