An average guy's IT (mis)adventures

I've had my hands full in the last few weeks.. let's see what's new for @wpn

1. First of all, I removed some #DNS records (and related services), namely:

laltrowiki (our (me and old friends) wiki didn't really fit with @wpn - I'm keeping it for myself)

trilium (note-taking app which I kept on @wpn, but was only personal.. Now it's hosted at home)

grocy (pantry/shopping aid app, same as trilium above)

2. Have upgraded plugins for roundcube #webmail and FreshRSS, #RSS reader. Main services are always up-to-date, while these were some additions due from time to time.

3. Have done some tinkering with this blog's and xmpp-it homepage's #sqlite DBs: if you're interested, follow here

4. Have installed and then removed 2 #gemini to #html #proxies, because I believe the one I've been (and still am) using so far, is the best one. I also tweaked its stylesheet a bit. The two proxies I tried are september and kineto, while the one currently in use is loxy

5. I have first upgraded uptime-kuma to V2 Beta but then backed it up and moved to gatus, which lacks some features but it's also lightweight and straightforward. During the process we lost webhooks live notifications (about services status) for XMPP chatroom, so I have also installed ntfy server and related Android app, but, obviously, I'm currently the only one to see those. If any of @wpn users is interested, I can share info about the "topic", server's "address:port" and such. For the time being everything is in plain and without authentication.. Don't think that @wpn's services status notifications are so "sensible" info to require encryption, so I didn't even bother 😀

6. It's "6" already.. wow!

transmission-daemon was replaced by good-old rtorrent and that also got a web-ui, which only myself can access so far.

All of the aforementioned changes and fixes were mainly meant to reduce the load on the machine, in order to provide a better experience for everyone. Things still look complicated though, because even if there was a significant decrease in RAM usage, CPU, on the other side, seems almost worsened - and I still can't explain that, apart from thinking contabo maybe doing oversubscription of resources on their host.

Last 2 things, then I'll shut-up! 😁

• Some of the users' home directories (only the ones which belongs to me or are system-related users account) are now backed-up via rsnapshot to my #homelab. I intend to write an how-to on that topic, further ahead in time, because I'm still testing/figuring it out.

• The onboarding tool has got a new checkbox for (legal) age verification.

That's it. Feel free to tale a "tour" if you're new or haven't had the chance yet: https://woodpeckersnest.space/

See you soon!

Hello,

this is going to be a little how-to configure aerc (a console mail client) in your @wpn shell - applies to other shells / mail servers as well, but it will be tailored for @wpn users.

aerc configuration is interactive as soon as you start it for the first time, but it will store your mail password in clear text inside ~/.config/aerc/accounts.conf file. We want instead to use the standard Unix password manager, pass, to encrypt it.

First you need a GPG key, which will be used to encrypt imap/smtp passwords. There are 2 ways:

1. Import an existing private key
2. Create a new keypair on @wpn and use that

Let's start:

$ gpg-connect-agent /bye # initializes the gpg-agent 

If you see the following lines (you should), everything is good.

gpg-connect-agent: no running gpg-agent - starting '/usr/bin/gpg-agent'
gpg-connect-agent: waiting for the agent to come up ... (5s)
gpg-connect-agent: connection to agent established

GOTO 1) to import an existing key

GOTO 2) to create a new key

GOTO 3) when 1) or 2) are done

1. To import your secret key you have to first copy it from your PC to the server. Use FTP/WEBDAV or SCP: all of them are supported, suit yourself.

$ gpg --import roughnecks_SECRET.asc # import the key named, in this case, "roughnecks_SECRET.asc"
$ gpg --list-secret-keys # verify that your key is there and copy its ID (needed later)
$ gpg --edit-key [key-ID] # see previous step. You have to manage key's trust

type: "trust" # without the quotes
type: "5" # for ultimate trust
type: "save" # to save and exit

Now you can delete your file key, since it's not needed anymore

$ shred -u roughnecks_SECRET.asc # securely delete key file

2. To create a new GPG key follow these steps:

$ gpg --full-generate-key

Specify parameters for your key (default are ok); for key expiration date I would recommend from 1 to 2 years, so you'll have to type respectively "1y" or "2y", but feel free to choose by yourself. Next, enter your information: name, email and comment (optional). Last step is to create a passphrase and then the system will generate the keys. List them when done and copy the ID (for later use):

$ gpg --list-keys # list your newly created keys

3. Now that GPG keys are set up, we will store our mail password and proceed to configure and start aerc

$ pass init [your-gpg-ID] # the one you copied earlier in any of the steps, 1) or 2)
$ pass insert email/woodpeckersnest.eu/imap # don't modify anything, enter your email password
$ pass insert email/woodpeckersnest.eu/smtp # same as above, don't modify anything, enter your email password

We're going to create aerc's account configuration file now, bear with me.

This is a sample config, for you to edit:

[@wpn]
source   = imaps://username@woodpeckersnest.eu
source-cred-cmd =       pass show email/woodpeckersnest.eu/imap
outgoing = smtps://username@woodpeckersnest.eu
outgoing-cred-cmd =     pass show email/woodpeckersnest.eu/smtp
default  = INBOX
from     = username <username@woodpeckersnest.eu>
copy-to  = Sent

You can personalize [@wpn] with anything you like inside the square brackets (it's your aerc profile's name)

You MUST change every "username" occurrence with your actual email localpart (the part the comes before the @ symbol in your email address, actually the username you registered at @wpn); the first "username" occurrence in the "from" line can be your real name or whatever you want to show to your correspondents, for your contact name, e.g. from = Simone <roughnecks@woodpeckersnest.eu>.

Copy the config you just edited and..

$ mkdir ~/.config/aerc # create a directory for aerc
$ nano ~/.config/aerc/accounts.conf # paste the snippet you copied above to this file, save and exit
$ chmod 600 ~/.config/aerc/accounts.conf # set correct permissions for your accounts file

Now you can finally launch "aerc" and type your GPG passphrase:

$ aerc

YAY, email! 😍

Hello!

Last "real" post was about 2 months ago.. I got busy with stuff at home but also made a lot of adjustments here and there at @wpn. Let me list the most important ones:

• Set up shell and email users' homes backup: archives are still stored on the VPS for the time being, till when I'll find another proper backup location.
• Cleaned up /var/www/ and nginx virtualhosts; also removed "Shaarli", since I wasn't really using it anymore.
• Added a new board on the main site for BitTorrent, reachable here
• Upgraded XMPP Prosody server to 13.0.0 and isolated anon webchat even more, so that those users won't be able to connect to Biboumi IRC gateway.
• Upgraded all #slixmpp powered bots to 1.10, released only yesterday
• Formatted (again) the 2 pdf files regarding @wpn's Term of Use and Privacy Notice (no rules updates though)

I think that's about it.. probably 😀 I'm definitely forgetting something.

Some other news: a few new users joined XMPP and more than a few logged in our Movim COMMutiny pod. Welcome Aboard everyone! Be Nice!!

I'm keeping the pod up-to-date as much as I can (it's running on master branch), but that also mean I have to restart it sometimes; I will try to do that only during weekends from now on.. promise.

And now I'd better get going again.. See you soon!

Busy Days, Exciting Progress 🚀

It’s been a couple working months, busy and sometimes hard but in the best way possible!

For starters, today the "GD" website went officially online, after we completed its migration from ZOPE to Wordpress and I couldn't be happier 😉

Another thrilling update is with COMMutiny, our social network project. The converse.js anonymous chat, originally set up for @wpn’s support room, has now found its own space within COMMutiny. This is a big step forward, and we’re inviting everyone interested in #XMPP, gaming, and social networks to join the conversation, anonymously or not.

On top of that, we’ve launched a brand-new freelance website, powered by Hugo. It’s sleek, fast, and everything we hoped it would be — hooray for #Hugo!

If you’re passionate about decentralized communication, gaming communities, or just want to connect with like-minded folks, we’d love to see you in COMMutiny! See you soon 👋

I am most productive at night, when there is finally silence - apart from background music. The last couple hours of this Wednesday brought some nice additions to the @wpn support MUC:

• chat is not XMPP only anymore, but it got bridged to Matrix, via "matterbridge".
• a bot is now sending "BOFH excuses" to the chat, once a day.

XMPP MUC can be reached from: https://invite.woodpeckersnest.space/#status@chat.woodpeckersnest.space?join

Matrix room can be reached from: https://matrix.to/#/#wpn:matrix.org

Bridged chat means that everything being written in any of those rooms, gets relayed to the other by bots: there are in fact 2 bots connected to the 2 rooms, one is an XMPP bot and the other is a Matrix one, operated by "matterbridge", as I said earlier.

About "BOFH excuses", they are some fortune cookies from the relative Linux package, which are all about "Bastard Operators From Hell" excuses.. They are some short funny sentences about IT which an imaginary Operator (sysop, sysadmin, you name it) could say as excuse to justify issues.

Example?

BOFH excuse #266:
All of the packets are empty.

I have the same script running on gemini, at gemini://woodpeckersnest.space/cgi-bin/bofh

Basically it's some python spaghetti which runs the fortune command, does some formatting to the resulting text and sends it over gemini, or in the case of @wpn chat, over webhook to one other bot, which then posts its content to XMPP. It's more complicated to explain than do it 😀

P.S. @wpn support MUC is not publicly listed, so even if I'm posting links which may be used to join it, it should be treated as limited to @wpn users only.

gemlog