Some projects and stuff

Enabling general features in Nuxt

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 15:40:01 +0000

Setting up vuex store

To enable Vuex, all you have to do is add an index.js in the store directory. Here is a basic vuex store file:

import Vuex from 'vuex'

const store = () => {
  return new Vuex.Store({
    state: {
      counter: 0
    },
    mutations: {
      increment(state) {
        state.counter++;
      },
      resetCounter(state) {
        state.counter = 0;
      }
    },
    actions: {
      resetCounter({commit}) {
        commit('resetCounter');
      }
    },
    getters: {
      getCounter: state => state.counter
    }
  })
}

export default store

Once added, the vuex store can be accessed in pages using this.$store. (i.e. this.$store.state, or this.$store.getters)

Note: the variable is called $store not $state!

Dynamic pages

Firefox Sync in Alpine Linux

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 04:32:21 +0000

This is a guide to setup Firefox Sync Server 1.5 in Alpine Linux. This guide is based off the official documentation available from Mozilla.

Prerequisites

Let’s install the things we need to get moving.

apk install python-dev git py-virtualenv build-base sqlite

Download and build

Now that the pre-reqs are setup, we can download the code and build it.

mkdir /opt
cd /opt

git clone https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver
cd syncserver
make build

Configure

Edit /opt/syncserver.ini

Update public_url to use proper domain name or ip address
Un-comment line with sqluri configuration, and change the path for syncserver.db to a directory outside of /tmp (i.e. /opt/syncserver/data.db.
Set up secret by running head -c 20 /dev/urandom | sha1sum to get new value and pasting in syncserver.ini

Run

Run make serve from the /opt/syncserver directory. You should be able to hit the sync server from a web browser and get an it works! message. If not, you should get some helpful error message.

Start at system boot

First, you need to enable the local service

rc-update add local

Next we need to add a script for the local service to run on startup. Create the file /etc/local.d/firefox_sync.start and past in the following code:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/make serve --directory /opt/syncserver

Save the file, and make it executable:

chmod +x /etc/local.d/firefox_sync.start

Test it by running: /etc/local.d/firefox_sync.start. You should see the sync server starting up.

Fully test by restarting the Alpine server. After logging in, you should be able to see the gunicorn server running when you run the top command.

Setting up Firefox

You now need to setup Firefox to point at your Sync Server.

To configure desktop Firefox to talk to your new Sync server, go to about:config, search for identity.sync.tokenserver.uri and change its value to the URL of your server with a path of token/1.0/sync/1.5.

Example: http://sync.myurl.com:5000/token/1.0/sync/1.5

You should now be able to log in with your Firefox Account and sync your data to your personal Sync Server.

Install PHP7 running in NGINX on Alpine Linux

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 15:11:49 +0000

Add community repository
Install nginx & php7-fpm

update /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf to include some of the following:

server {
     listen 80 default_server;
     listen [::]:80 default_server;

     root /var/www/html;
     index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html index.php;


     # Everything is a 404
     location / {
             try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
     }

     location ~ \.php$ {
             include fastcgi.conf;
             fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
     }

     location ~ /\.ht {
             deny all;
     }
}

Start php-fpm7 and nginx services
Create the file /var/www/html/index.php and add the following code to test:
```
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
```

Add database & user to PostgreSQL

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 02:06:24 +0000

These are the steps to creating a new database with it’s own admin user for PostgreSQL.

# On the postgres server
psql -U postgres # log into postgres

create role newdbadmin with login password 'pa$$word';                                                                          

create database newdb;

grant all privileges on database newdb to newdbadmin;

How to set up a home router as an access point

Mon, 30 Oct 2017 00:55:22 +0000

Many consumer routers don’t have a built-in feature to deploy as an access point. They can, however, be used as an access point by turning off a few features and wiring it up correctly.

Disable services

Disable DHCP
Change LAN IP & subnet mask to something in your existing subnet
Disable RIP
Disable UPnP

Wiring

Plug a cable between the switch ports on your new AP into a switch on your existing network (do NOT plug into the WAN/internet port).

Add support for less in .vue files

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 01:25:38 +0000

This wasn’t immediately obvious and took me longer than it should have to figure out considering how simple it is. All you have to do is install 2 npm packages, and then tell the .vue file to use less.

npm install --save less less-loader

Then you can update the style section of the .vue file like so:

<style scoped lang="less">

</style>

Restart the dev server and it should be working.

Restore SQL Server database into SQL Server running on Docker from the command line

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 15:44:01 +0000

I needed to restore a database backup file to a locally running SQL Server running in a Docker container. I was using a Mac and had no desire to install SSMS in parallels.

Prerequisites

Sql Server is running in docker. Getting Started
A SQL Server account w/ adequate permissions
A .bak file to restore from

Restore the Database

Overview

In order to restore the restore the backup file into SQL Server on Docker we will have to take the following steps:

Copy backup file into container
Log into SQL Server and run sqlcmd
Determine which files will be restored from the backup
Run the restore command

Copy file into container

We can use the docker cp command to copy a file into the container. We will copy our file into SQL Server’s data directory

docker cp <mydb.bak> <sql-server>:/var/opt/mssql/data/mydb.bak

# where:
# <sql-server> is the name of the container
# <mydb.bak> is the name of the backup file

Determine files to be restored

Run the following command to see what files the backup file includes:

RESTORE FILELISTONLY FROM DISK = N'mydb.bak';

This command will output a list of files that we will need to account for when running the restore command. Here is an example output:

LogicalName	PhysicalName
mydb	D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\mydb.mdf
mydb_log	D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\mydb_log.mdf

We will need the LogicalName and the filename in the PhysicalName columns for the restore command.

Run restore command

When we run the restore database command, we have to indicate where the different logical files will live on the filesystem. Since this is running in a Docker container, it lives in a Linux filesystem and the files will have to use Linux paths.

You should be able to see in the following example where the Logical names are used with the MOVE command and the Physical file names are used in the TO portion.

Update the query to reflect your backup file name and the information gathered from the previous step.

RESTORE DATABASE mydb FROM DISK = N'mydb.bak' WITH 
MOVE 'mydb' TO '/var/opt/mssql/data/<mydb.mdf>',
MOVE 'mydb_log' TO '/var/opt/mssql/data/<mydb_log.ldf>';

Run the command and you should be good to go.

Gotchas

RESTORE DATABASE is terminating abnormally

If you run the command and get an error like this:

1> restore database mydb from disk=N'mydb.bak' with replace;
2> go
Msg 5133, Level 16, State 1, Server d9d263f75eb0, Line 1
Directory lookup for the file "D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\mydb.mdf" failed with the operating system error 2(The system cannot find the file specified.).
Msg 3156, Level 16, State 3, Server d9d263f75eb0, Line 1
File 'mydb' cannot be restored to 'D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\mydb.mdf'. Use WITH MOVE to identify a valid location for the file.
Msg 5133, Level 16, State 1, Server d9d263f75eb0, Line 1
Directory lookup for the file "D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\mydb_log.ldf" failed with the operating system error 2(The system cannot find the file specified.).
Msg 3156, Level 16, State 3, Server d9d263f75eb0, Line 1
File 'mydb_log' cannot be restored to 'D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\mydb_log.ldf'. Use WITH MOVE to identify a valid location for the file.
Msg 3119, Level 16, State 1, Server d9d263f75eb0, Line 1
Problems were identified while planning for the RESTORE statement. Previous messages provide details.
Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Server d9d263f75eb0, Line 1
RESTORE DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

This error is caused when you are not indicating where your files should be moved to. Make sure that you are using the MOVE TO command for all files in the backup file.

No such file or directory

This error has to do with the location of your backup file on the Docker filesystem. The directory it needs to be in is /var/opt/mssql/data/. You can use the ls and mv commands in the container to troubleshoot the location of the .bak file.

docker exec sql-server ls /var/opt/mssql/data/

mydb.bak      <<< Backup file should be in this directory
master.mdf
mastlog.ldf
model.mdf
modellog.ldf
msdbdata.mdf
msdblog.ldf
tempdb.mdf
templog.ldf

Proxmox Quick Hints & Tips

Fri, 11 Nov 2016 05:18:46 +0000

Mount a host folder in a container

Stop the container
Run the pct set command like the example below to create a mapping:
```
pct set <vmid> -mp0 /media/1tb,mp=/media/1tb 
```
What does this command mean?

pct set - command to change container settings
<vmid> - id of the container (i.e. 103)
-mp0 - identifier of the mountpoint. Multiple mountpoints would be subsequently named. (i.e. -mp1, -mp2, -mp3, etc.)
/media/1tb - folder on host
,mp=/media/1tb - destination mount folder inside container

Repository Pinning

Alpine allows you to ‘pin’ repositories so that you can pull packages from different package streams. Add the repositories in /etc/apk/repositories:

@edge http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main
@testing http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing

Save and update your repositories. You can then install from the pinned repos.

apk update
apk add stableapp newapp@edge bleedingapp@testing

Install a specific version of an app.

Specific app versions can be installed using a simple syntax:

apk add asterisk=1.6.0.21-r0
# or
apk add 'asterisk<1.6.1'

Cron in Alpine (i.e. BusyBox Cron)

The easiest way to get a script to run is to place it in one of several pre-setup directories:

/etc/periodic/15min
/etc/periodic/hourly
/etc/periodic/daily
/etc/periodic/weekly
/etc/periodic/monthly

If these don’t work for you, you can add your script the normal way in /etc/crontabs/root.

Tips

Make sure your script is executable by root!
Your script should NOT end with .sh.

Important Directories

Container configuration file

/etc/pve/lxc/<CTID>.conf

Default container OS configuration files

/usr/share/lxc/config/<ostype>.common.conf

Proxmox 4.3

Backup the file /usr/share/pve-manager/ext6/pvemanagerlib.js
Edit the file /usr/share/pve-manager/ext6/pvemanagerlib.js
Find the line that says if (data.status !== 'Active') (around line 557)
Change to if (false)
Save and quit

You may need to reload your browser and/or clear your cache

How to send yourself a Telegram message from BASH

Tue, 06 Sep 2016 02:08:33 +0000

In order to send yourself a message via Telegram you need to do 3 things. Create a bot, get your chat id, start a chat with that bot, and finally send a message via the command line.

Step 1: Set up your bot

All Telegram bots have global visibility. This is important when setting the name for your bot. I have several bot, so I name them myusername_botname. This makes it so my bots all have similar names.

In order to set up a bot, you need to start a chat with @botfather. Send the message /newbot and the BotFather will walk you though setting up your new bot. This is what a typical conversation will look like:


[2:21:03 PM] George:
/newbot

[2:21:03 PM] BotFather:
Alright, a new bot. How are we going to call it? Please choose a name for your bot.

[2:21:08 PM] George:
test_123456

[2:21:07 PM] BotFather:
Good. Now let's choose a username for your bot. It must end in `bot`. Like this, for example: TetrisBot or tetris_bot.

[2:21:26 PM] George:
test_123456_bot

[2:21:25 PM] BotFather:
Done! Congratulations on your new bot. You will find it at telegram.me/test_123456_bot. You can now add a description, about section and profile picture for your bot, see /help for a list of commands. By the way, when you've finished creating your cool bot, ping our Bot Support if you want a better username for it. Just make sure the bot is fully operational before you do this.

Use this token to access the HTTP API:
102932392:AAGjexEEZBJ3D09ubEb57zAAhq_qF8MDEI

For a description of the Bot API, see this page: https://core.telegram.org/bots/api

Congratulations, you have created a bot! Make sure you save the access token (i.e. api key)! You will need it to create requests.

Step 2: Get your chat id

To get your chat id you will need to start a chat with @idbot, and send the message /getid. The chat id will be a number like 394882049.

Step 3: Start chat with your new bot

This is easy. Just start a new chat with @your_bot_name. This is necessary, though, or your bot will be unable to send messages to you.

Step 4: Send message via BASH

You need cURL installed. Use the following command to test your bot.

curl -s "https://api.telegram.org/bot$API_KEY/sendMessage?chat_id=$CHAT_ID&text=helloworld"

Make sure to replace the variables:
$API_KEY = the access token from Step 1
$CHAT_ID = the chat id from step 2

You should get a JSON response to let you know if it was successful.

Troubleshooting

If you get the error {"ok":false,"error_code":400,"description":"Bad Request: chat not found"}# that either means that your chat_id is incorrect, or that you haven’t started a conversation with the bot yet (see step 3)

Install NGiNX with Let's Encrypt in an Alpine Linux Container

Sat, 13 Aug 2016 04:04:19 +0000

This is a quick and easy one.

Prerequisites

An Alpine Linux container
An internet connection

Install nginx

apk add nginx
rc-update add nginx default
rc-service nginx start

Nginx Configuration

Config file is located at /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

Use service nginx reload to reload the configuration after editing it.

Install Certbot

Currently certbot only lives in the community repository. You can find out which repo a package is in by looking at the Alpine Packages website. You’ll need to add the community repository by editing /etc/apk/repositories and adding the following line:

@community http://dl-2.alpinelinux.org/alpine//v3.4/community

Note that this is for version 3.4. You may have to update the version number

After editing your repositories you need to update them and install certbot.

apk update && apk upgrade
apk add certbot@community

Adding a new cert

Certificates can be added with certbot using the wizard. Don’t forget to stop any instances of nginx first!

certbot certonly

Updating certs automatically

Let’s Encrypt certs only last 3 months. This is by design. One of the beautiful parts of Let’s Encrypt is that we can update the certs automatically. I have created a script in etc/periodic/weekly to update my scripts. It only has one line:

/usr/bin/certbot renew --standalone --pre-hook "service nginx stop" --post-hook "service nginx start"

Don’t forget to make this script executable!

This script is run by cron on a weekly basis. It automatically stops nginx before it starts and starts it back up when it’s finished.

Step-by-step guide to creating an Alpine container in Proxmox

Sun, 12 Jun 2016 19:02:58 +0000

Download the Alpine template

Templates can be downloaded directly from the Proxmox web interface, though it’s a bit hidden. You have to go to Storage View –> local –> Content –> Templates.

Note: local is the name of my local storage, but yours may be different. Find out where your container templates are stored by going to Datacenter –> Storage and see where ‘Container Templates are stored.

From here you can just click on the ‘Templates’ button, locate the Alpine Linux template and download.

This will download the file to /var/lib/vz/template/cache by default. You can also upload templates manually to that location if you wish.

Creating the container

Let’s start by creating a new container from the Proxmox web interface.

General Information

Next we’ll fill out the general information about the container

Field	Purpose
Node	Physical machine that the container will live on. I only have one server in my 'cluster' so that is my only choice.
VM ID	Proxmox's internal vmid for this container. We will be using this number a lot, especially when using the command line tools
Hostname	Self-explanitory
Resource pool	Only important if you're using resource pools. Can be ignored if you have a simple setup.
Password	Password for root user

Template

Here you will want to select the Alpine template that we downloaded previously

Root Disk

The only thing I usually change on this tab is the root disk size. That being said, if you’re creating a container that you plan on using a lot of storage, don’t add it here. You can mount host directories in the container directly.

CPU

Just set your CPU core limit and be on your way. Don’t worry about oversubscribing to CPU cores, this is just the limit that a single container can use. Also see this thread if you want to know about CPU units.

Memory

Set the memory and swap space that you want allocated to the container. Remember that containers are much more lightweight than VMs, so you don’t need to give them as much RAM. You can guess low on this page, and then easily increase it in the future as needed.

Network

Here is a basic network setup that I use. I like to leave a static IP address and set the last octet to the vmid assigned by Proxmox (112 in this case). This makes life easier if you’re running a relatively simple network.

DNS

Here you can leave all the defaults. Only change this section if you know why you’re changing this section.

Confirm and Finish

You’re ready to rip. You should see a successful creation as shown below.

Start and access your new container

From here on out I prefer to use the command line tools to interact with my containers. This is done from an SSH session on the host machine.

Proxmox uses the pct tool to manage containers. We’ll also need to know the vmid that Proxmox assigned to the container upon creation.

# Start the container
pct start <vmid>

# List all containers w/ status
pct list

# Access the container
pct enter <vmid>

Once you pct enter your container, you should be able to apk update && apk upgrade.

# pct enter 112                                                                                    
/ # apk update && apk upgrade
fetch http://dl-2.alpinelinux.org/alpine//v3.3/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
v3.3.3-57-gb0ca6a4 [http://dl-2.alpinelinux.org/alpine//v3.3/main]
OK: 5317 distinct packages available
(1/2) Upgrading libcrypto1.0 (1.0.2g-r0 -> 1.0.2h-r0)
(2/2) Upgrading libssl1.0 (1.0.2g-r0 -> 1.0.2h-r0)
OK: 6 MiB in 16 packages
/ # 

That’s all there is to it! You can now download any package from the APK Repository, or follow one of my guides.

Why I moved my homelab over to Alpine Linux containers

Sun, 12 Jun 2016 03:13:54 +0000

Ever since I purchased my home server (a Dell T20) I have been running Proxmox for all of my home server needs. I had never used containers before and I assumed that I would be using it to manage virtual servers. I tried using OpenVZ containers (because it’s so easy in Proxmox) running Debian and found that they worked great for all of my use cases. I ended up not creating a single real VM.

Proxmox 4.2 introduced support for Alpine Linux and I decided to move as much as I could over.

Containers vs VMs

The biggest benefit of using containers over virtual machines is the reduction of overhead. Each virtual machine you run has virtual hardware and it’s own kernel. If you have 5 virtual machines running on your server, you have 5 sets of virtualized hardware and 5 separate operating system kernels: even if they’re exactly the same!

Containers solve this problem by sharing the same kernel. If you have 5 containers on your system you still just have one instance of the kernel. This makes it so that you can run many more containers on a server than you would virtual machines.

Wait! Not all operating systems use the same kernel! You’re right. This is a limitation of containers. You can’t run a BSD-based OS on a Linux container host, and Windows is out of the question. Fortunately for us, you can do pretty much everything with Linux.

Another nice benefit of Proxmox is that it can also manage virtual machines, so you could create one in a pinch.

So Docker is like the best container thingie, right?

Docker is so hot right now. It has tons of support, but it’s not a good choice for a homelab. Docker was designed for the enterprise environment. It was designed so that each container would really only house a single process. This is an extremely powerful idea, but it comes with a complexity doesn’t add much value to a home server setup.

Here’s an example. Let’s say that you want to run a Wordpress website. Docker would recommend that you install Wordpress in one container and MySQL in a separate container, and have a third data volume for static content. You would then have to use Docker tools to wire the three containers together so that they can talk to each other. This extra overhead can be a pain in a homelab situation, because we’re not going to be using the scaling benefits that it provides.

OpenVZ and LXC containers are designed with the purpose of replicating the native OS environment. They feel like regular full-fledged operating systems. They are made to run multiple processes. You can run you Wordpress server, database server in the same container and you can have persistent data. Yes please!

Alpine Linux

I first built my homelab on Debian containers. Everything worked great, but offsite backups were a bit heavy for my abysmal upload rate. I came across Alpine as a possible alternative, and I had to give it a go.

From the Alpine web site:

Alpine Linux is built around musl libc and busybox. This makes it smaller and more resource efficient than traditional GNU/Linux distributions. A container requires no more than 8 MB and a minimal installation to disk requires around 130 MB of storage. Not only do you get a fully-fledged Linux environment but a large selection of packages from the repository.

They’re not kidding about how small it is, checkout top running on a brand new installation:

In my experience, Alpine has packages for almost everything I want (Plex is the big exception, but they do have Emby). It may take a little more wrenching than a more popular distribution, but it’s worth it for me.

Summary: It’s tiny and has tons of easily-installed packages

Real life size differences

I have been most impressed by how small the containers are. My container backups have gone from 1Gb+ to 8-100MiB. This makes a huge difference for my off-site backup bandwidth.

Application	Backup Size (gzip)
Ghost Blog	59MiB
Laverna	69MiB
Transmission w/ OpenVPN client	5MiB
Squid	9MiB
SickRage	69MiB
Selenium w/ Firefox	105MiB

Guides

I’ve documented my process for others to follow:

Have fun!

Install a Headless Selenium server in an Alpine Linux container

Sat, 11 Jun 2016 14:42:36 +0000

Selenium is a web automation tool. It can be used to crawl and scrape websites. It requires a web browser installed to use as a web driver: we’re going to use Firefox. We’ll also need to trick Firefox into thinking there is a display attached: we’ll user Xvfb for that.

One setup, you’ll be able to run Selenium scripts at your pleasure.

Prerequisites

A virgin Alpine Linux container
A medium knowledge of Linux

Add Firefox repository to APK

As of this blog post, Firefox is not available in the main alpine repository. You can search the Alpine repository to find out where you can install Firefox from. In my case, it is available in the community repository branch v3.3.

With that information, I can add the following line to /etc/apk/repositories

http://dl-2.alpinelinux.org/alpine//v3.3/community

Update your cache to pull from the new repository

apk upgrade --update-cache --available

Install Selenium dependencies

Now you should be install Firefox and all other Selenium dependencies without issue.

apk add xvfb firefox dbus py-pip ttf-dejavu

Here is what we just installed:

Repository	Purpose
xvfb	A virtual display driver. We're building a headless system, so we need a virtual display for our web browser to run in.
firefox	We will use the Firefox driver for Selenium. This is what we will use for scraping web sites.
py-pip	Used to install Selenium drivers for Python
ttf-dejavu	Fonts! These are required for Firefox to render pages

Setup Xvfb virtual display server

Test Xvfb is setup properly

We should be able to run the Xvfb virtual display server by running

Xvfb :99 -ac &

Check to make sure your display server is running using the top command.

Note: If you get an error complaining about a machine-id, install the dbus package and run dbus-uuidgen > /etc/machine-id. You can then uninstall dbus.

Setup Xvfb to start on system boot

We will use the local service to create a basic script that will start our service at boot time. We’ll start by enabling the local service to run at boot.

rc-update add local default

Now we need to create our start script. When local service is enabled, it will run all executable scripts in the /etc/local.d/ that end with .start at boot time. It will run all .stop scripts when the local service is stopped

In our case, we just need a single script /etc/local.d/Xvfb.start with the following lines:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/Xvfb :99 -ac &

Now make it executable:

chmod +x /etc/local.d/Xvfb.start

Note: Now is a good time to test that everything is working smoothly. Stop and start your container and then check to see if the Xvfb service is running

Note: Creating a script to shutdown Xvfb is left as an exercise for the reader

Install Selenium with Python

We’re going to use Python Selenium bindings because it’s really easy to get started.

pip install --upgrade pip # ensure pip is upgraded to latest version
pip install selenium requests

That’s it. You can checkout the Selenium Python Getting Started Guide.

Conclusion

How to install Laverna in an Alpine LXC container

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 15:21:37 +0000

This guide will get you Laverna running inside a super tiny and secure Alpine Linux container.

Prerequisites

A server with LXC installed
A basic Alpine LXC container setup - Guide

Setup Laverna

Install dependencies

apk add openssl unzip

Download Laverna files

mkdir -p /var/www/
cd /var/www/
wget https://github.com/Laverna/static-laverna/archive/gh-pages.zip -O laverna.zip
unzip -uo laverna.zip

Install Nginx

We need a web server to serve Laverna. We’re going to use nginx.

apk add nginx

We need to update nginx to point at the directory that houses Laverna. This only takes one change in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. Change the root value under server to /var/www/laverna

- root http
+ root /var/www/laverna

Start your new site

All we have left is to start nginx, and set it to start at boot.

rc-update add nginx
rc-service start nginx

You can now visit your site at http://[ip address]

Clean Up

In an effort to keep our container as small as possible, we should clean up after ourselves.

rm /var/www/laverna.zip
apk del unzip

Start Laverna container at system boot

We’ve setup our Laverna service to start up when the container boots, but we also need to set up our Laverna container to start when the host boots.

From the host machine, edit /var/lib/lxc/laverna/config to add the following line:

lxc.start.auto = 1

To test to make sure your container will boot on startup, shut down the container and then run the following command:

lxc-autostart

This command starts all containers that are marked to boot on startup. After running this command you should be able to navigate to Laverna from your web browser.

Now what?

Take some actual notes

How to setup OpenVPN on an Alpine LXC container

Sat, 09 Apr 2016 03:01:51 +0000

Alpine on LXC is an excellent base for setting up an application. This guide will show you how to setup an OpenVPN connection that connects automatically when the container is started.

Prerequisites

A server with LXC installed
A basic Alpine LXC container setup - Guide

Setup tun module

In order to connect to an OpenVPN server, we need to have a tun adapter setup in our container. Enabling the tun adapter on the host system is beyond the scope of this guide. You’ll have to Google it.

Add the following lines to the container’s config file in /var/lib/lxc/vpn/config to give your container permission to use the host’s tun module, and create the tun node on startup:

# Add as last item in devices section
lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 10:200 rwm

# Create tun node on bootup
# Add as last item in file
lxc.hook.autodev = sh -c "modprobe tun; cd ${LXC_ROOTFS_MOUNT}/dev; mkdir net; mknod net/tun c 10 200; chmod 0666 net/tun"

Proxmox Note: if you’re using Proxmox, your container config will be located in /etc/pve/lxc/<vmid>.conf

Setup OpenVPN client

Enter the container and install OpenVPN

lxc-attach -n vpn
apk add openvpn

Marvel that your container is a mere 12MB!

OpenVPN configuration

You should be able to obtain the OpenVPN configuration from your OpenVPN provider. A sample configuration is available from the OpenVPN website. This file will need to be copied to your container to /etc/openvpn/openvpn.conf. This is the default config file that is picked up when the OpenVPN service is started.

Now you can test the VPN connection manually

openvpn /etc/openvpn/openvpn.conf

# Ensure the tunnel was created by running
ifconfig

Start OpenVPN at boot

rc-update add openvpn

That’s it!

Test your configuration

Exit your container and reboot it

lxc-stop -n vpn
lxc-start -n vpn
lxc-attach -n vpn
ifconfig

You should be able to see a tun0 connection in the list of interfaces.

What Next?

You may want to use OpenVPN on several containers. The easiest way to accomplish this is to stop your new is to clone this container into a new container:

lxc-clone vpn newvpn

That was easy.

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