Is there any IRC Server / Demon with integrated "bouncer"? - server

I want to offer IRC service to other users on my local network.
I'd like to have persistent logs of all (or at least certain) channels and private messages that can be replayed by the client. The log capacity could be limited. I know this is usually handled by a bouncer.
I want this setup to work locally, even if the server uplink goes down, so I probably want to run my own IRC server.
Are there any IRC servers already support this?

Having a common chat and pastebin on the local network is very useful.
I've been attempting this today. And after some tribulations I have success.
I've been running ircd-hybrid without any problems for a while, but conversation histories, as you know, are not saved.
You could use any bouncer but I'll demonstrate ZNC:
If you're running linux, run...
sudo apt-get install znc
once it's installed, run...
znc --makeconf
This generates a config file. When asked for a port number specify a free port. This is the one you will connect to from your client and should NOT be the same as you IRC daemons port.
Later on you will be asked to specify the server you want to connect to, this should be 127.0.0.1:.
Make sure you firewall allows the new port, and restart ircd:
sudo service <your irc daemon> restart
That's it. Unless you've set it's modes to +i, your bouncer should now be visible on the channels you've asked it to join.
For more info on ZNC:
http://wiki.znc.in/FAQ
Might help to talk to the IRC crew at #ircd-coders on irc.ircd-hybrid.org
and for ZNC people... #znc on chat.freenode.net

Related

connecting wget to vpn

I'm trying to download some files using wget but the problem is the files will only download from specific servers how can I use wget over VPN?
p s: I tried use_proxy=yes -e http_proxy=[server]:[port] but it didn't work I need to connect to a VPN server not a proxy
Install a VPN on your machine first, then run the command
Proxies and VPNs are entirely different things. The proxy functionality won't be of any use to you here.
To use a VPN you have to setup a connection at the OS level (i assume linux ? but i could be wrong) - the wget tool itself wont be involved, you'll just run that after your connection is replaced with the VPN connection (no need for any special flags).
As for how you setup the vpn connection, that differs a lot based on the particular details of your situation. It could involve running openvpn yourinfo.ovpn or something like that, or your vpn provider may offer a separate application to set up the tunnel connection and then adjust your OS's routing table so traffic flows through the tunnel instead of to the normal gateway.

How to Confirm PostgreSQL on Ubuntu VM is communicating with External Server for Updates

I have an Ubuntu VM installed on a client's VMware system. Recently, the client's IT informed us that his firewall has been detecting consistent potential port scans to our VM's internal IP address (coming from 87.238.57.227). He asked if this was part of a known package update process on our VM.
He sent us a firewall output where we can see several instances of the port scan, but there are also instances of our Ubuntu VM trying to communicate back to the external server on port 37258 (this is dropped by the firewall).
Based on a google lookup, the hostname of the external IP address is "feris.postgresql.org", with the ASN pointing to a European company called Redpill-Linpro. As far as I can tell, they offer IT consulting services, specializing in open source software (like PostgreSQL, which is installed on our VM). I have never heard of them before though and have no idea why our VM would be communicating with them or vice-versa. I'm also not sure if I'm interpreting the IP lookup information correctly: https://ipinfo.io/87.238.57.227
I'm looking for a way to confirm or disprove that this is just our VM pinging for a standard postgres update. If that's the case I'd like to restrict this behaviour. We would prefer to do these types of updates manually and limit the communication outside of the VM to what is strictly necessary for the functionality of our application.
Update
I sent an email to Redpill's abuse account. They responded quickly saying that the server should not be port scanning anyone and if it appears that way, something is wrong.
The server is part of a cluster of machines that serves apt.postgresql.org among other postgres download sites. I don't think we have anything like ansible or puppet installed that would automatically check for updates but I will look into that to make sure. I'm wondering if Ubuntu reaching out to update the MOTD with the number of available packages would explain why our VM is trying to reach out to the external postgres server?
The abuse rep said in any case there should only be outgoing connections from the VM, not incoming. He asked for some additional info so I will keep communicating with him and try to update this post accordingly
My communication with the client's IT dropped off so I did not get a definitive answer on this, but I'll provide some new details:
I reached out to the abuse email for Redpill-Linpro. He got back to me and confirmed the server corresponding to the detected IP address is part of a cluster that hosts postgres download sites, including apt.postgresql.org. He was surprised to learn we had detected a port scan from their server and seems eager to figure out why that is happening.
He asked if the client IT could pass along some necessary info for them to set up tracking on that server. But the client IT never got back to me. I think he was satisfied that it wasn't malicious and stopped pursuing it.
Here's one of the messages the abuse rep sent me that may be relevant:
That does look a lot like the tcp to the apt download server yes. It's
strange that your firewall reports that many incoming connections, but
they could be fallout from some connection tracking that's not
operating as intended. The timing appears to be matching up more or
less perfectly. And there should definitely not be any ping-back
connections from it.
Since you appear to be using the http version of the server (and not https) bringing the data in cleartext, they should be able to just
dump the TCP connection contents and verify exactly what it does. But
I bet they are going to see a number of http requests initiated by the
apt client that is checking for updates.

Remote control Eclipse on Ubuntu

I'm using Eclipse on many different PC's also on nonPrivat PC's like in the university, I would like to run Eclipse on an Ubuntu Server (I already got one running at home) and access it remotely from another operating system (Windows/Mac/Linux).
I know there are ways like Xrdp, but I don't really want to install a GUI on the Ubuntu Server to do that. (If it's at all possible to access it over the internet)
Are there other ways to deal with that problem? Maybe something quite different than that?
Thanks in advance!
Two solutions.
You can use ssh -X user#your.server. This will create a tunnel for the X protocol, allowing you to run Eclipse with display on your machine, i.e. just
mymachine $ ssh -X me#that.server
thatserver# eclipse
and you will see the GUI on the local machine, provided you have an X server, which should be standard and is easy to find for a Mac (it is called Quartz).
If you are not willing, or not able, to install X on your machine, you could also install tightvnc on the remote machine and a VNC client on your computer. VNC is a different remoting protocol, and can be better than X in some cases, because it has a reputation for fewer round trips in its communication, giving less latency problem.
If you have a database to reach for your project, that can be seen only from the remote machine, maybe inside a DMZ, you might still reach it, creating an SSH tunnel, like this
ssh -X -L <database port>:<database server address>:<port number here> me#that.server
This way you will be able to access the database with which you talk on port database port at address database server address, as seen from the remote server that.server. The port will be forwarded to localhost:por number here.
Do you need to have graphic access to eclipse or do you just need to be able to build projects? If you just want to build projects there is a headless CDT which let's you do that from the command line.

How to set up Mosquitto MQTT broker on a shared server?

Is it possible to run the Mosquitto Broker on any shared server? The closest solution I got to is this here, it only tells how to configure it, but I can't figure out how to install it on my server without ssh.
Another possible solution for my problem will be to use hosted brokers like CloudMQTT. I don't like it's plans and pricing, are there any other alternatives to this?
If you don't have console (SSH) access to the machine to install and run software it is going to be very difficult to add a broker without help from the administrator.
If you do mean a virtual host on a shared web server, then this is unlikely to happen as there is no concept of virtual hosts for MQTT so each user would have to be given their own port number (may be 2 if you want MQTT over websockets)

Using Wireshark With Local Test Application

I have written a small client server socket application. It is a proof of concept for some socket programming that I want to apply to a much bigger project.
For the moment I want to user wireshark to analyse the traffic that goes between them. They are both running on my local machine.
I have installed a loopback interface, and have tried to use wireshark with it.
No joy. Any ideas?
I have successfully analysed traffic between my machine and other machines no problems.
I have had a look here,
http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/Loopback
And I am not using the address 127.0.0.1 which they mention saying you can't capture traffic on 127.0.0.1
Thanks.
You might try creating a virtual machine to run your application and using wireshark on it.
Save yourself some grief and download Microsoft Network Monitor.
As good as Wireshark is on Unixen, Windows is a "special" case :)