Akom's Tech Ruminations

In Ubuntu 15.04 it already works in Firefox as long as you have vlc installed, and you select /usr/bin/vlc the first time Firefox asks you what to do. Not so much in Chrome... Chrome uses xdg-open to determine what to launch. By default, xdg-open has no idea what to do with a mms://1.2.3.4/something.wmv style URL, so we need to set up a protocol action in xdg, as per http://askubuntu.com/questions/190895/how-to-change-what-xdg-open-does-with-ssh-userip-liniks :

xdg-mime default vlc.desktop x-scheme-handler/mms

UPDATE: I find that vlc does not gracefully recover from eTVnet's "glitches" - sound stops playing but video continues. Surprisingly, Totem does not have this issue, so I swtiched:

xdg-mime default totem.desktop x-scheme-handler/mms

This is a quick and dirty interface to update-alternatives on Centos/Redhat/Ubuntu for puppet. Seems to work well and doesn't require any modules.
Usage example: alternatives_update { 'java': versiongrep => '1.8' }

class my_alternatives {


  # Manipulates alternatives using update-alternatives.
  # Supports RHEL, Centos and Suse.
  # Ubuntu not tested (yet).
  #
  # If multiple matches are available, picks the first one.
  #
  # There is rudimentary alternatives support in the java class,
  # but it's rather limited and doesn't support most platforms and java versions.
  define update (
    $item = $title,   # the item to manage, ie "java"
    $versiongrep,     # string to pass to grep to select an alternative, ie '1.8' (1.8.*openjdk would also work)
    $optional = true,  # if false, execution will fail if the version is not found
    $altcmd   = 'update-alternatives' # command to use
  ) {

    case $::osfamily {
      'RedHat','SuSE': {


        if ! $optional {
          # verify that we have exactly 1 matching alternatives, unless it's optional
          exec { "check alternatives for ${item}":
            path    => ['/sbin','/bin','/usr/bin','/usr/sbin'],
            command => "echo Alternative for ${item} version containing ${versiongrep} was not found, or multiple found ; false",
            unless  => "test $(${altcmd} --display ${item} | grep '^/' | grep -- '$versiongrep' | wc -l) -eq 1",
            before  => Exec["update alternatives for ${item} to ${versiongrep}"],
          }
        }

        # Runs the update alternatives command
        #  - unless it reports that it's already set to that version
        #  - unless that version is not found via grep
        exec { "update alternatives for ${item} to ${versiongrep}":
          path    => ['/sbin','/bin','/usr/bin','/usr/sbin'],
          command => "${altcmd} --set ${item} $( ${altcmd} --display ${item} | grep '^/' | grep -- '$versiongrep' | head -n 1 | sed 's/ .*$//' ) ",
          unless  => "test -x \"$(${altcmd} --display ${item} | grep 'currently points' | grep -- '$versiongrep' | awk '{print \$NF}')\"",
          onlyif  => "${altcmd} --display ${item} | grep '^/' | grep -- '$versiongrep' ", # check that there is one (if optional and not found, this won't run)
        }

      }

      # Leave Ubuntu alone, this probably won't work there anyway


    }
  }

}
 

Although it'd be nice to have all of your services not rely on their shell environment, sometimes it is unavoidable. In my case, some of the systems are still on init.d (redhat <=65, centos <=65, etc), but some are on systemd (7.0's, suse 12, etc). The old init scripts rely on the .bashrc file. In order to make the service run consistently on both flavors, I had to teach systemd to read the user's bashrc file. This is what it looks like.

[Service]
Type=simple
User=some_user
# Process the normal environment files for this user by starting a login shell
# and outputting it all in a temp file.  This makes it compatible
# with the non-systemd init scripts that still rely on .bashrc
ExecStartPre=/bin/bash --login -c 'env > /tmp/.magic-environment-file'
ExecStart=SERVICE_COMMAND
EnvironmentFile=-/tmp/.magic-environment-file
 

The "-" before the filename seems to make systemd ignore the error if the file is not there (for example, on the first run of the pre command). Now, obviously, you could just set your ~some-user/.bashrc as the EnvironmentFile - but your mileage will vary. systemd will not interpolate variables and it will ignore lines starting with "export"...

Continue reading "Getting a systemd unit to read your .bashrc file for its environment"

pfSense router configuration for Traffic Shaping is relatively convoluted if you're not already familiar with the interface. Assuming that you've used one of the wizards to create the default queues (default, ack, voip, p2p), what you have to do is:

1. Set the upload bandwidth (Traffic Shaper->By Interface->WAN). This may be optional if using the default PRIQ mode
2. Create a rule to match Google Hangouts traffic. According to this helpful post, the UDP ports hangouts uses are 19302-19309 (I'm assuming that outbound UDP is open). Therefore we create a new "match" type firewall rule with these ports as destination and assign them to the voip queue. Here is an example of a Floating rule to do that:
   

   Example Floating Rule
3. For SIP (if you have SIP devices or softphones), you can make a Layer 7 rule (Traffic Shaper -> Layer 7) that assigns sip traffic to the voip queue

This is, of course, just a note for myself.