Step 1

First we have to get us a free subdomain with DynDNS. Therefore we register us for free at No-IP.com. We are going to be using the free option.

Step 2

Now we install the No-IP.com the Dynamic DNS Update client for Linux on our Raspberry Pi and unpack it. He will later check every few minutes to see if the IP address has changed, if so, notify the application this No-IP.com with, so your subdomain refers again to the current IP address of Raspberry Pis.

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wget http://www.noip.com/client/linux/noip-duc-linux.tar.gz
tar xf noip-duc-linux.tar.gz
rm noip-duc-linux.tar.gz

Step 3

Rename directory and enter:

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mv noip-* noip
cd noip

Step 4

Now we install the application. At the end of this call we are asked for our e-mail address of the No-IP.com account, our password, and the subdomain and the update interval. Here we enter our data.

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sudo make install

Step 5

Now we have to start the installed application using the following command.

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sudo noip2

Step 6

If you want that the update will start automatically with the client Raspberry Pi and thus always updates the IP, you can to create a crontab.
crontab -e

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@reboot cd /home/pi/noip && sudo noip2

Now forward the ports on whatever web services you will be using with your custom domain.

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is a set of free and open technologies for instant messaging, multi-party chat, voice and video chat, and more. It is a federated system, meaning that a user from one XMPP server can messaging someone with a different account on another server. This guide will show you how to setup your own XMPP chat service on Ubuntu or Debian using the Prosody XMPP server.

Use this guide to configure dynamic DNS on your raspberry pi if you would like to connect to a named domain. This is most likely essential if you are hosting your pi from your home.

Install

Prosody should already be in your distribution’s the repositories.

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sudo apt-get install prosody

Generate you self-signed certs and keys:

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sudo su
cd /etc/prosody/certs/
sudo openssl genrsa -out prosody.key 4096
sudo openssl req -new -sha256 -key prosody.key -out prosody.csr
sudo openssl x509 -req -sha256 -days 3650 -in prosody.csr -signkey prosody.key -out prosody.crt
exit

Next we plug in our SSH stuff to encrypt communicatinos on our server. We change this:

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VirtualHost "example.com"
        enabled = false -- Remove this line to enable this host
 
        -- Assign this host a certificate for TLS, otherwise it would use the one
        -- set in the global section (if any).
        -- Note that old-style SSL on port 5223 only supports one certificate, and will always
        -- use the global one.
        ssl = {
                key = "/etc/prosody/certs/example.com.key";
                certificate = "/etc/prosody/certs/example.com.crt";
        }

Into this:

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VirtualHost "myIncredibleSiteName.no-ip.org"
        ssl = {
                key = "/etc/prosody/certs/prosody.key";
                certificate = "/etc/prosody/certs/prosody.crt";
        }

Enable multi-user chat, if desired:

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Component "conference.example.no-ip.net" "muc"

Restart to make settings take effect:

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sudo /etc/init.d/prosody restart

Next, we configure our first user.

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prosodyctl adduser admin@example.ddns.net

Give the desired password at prompt.

Now foreward ports 5222 and 5269 on your router (Go ahead and foreward 5280 and 5281 as well if you want to upload and store files on your server).

To view information about your Prosody install, enter:

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prosodyctl about

Conversations

An excellent free and open source XMPP client for Android is Conversations (also available at no cost on F-Droid

After installing the app, insert your user credentials.

Depending an the XMPP server that you create an account on, different functionality will be available to you. Here is a list of different servers and the XMPP extensions that they support

Right now we can add contacts and message with them. We can send any type of file, and it is routed and stored on the destination’s phone.

But what about group messaging? What about syncing message on different devices?

Go to Manage Accounts, select yours.

In upper right, check the Server info box.

We have a lot of cool stuff missing, it’s time we tried enabling it!

Modules

Here is a great list of public XMPP servers and the extensions that they support.

On our server, let’s enable all of the modules that the Conversations app supports.

First, install mercurial:

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sudo apt-get install mercurial

Go into /usr/lib/prosody

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hg clone https://hg.prosody.im/prosody-modules/ prosody-modules

In /etc/prosody/prosody.lua.config, add below the admin line plugin_paths = { "/usr/lib/prosody/prosody-modules" }

This is what my modules_enabled portion looks like now:

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modules_enabled = {
  -- Generally required
    "roster"; -- Allow users to have a roster. Recommended ;)
    "saslauth"; -- Authentication for clients and servers. Recommended if you want to log in.
    "tls"; -- Add support for secure TLS on c2s/s2s connections
    "dialback"; -- s2s dialback support
    "disco"; -- Service discovery
  -- Not essential, but recommended
    "private"; -- Private XML storage (for room bookmarks, etc.)
    "vcard"; -- Allow users to set vCards
  
  -- These are commented by default as they have a performance impact
    --"privacy"; -- Support privacy lists
    --"compression"; -- Stream compression (Debian: requires lua-zlib module to work)
  -- Nice to have
    "version"; -- Replies to server version requests
    "uptime"; -- Report how long server has been running
    "time"; -- Let others know the time here on this server
    "ping"; -- Replies to XMPP pings with pongs
    "pep"; -- Enables users to publish their mood, activity, playing music and more
    "register"; -- Allow users to register on this server using a client and change passwords
  -- Admin interfaces
    "admin_adhoc"; -- Allows administration via an XMPP client that supports ad-hoc commands
    --"admin_telnet"; -- Opens telnet console interface on localhost port 5582
  
  -- HTTP modules
    "bosh"; -- Enable BOSH clients, aka "Jabber over HTTP"
    "http_files"; -- Serve static files from a directory over HTTP
  -- Other specific functionality
    "posix"; -- POSIX functionality, sends server to background, enables syslog, etc.
    --"groups"; -- Shared roster support
    --"announce"; -- Send announcement to all online users
    --"welcome"; -- Welcome users who register accounts
    --"watchregistrations"; -- Alert admins of registrations
    --"motd"; -- Send a message to users when they log in
    --"legacyauth"; -- Legacy authentication. Only used by some old clients and bots.
    --
    --external modules--
    "carbons";
    "mam";
    "mam_archive";
    "smacks";
    "http";
    "http_upload";
    "http_muc_log";
    "csi";
    "privacy";
    "blocking";
};
--HTTP STUFF-----
http_ports = { 5280 }
http_interfaces = { "*" }
 
https_ports = { 5281 }
https_interfaces = { "*" }
http_upload_file_size_limit = 1024 * 1024 * 20 --20MB
 https_ssl = {
    certificate = "/etc/prosody/certs/prosody.crt";
    key = "/etc/prosody/certs/prosody.key";
    }
--END HTTP STUFF------

Restart Prosody to enable changes:

sudo /etc/init.d/prosody restart

All my modules are enabled!

I had to share this little gem of a program. Many people have a google drive account, but in linux there was no convienent way to access your files from the Desktop. This program allows you to mount your drive files on your desktop, eliminating the need to sync and waste valuable hard drive space. The souce can be obtained here.

Download:

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alessandro-strada/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install google-drive-ocamlfuse

Usage:

The first time, you can run google-drive-ocamlfuse without parameters:

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google-drive-ocamlfuse

This command will create the default application directory (~/.gdfuse/default), containing the configuration file config (see the wiki page for more details about configuration). And it will start a web browser to obtain authorization to access your Google Drive. This will let you modify default configuration before mounting the filesystem.

Then you can mount the filesystem:

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google-drive-ocamlfuse mountpoint

If you have more than one account, you can run:

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google-drive-ocamlfuse -label label [mountpoint]

Using label to distinguish different accounts. The program will use the directory ~/.gdfuse/label to host configuration, application state, and file cache. No file is shared among different accounts, so you can have a different configuration for each one.

I had a specific problem that i wanted to solve: setting up a wordpress installation that had HTTPS, and it had to be inside of a docker container. Seemed challenging.

Luckily for me, the project HTTPS-PORTAL is is working order and being actively developed!

Using Let’s Encrypt’s certificate automation, I was able to set up an HTTPS wordpress install in under five minutes. Here are some reasons why sites should be using HTTPS:

• HTTPS helps prevent intruders from tampering with the communications between your websites and your users’ browsers. Intruders include intentionally malicious attackers, and legitimate but intrusive companies, such as ISPs or hotels that inject ads into pages.

• HTTPS prevents intruders from being able to passively listen in on the communications between your websites and your users.

• It is much cheaper and faster to imlement because of the Let’s Encrypt project!

I followed this tutorial to get me up and running with my wordpress install. I had some problems understanding how to write a docker-compose file, but the blog author was very quick in helping to correct my mistakes.

Compose

Here is what my docker-compose.yml file contained, minus the real password:

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# docker-compose.yml for my_wordpress site
https-portal:
  image: steveltn/https-portal
  ports:
    - 80:80
    - 443:443
  links:
    - wordpress
  environment:
    - "DOMAINS=containerize.us -> http://wordpress" #maps https-portal to the wordpress image
    - "PRODUCTION=true" #ensures that the certificate will be recognized as valid by web browsers
wordpress:
  image: wordpress
  links:
    - db:mysql
db:
  image: mariadb
  ports:
    - 3306:3306
  environment:
    MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: '<secure_password>'

In the docker-compose.yml directory, run the command to start the containers:

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docker-compose up

After the server generates a TLS Diffie-Hellman key and spins up the WordPress instance, we have our WordPress site installed!

Increase Upload Allowance

Now let’s insert some media. While you could just embed everything from an external site like youtube and imagur, it is nice to have the option to host your own assets. Right now, the upload limit is a puny 2MB. Let’s change it to 64MB.

To enter the running container, type:

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docker exec -i -t mywordpress_wordpress_1 bash

To install the nano text editor, type:

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apt-get update
apt-get install nano

Create the file php.ini in you WordPress root directory.

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vi php.ini

Once in, paste these lines:

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upload_max_filesize = 64M
post_max_size = 64M
memory_limit = 64M

Stop the running containers…

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docker-compose stop

And restart them in detatched mode

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docker-compose up -d

Hooray, our upload limit is now increased! We can now upload media up to 64MB.

My Running Sites (Currently offline)

You can visit the site I generated this way at https://news.containerize.us

Also, using keys a generate with HTTPS-PORTAL, I created a Mattermost instance.

Click here to join my Containers Mattermost group.

This wasn’t a very hard of a project, there are already many tutorials and boiler plates for getting a bot up and running on Node.js with the Twitter API. You can find the source code to my bot here.

Clone the git repo git clone https://github.com/JacksonJS/sharkTankBot.git and setup your Twitter account for apps, and plugin your credentials into config.js

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module.exports = {
  consumer_key: 'use',
  consumer_secret: 'your',
  access_token: 'own',
  access_token_secret: 'tokens&keys'
}

Run npm install in your root folder, allow the dependencies to be downloaded, and then run:

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node bot.js

Tweets by @SharkTankBot

Super easy!

There are several guides to help you start making a bot, and I used https://github.com/nisrulz/twitterbot-nodejs as a starting point for @SharkTankBot.

Info for using the Twitter API Client for node is located here

Edit: I am now using the forever package for node to keep this bot from crashing. To use, run npm install -g forever.

To start the bot, while in the bot root directory, run forever start --spinSleepTime 10000 bot.js.

Instead of writing to the console, our logs will go somewhere in ~/.forever. To locate the log for your currently running node project, run forever list.

If you would like to see the live updates of logs, run tail -f <logfile>.

I will update this post as I add new features to the bot. Have fun, and stay safe!

😎

I will assume you have an ubuntu 14.04 Digital Ocean droplet to install your Quasselcore. When we install, we will be using the SQlite database so that we can use the manaers.py script later to add and manage multiple users.

SSH into your server.

Add repository

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mamarley/quassel
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install quassel-core

Check that Quasselcore is running (I’m using sudo to display the process name)

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sudo netstat -tulpn

Output should be almost identical to:

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tcp6       0      0 :::4242                 :::*                    LISTEN      764/quasselcore

On client computer, add repo:

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mamarley/quassel
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install quasselclient

Connect your Quassel Client to your server and follow the setup wizard.

Create Admin User:

Use the default sqlite database:

Accept the self-signed certificate:

Add core accounts:

Setup your networks:

Now we will configure Quassel to add users. We cannot do this in the gui, we must do it as root in the core.

First, logout of Quassel on your devices (just to play it safe so we don’t have to do an entire reinstallation).

In your VPS, go to /var/lib/quassel/

Copy the manageusers.py file from this GitHub repo

Run the script.

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./manageusers.py <user> <password>

Open up a new instance of Quasselclient, add the server and user information, and set it up just like before.

Boom, you now have a persistent IRC connection!

NOTE:

If your SQlite database gets too big for your liking you can reduce its size using this script or this other script that includes making a backup.

Here is a weekly purge.

Another method, this time running an sqlite command.

Complete Developer Podcast

Complete Developer Podcast: http://completedeveloperpodcast.com/
New podcast, extremely helpful and informative, very educational

Jupiter Broadcasting

Coder Radio: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/show/coderradio/
Linux Unplugged: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/show/linuxun/
Linux Action show: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/show/linuxactionshow
Linux focused tech podcasts: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/

Software Engineering Daily

Software Engineering Daily: http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/

Devchat.tv

Javascript Jabber: https://devchat.tv/js-jabber
Several great tech podcasts: https://devchat.tv/

Spec.fm

Developer Tea: http://spec.fm/podcasts/developer-tea
Does Not Compute: http://spec.fm/podcasts/does-not-compute
Several great development and design podcasts: http://spec.fm/

Twit.tv

Security Now!: https://www.grc.com/securitynow.html

The Changelog

The Changelog: https://changelog.com/