site/page/search/index.json

[{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m a software engineer with a passion for open-source, infrastructure, tooling and security.\n","href":"/about/","title":"About"},{"content":"","href":"/","title":"davegallant"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/dotfiles/","title":"dotfiles"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/home-manager/","title":"home-manager"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/nix/","title":"nix"},{"content":"","href":"/post/","title":"Posts"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/","title":"Tags"},{"content":"Over the years I have collected a number of dotfiles that I have shared across both Linux and macOS machines (~/.zshrc, ~/.config/git/config, ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf, etc). I have tried several different ways to manage them, including bare git repos and utilities such as GNU Stow. These solutions work well enough, but I have since found what I would consider a much better solution for organizing user configuration: home-manager.\nWhat is home-manager? Before understanding home-manager, it is worth briefly discussing what nix is. nix is a package manager that originally spawned from a PhD thesis. Unlike other package managers, it uses symbolic links to keep track of the currently installed packages, keeping around the old ones in case you may want to rollback.\nFor example, I have used nix to install the package bind which includes dig. You can see that it is available on multiple platforms. The absolute path of dig can be found by running:\n❯ ls -lh $(which dig) lrwxr-xr-x 73 root 31 Dec 1969 /run/current-system/sw/bin/dig -\u0026gt; /nix/store/0r4qdyprljd3dki57jn6c6a8dh2rbg9g-bind-9.16.16-dnsutils/bin/dig Notice that there is a hash included in the file path? This is a nix store path and is computed by the nix package manager. This nix pill does a good job explaining how this hash is computed. All of the nix pills are worth a read, if you are interested in learning more about nix itself. However, using home-manager does not require extensive knowledge of nix.\nPart of the nix ecosystem includes nixpkgs. Many popular tools can be found already packaged in this repository. As you can see with these stats, there is a large number of existing packages that are being maintained by the community. Contributing a new package is easy, and anyone can do it!\nhome-manager leverages the nix package manager (and nixpkgs), as well the nix language so that you can declaratively define your system configuration. I store my nix-config in git so that I can keep track of my packages and configurations, and retain a clean and informative git commit history so that I can understand what changed and why.\nSetting up home-manager  ⚠️ If you run this on your main machine, make sure you backup your configuration files first. home-manager is pretty good about not overwriting existing configuration, but it is better to have a backup! Alternatively, you could test this out on a VM or cloud instance.\n The first thing you should do is install nix:\ncurl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh It\u0026rsquo;s not a good idea to curl and execute files from the internet (without verifying integrity), so you might want to download the install script first and take a peak before executing it!\nOpen up a new shell in your terminal and running nix should work. If not, run . ~/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh\nNow, install home-manager:\nnix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/master.tar.gz home-manager nix-channel --update nix-shell \u0026#39;\u0026lt;home-manager\u0026gt;\u0026#39; -A install You should see a wave of /nix/store/* paths being displayed on your screen.\nNow, to start off with a basic configuration, open up ~/.config/nixpkgs/home.nix in the editor of your choice and paste this in (you will want to change userName and homeDirectory):\n{ config, pkgs, ... }: { programs.home-manager.enable = true; home = { username = \u0026#34;dave\u0026#34;; homeDirectory = \u0026#34;/home/dave\u0026#34;; stateVersion = \u0026#34;21.11\u0026#34;; packages = with pkgs; [ bind exa fd ripgrep ]; }; programs = { git = { enable = true; aliases = { \u0026#34;aa\u0026#34; = \u0026#34;add -A .\u0026#34;; \u0026#34;br\u0026#34; = \u0026#34;branch\u0026#34;; \u0026#34;c\u0026#34; = \u0026#34;commit -S\u0026#34;; \u0026#34;ca\u0026#34; = \u0026#34;commit -S --amend\u0026#34;; \u0026#34;cb\u0026#34; = \u0026#34;checkout -b\u0026#34;; \u0026#34;co\u0026#34; = \u0026#34;checkout\u0026#34;; \u0026#34;d\u0026#34; = \u0026#34;diff\u0026#34;; \u0026#34;l\u0026#34; = \u0026#34;log --graph --pretty=format:\u0026#39;%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)\u0026lt;%an\u0026gt;%Creset\u0026#39; --abbrev-commit\u0026#34;; }; delta = { enable = true; options = { features = \u0026#34;line-numbers decorations\u0026#34;; whitespace-error-style = \u0026#34;22 reverse\u0026#34;; plus-style = \u0026#34;green bold ul \u0026#39;#198214\u0026#39;\u0026#34;; decorations = { commit-decoration-style = \u0026#34;bold yellow box ul\u0026#34;; file-style = \u0026#34;bold yellow ul\u0026#34;; file-decoration-style = \u0026#34;none\u0026#34;; }; }; }; extraConfig = { push = { default = \u0026#34;current\u0026#34;; }; pull = { rebase = true; }; }; }; starship = { enable = true; enableZshIntegration = true; settings = { add_newline = false; scan_timeout = 10; }; }; zsh = { enable = true; enableAutosuggestions = true; enableSyntaxHighlighting = true; history.size = 1000000; localVariables = { CASE_SENSITIVE = \u0026#34;true\u0026#34;; DISABLE_UNTRACKED_FILES_DIRTY = \u0026#34;true\u0026#34;; RPROMPT = \u0026#34;\u0026#34;; # override because macOS defaults to filepath ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_HIGHLIGHT_STYLE = \u0026#34;fg=#838383,underline\u0026#34;; ZSH_DISABLE_COMPFIX = \u0026#34;true\u0026#34;; }; initExtra = \u0026#39;\u0026#39; export PAGER=less \u0026#39;\u0026#39;; shellAliases = { \u0026#34;..\u0026#34; = \u0026#34;cd ..\u0026#34;; grep = \u0026#34;rg --smart-case\u0026#34;; ls = \u0026#34;exa -la --git\u0026#34;; }; \u0026#34;oh-my-zsh\u0026#34; = { enable = true; plugins = [ \u0026#34;gitfast\u0026#34; \u0026#34;last-working-dir\u0026#34; ]; }; }; }; } Save the file and run:\nhome-manager switch You should see another wave of /nix/store/* paths. The new configuration should now be active.\nIf you run zsh, you should see that you have starship and access to several other utils such as rg, fd, and exa.\nThis basic configuration above is also defining your ~/.config/git/config and .zshrc. If you already have either of these files, home-manager will complain about them already existing.\nIf you run cat ~/.zshrc, you will see the way these configuration files are generated.\nWrapping up And that is how you can get started defining your user configuration with home-manager. You can extend this configuration for programs such as (neo)vim, emacs, alacritty, ssh, etc. To see other programs, take a look at home-manager/modules/programs.\n","href":"/blog/2021/09/08/why-i-threw-out-my-dotfiles/","title":"Why I Threw Out My Dotfiles"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/adguard/","title":"adguard"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/homelab/","title":"homelab"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/jellyfin/","title":"jellyfin"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/netdata/","title":"netdata"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/pihole/","title":"pihole"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/plex/","title":"plex"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/tailscale/","title":"tailscale"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/virtualization/","title":"virtualization"},{"content":"A homelab can be an inexpensive way to host a multitude of internal/external services and learn a lot in the process.\nDo you want host your own Media server? Ad blocker? Web server? Are you interested in learning more about Linux? Virtualization? Networking? Security? Building a homelab can be an entertaining playground to enhance your computer skills.\nOne of the best parts about building a homelab is that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have to be a large investment in terms hardware. One of the simplest ways to build a homelab is out of a refurbished computer. Having multiple machines/nodes provides the advantage of increased redundancy, but starting out with a single node is enough to reap many of the benefits of having a homelab.\nVirtualization Virtualizing your hardware is an organized way of dividing up your machine\u0026rsquo;s resources. This can be done with something such as a Virtual Machine or something lighter like a container using LXC or runC. Containers have much less overhead in terms of boot time and storage allocation. This Stack Overflow answer sums it up nicely.\nA hypervisor such as Proxmox can be installed in minutes on a new machine. It provides a web interface and a straight-forward way to spin up new VMs and containers. You\u0026rsquo;ll want to ensure that VT-d and VT-X are enabled in the BIOS if you decide to install a hypervisor to manage your virtualization.\nServices So what are some useful services to deploy?\n Jellyfin or Plex - basically a self-hosted Netflix that can be used to stream from multiple devices, and the best part is that you manage the content! Unlike Plex, Jellyfin is open-source and can be found here. changedetection - is a self-hosted equivalent to something like visualping.io that will notify you when a webpage changes and keep track of the diffs Adguard or Pihole - can block a list of known trackers for all clients on your local network. I\u0026rsquo;ve used pihole for a long time, but have recently switched to Adguard since the UI is more modern and it has the ability to toggle on/off a pre-defined list of services, including Netflix (this is useful if you have stealthy young kids). Either of these will speed up your internet experience, simply because you won\u0026rsquo;t need to download all of the extra tracking bloat.  There is a large number of services you can self-host, including your own applications that you might be developing. awesome-self-hosted provides a curated list of services that might be of interest to you.\nVPN You could certainly setup and manage your own VPN by using something like OpenVPN, but there is also something else you can try: tailscale. It is a very quick way to create fully-encrypted connections between clients. And by using its MagicDNS, it is a truly magical solution. If one of your nodes has a hostname of plex, you can simply access it by referring to its hostname (i.e ssh plex@plex). This way you can create a secure tunnel to your homelab from anywhere in the world!\nMonitoring Monitoring can become an important aspect of your homelab after it starts to become something that is relied upon. One of the simplest ways to setup some monitoring is using netdata. It can be installed on individual containers, VMs, and also a hypervisor (such as Proxmox). All of the monitoring works out of the box by detecting disks, memory, network interfaces, etc.\nAdditionally, all of these different agents can be connected to netdata cloud, which can alert you when some of your infrastructure is down or in a degraded state. Adding additional nodes to netdata cloud is as simple as a 1 line shell command.\nPrometheus metrics combined with Grafana is another popular way of visualizing metrics as well as setup alerting. These are powerful tools that many companies use in production systems. If you are looking for inspiration, check out CERN\u0026rsquo;s public Grafana.\nIn Summary Building out a homelab can be incredibly rewarding and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t always require buying a rack full of expensive servers to get a significant amount of utility.\n","href":"/blog/2021/09/06/what-to-do-with-a-homelab/","title":"What To Do With A Homelab"},{"content":"AppGate SDP provides a Zero Trust network. This post describes how to get AppGate SDP 4.3.2 working on Arch Linux.\nDepending on the AppGate SDP Server that is running, you may require a client that is more recent than the latest package on AUR. As of right now, the latest AUR is 4.2.2-1.\nThese steps highlight how to get it working with Python3.8 by making a 1 line modification to AppGate source code.\nPackaging We already know the community package is currently out of date, so let\u0026rsquo;s clone it:\ngit clone https://aur.archlinux.org/appgate-sdp.git cd appgate-sdp You\u0026rsquo;ll likely notice that the version is not what we want, so let\u0026rsquo;s modify the PKGBUILD to the following:\n# Maintainer: Pawel Mosakowski \u0026lt;pawel at mosakowski dot net\u0026gt; pkgname=appgate-sdp conflicts=(\u0026#39;appgate-sdp-headless\u0026#39;) pkgver=4.3.2 _download_pkgver=4.3 pkgrel=1 epoch= pkgdesc=\u0026#34;Software Defined Perimeter - GUI client\u0026#34; arch=(\u0026#39;x86_64\u0026#39;) url=\u0026#34;https://www.cyxtera.com/essential-defense/appgate-sdp/support\u0026#34; license=(\u0026#39;custom\u0026#39;) # dependecies calculated by namcap depends=(\u0026#39;gconf\u0026#39; \u0026#39;libsecret\u0026#39; \u0026#39;gtk3\u0026#39; \u0026#39;python\u0026#39; \u0026#39;nss\u0026#39; \u0026#39;libxss\u0026#39; \u0026#39;nodejs\u0026#39; \u0026#39;dnsmasq\u0026#39;) source=(\u0026#34;https://sdpdownloads.cyxtera.com/AppGate-SDP-${_download_pkgver}/clients/${pkgname}_${pkgver}_amd64.deb\u0026#34; \u0026#34;appgatedriver.service\u0026#34;) options=(staticlibs) prepare() { tar -xf data.tar.xz } package() { cp -dpr \u0026#34;${srcdir}\u0026#34;/{etc,lib,opt,usr} \u0026#34;${pkgdir}\u0026#34; mv -v \u0026#34;$pkgdir/lib/systemd/system\u0026#34; \u0026#34;$pkgdir/usr/lib/systemd/\u0026#34; rm -vrf \u0026#34;$pkgdir/lib\u0026#34; cp -v \u0026#34;$srcdir/appgatedriver.service\u0026#34; \u0026#34;$pkgdir/usr/lib/systemd/system/appgatedriver.service\u0026#34; mkdir -vp \u0026#34;$pkgdir/usr/share/licenses/appgate-sdp\u0026#34; cp -v \u0026#34;$pkgdir/usr/share/doc/appgate/copyright\u0026#34; \u0026#34;$pkgdir/usr/share/licenses/appgate-sdp\u0026#34; cp -v \u0026#34;$pkgdir/usr/share/doc/appgate/LICENSE.github\u0026#34; \u0026#34;$pkgdir/usr/share/licenses/appgate-sdp\u0026#34; cp -v \u0026#34;$pkgdir/usr/share/doc/appgate/LICENSES.chromium.html.bz2\u0026#34; \u0026#34;$pkgdir/usr/share/licenses/appgate-sdp\u0026#34; } md5sums=(\u0026#39;17101aac7623c06d5fbb95f50cf3dbdc\u0026#39; \u0026#39;002644116e20b2d79fdb36b7677ab4cf\u0026#39;) Let\u0026rsquo;s first make sure we have some dependencies. If you do not have yay, check it out.\nyay -S dnsmasq gconf Now, let\u0026rsquo;s install it:\nmakepkg -si Running the client Ok, let\u0026rsquo;s run the client by executing appgate.\nIt complains about not being able to connect.\nEasy fix:\nsudo systemctl start appgatedriver.service Now we should be connected\u0026hellip; but DNS is not working?\nFixing the DNS Running resolvectl should display that something is not right.\nWhy is the DNS not being set by appgate?\n$ head -3 /opt/appgate/linux/set_dns #!/usr/bin/env python3 \u0026#39;\u0026#39;\u0026#39; This is used to set and unset the DNS. It seems like python3 is required for the DNS setting to happen. Let\u0026rsquo;s try to run it.\n$ sudo /opt/appgate/linux/set_dns /opt/appgate/linux/set_dns:88: SyntaxWarning: \u0026#34;is\u0026#34; with a literal. Did you mean \u0026#34;==\u0026#34;? servers = [( socket.AF_INET if x.version is 4 else socket.AF_INET6, map(int, x.packed)) for x in servers] Traceback (most recent call last): File \u0026#34;/opt/appgate/linux/set_dns\u0026#34;, line 30, in \u0026lt;module\u0026gt; import dbus ModuleNotFoundError: No module named \u0026#39;dbus\u0026#39; Ok, let\u0026rsquo;s install it:\n$ sudo python3.8 -m pip install dbus-python Will it work now? Not yet. There\u0026rsquo;s another issue:\n$ sudo /opt/appgate/linux/set_dns /opt/appgate/linux/set_dns:88: SyntaxWarning: \u0026#34;is\u0026#34; with a literal. Did you mean \u0026#34;==\u0026#34;? servers = [( socket.AF_INET if x.version is 4 else socket.AF_INET6, map(int, x.packed)) for x in servers] module \u0026#39;platform\u0026#39; has no attribute \u0026#39;linux_distribution\u0026#39; This is a breaking change in Python3.8.\nSo what is calling platform.linux_distribution?\nLet\u0026rsquo;s search for it:\n$ sudo grep -r \u0026#39;linux_distribution\u0026#39; /opt/appgate/linux/ /opt/appgate/linux/nm.py: if platform.linux_distribution()[0] != \u0026#39;Fedora\u0026#39;: Aha! So this is in the local AppGate source code. This should be an easy fix. Let\u0026rsquo;s just replace this line with:\nif True: # Since we are not using Fedora :) Wrapping up It turns out there are breaking changes in Python3.8.\nThe docs say Deprecated since version 3.5, will be removed in version 3.8: See alternative like the distro package.\nI suppose this highlights one of the caveats of relying upon the system\u0026rsquo;s python, rather than having an isolated, dedicated environment for all dependencies.\n","href":"/blog/2020/03/16/appgate-sdp-on-arch-linux/","title":"AppGate SDP on Arch Linux"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/linux/","title":"linux"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/python/","title":"python"},{"content":"","href":"/tags/vpn/","title":"vpn"},{"content":"test\n","href":"/page/search/","title":""},{"content":"","href":"/authors/","title":"Authors"},{"content":"","href":"/page/","title":"Pages"}]