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rdwild

Proxmox support

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One of the things that a lot of people that run proxmox done know is that even if you have a support contact support (help) is provided during Austrian Business days which for Proxmox is: Monday to Friday, from 7:00 – 17:00 (CET/CEST). For those of us in North America that means support is available from 1 AM EST to 11 AM EST which can be difficult support wise. And that is why we provide primary support here in North America for many companies as a first line of support. That means when it is 5 pm in Toronto and its 8 pm at Proxmox and support is closed you will still get the support you need.

One other thing that for some of our clients is very important … you don’t need to open a port on your firewall as long as you have access to your proxmox servers from an admin machine. You watch, while we fix!

Linux LVM2 : How to rename a duplicate VG volume

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I have had a few cases where I had to take an old Linux system drive with data on it and move data over to a new system drive. In this case, it was when one of my Ubuntu systems stopped working and would not even boot (it froze during boot up and I could not get any info out of it). At the time I prepped a new Ubuntu system drive and booted up with it and then installed the old drive so I could get data off of it. The problem at the time was that I could not mount the volume due to the fact that it was an LVM volume with the same volume group name at the new system drive so it would not mount. This problem is actually two problems in one. The first one is obvious in that we have two volumes with the same volume name. The second is that it does not show the relationship between the device name and the lvm volume.

If you do an “fdisk – l” it gives you the disk identifier but no volume group names

Disk /dev/sdb: 837.75 GiB, 899527213056 bytes, 1756889088 sectors
Disk model: PERC H710
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: A4AC923B-B4F9-444F-BC48-86591E1A0302

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 2203647 2201600 1G EFI System
/dev/sdb2 2203648 6397951 4194304 2G Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb3 6397952 1756887039 1750489088 834.7G Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/sdc: 837.75 GiB, 899527213056 bytes, 1756889088 sectors
Disk model: PERC H710
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 4EDFCB23-DE1E-41F2-B3DF-6207AD3C0B94

If you do a “lsblk” you get the device device and volume group name but no vg uuid

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda 8:0 0 9.1T 0 disk
└─sda1 8:1 0 9.1T 0 part
sdb 8:16 0 837.8G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 1G 0 part /boot/efi
├─sdb2 8:18 0 2G 0 part /boot
└─sdb3 8:19 0 834.7G 0 part
└─ubuntu–vg–1-ubuntu–lv 253:1 0 834.7G 0 lvm /
sdc 8:32 0 837.8G 0 disk
├─sdc1 8:33 0 1G 0 part
├─sdc2 8:34 0 2G 0 part
└─sdc3 8:35 0 834.7G 0 part
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
nvme0n1 259:1 0 1.5T 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:2 0 1G 0 part
├─nvme0n1p2 259:3 0 2G 0 part
└─nvme0n1p3 259:4 0 1.5T 0 part
└─ubuntu–vg-ubuntu–lv 253:0 0 1.5T 0 lvm

If you do a “sudo vgdisplay” you get the following …. two VGs with the same name andit does give you the UUIDs but no device name.

WARNING: VG name ubuntu-vg-1 is used by VGs 0FSzGi-emNx-ILEO-MjLt-2RAa-Sn40-mn2voh and VkCMJn-0IyH-DPjA-4hdZ-GqOl-eNkj-4Plf12.
Fix duplicate VG names with vgrename uuid, a device filter, or system IDs.
— Volume group —
VG Name ubuntu-vg-1
System ID
Format lvm2
Metadata Areas 1
Metadata Sequence No 2
VG Access read/write
VG Status resizable
MAX LV 0
Cur LV 1
Open LV 0
Max PV 0
Cur PV 1
Act PV 1
VG Size <834.70 GiB
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 213682
Alloc PE / Size 213682 / <834.70 GiB
Free PE / Size 0 / 0
VG UUID 0FSzGi-emNx-ILEO-MjLt-2RAa-Sn40-mn2voh

— Volume group —
VG Name ubuntu-vg-1
System ID
Format lvm2
Metadata Areas 1
Metadata Sequence No 2
VG Access read/write
VG Status resizable
MAX LV 0
Cur LV 1
Open LV 1
Max PV 0
Cur PV 1
Act PV 1
VG Size <834.70 GiB
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 213682
Alloc PE / Size 213682 / <834.70 GiB
Free PE / Size 0 / 0
VG UUID VkCMJn-0IyH-DPjA-4hdZ-GqOl-eNkj-4Plf12

If you use the vgs with some additional parameters “sudo vgs -o vg_name,vg_uuid,pv_uuid” it will give you the VG UUID and the physical ID

WARNING: VG name ubuntu-vg-1 is used by VGs 0FSzGi-emNx-ILEO-MjLt-2RAa-Sn40-mn2voh and VkCMJn-0IyH-DPjA-4hdZ-GqOl-eNkj-4Plf12.
Fix duplicate VG names with vgrename uuid, a device filter, or system IDs.
VG VG UUID PV UUID
ubuntu-vg-1 0FSzGi-emNx-ILEO-MjLt-2RAa-Sn40-mn2voh QTTC9X-p0Yn-70o3-rVg0-KvK0-dyUx-yel5Ti
ubuntu-vg-1 VkCMJn-0IyH-DPjA-4hdZ-GqOl-eNkj-4Plf12 bI07eL-EHoI-iAnr-AoVg-jWfm-GaON-eSiyd8

You can now type the following command “sudo pvdisplay” to get a list of PV UUID and their physical drives.

WARNING: VG name ubuntu-vg-1 is used by VGs 0FSzGi-emNx-ILEO-MjLt-2RAa-Sn40-mn2voh and VkCMJn-0IyH-DPjA-4hdZ-GqOl-eNkj-4Plf12.
Fix duplicate VG names with vgrename uuid, a device filter, or system IDs.
— Physical volume —
PV Name /dev/sdc3
VG Name ubuntu-vg-1
PV Size <834.70 GiB / not usable 3.00 MiB
Allocatable yes (but full)
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 213682
Free PE 0
Allocated PE 213682
PV UUID QTTC9X-p0Yn-70o3-rVg0-KvK0-dyUx-yel5Ti

— Physical volume —
PV Name /dev/sdb3
VG Name ubuntu-vg-1
PV Size <834.70 GiB / not usable 3.00 MiB
Allocatable yes (but full)
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 213682
Free PE 0
Allocated PE 213682
PV UUID bI07eL-EHoI-iAnr-AoVg-jWfm-GaON-eSiyd8

If you look at the lsbk command above you will note that sdb3 is our new boot volume and sdc3 is our old drive that we need to rename and it has a pv uuid of QTTC9X-p0Yn-70o3-rVg0-KvK0-dyUx-yel5Ti

If we look up the pv uuid when we used the vsg command above we get the following VG UUID (0FSzGi-emNx-ILEO-MjLt-2RAa-Sn40-mn2voh) that we can use to rename the duplicate volume group using vgrename to rename the volume group. vgrename (vg uuid) (name of the new volume group)

It would look like the following in our situation: vgrename 0FSzGi-emNx-ILEO-MjLt-2RAa-Sn40-mn2voh backup

At this point activate the changes via “vgchange -ay” and I would suggest you could reboot and then do an lvscan to pickup the new volume.

sudo lvscan
ACTIVE ‘/dev/backup/ubuntu-lv’ [<834.70 GiB] inherit
ACTIVE ‘/dev/ubuntu-vg-1/ubuntu-lv’ [<834.70 GiB] inherit

We are now going to mount the backup volume with the mount command.

sudo mount /dev/backup/ubuntu-lv /mnt/backup

Bob’s your uncle, we now have access to our backup os volume so we can get data off of it.

we are now a proxmox reseller

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We are glad to announce that we have become a proxmox reseller. That means when you want to purchase proxmox product support licenses you can come to us. Please visit the proxmox menu on the main page to find out more or visit our store to purchase licenses.

Proxmox backup server Cloud backup module

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We are glad to announce that we have completed the research grant (on time and on budget) that the SIA Foundation has sponsored and have been approved for the grant to develop the PBS Cloud backup module and an S3 plugin. The purpose of this grant is to allow proxmox VE servers (virtual machine servers) to backup their data off-site to any compatible S3 storage network so that should a worse-case event occur the business can survive. Approx 93% of companies without disaster recovery who suffer a major data disaster due to flood or fire are out of business within one year? Backup your data locally for speed, but also keep a copy in the cloud so you can restore from the cloud should disaster strike.

The Sia Network is a distributed redundant storage network that uses the sia coin as payment. You will find that the Sia network provides redundancy and low-cost backup solution and we recommend you try it before other S3 solutions.

https://forum.sia.tech/t/proxmox-backup-server-cloud-extension/397/9

If you want to learn more about the grant process: https://sia.tech/grants

And if you want to learn more about Sia: https://sia.tech/

We will update this article with more info as we start development.

Research Grant Completed

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We are glad to announce that we have completed the research grant (on time and on budget) that the SIA Foundation has sponsored and applied for the grant using that data (posted below) for the grant to develop the proxmox cloud backup module. The purpose of this grant is to allow proxmox VE servers (virtual machine servers) to backup their data off site to any compatible S3 storage network so that should a worse case event occur the business can survive. Approx 93% of companies without disaster recovery who suffer a major data disaster due to flood or fire are out of business within one year?

https://forum.sia.tech/t/proxmox-backup-server-cloud-extension/397/9

If you want to learn more about the grant process: https://sia.tech/grants

And if you want to learn more about Sia: https://sia.tech/

We are waiting for the next Sia Foundation board meeting to determine if we have been approved for the project which should be Oct 31, 2023.

Research Grant Approved

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We are glad to announce that we have received a grant from the SIA Foundation to research the possibility of building a module for proxmox backup server that would allow for cloud backups. We support the concept of distributed storage and the sia network allows for that. We have been providing our own storage in the sia network for over a year and recently setup a host machine on the test network. If you want to learn more about the grant you can use the link below.

https://forum.sia.tech/t/grant-proposal-sia-proxmox-backup-feasibility-study/358

If you want to learn more about the grant process: https://sia.tech/grants

And if you want to learn more about Sia: https://sia.tech/


If the feasibility study works out we will move forward with a request for a grant to cover the above development of this module.

ISPCONFIG Free Virus scanning

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If you are running ISPCONFIG to host client website and email at some point you are going to run across an infected website or two. As a host, you can encourage your clients to make sure their content management systems (joomla, wordpress) is regularly updating their code base and plugins. Keeping them updated is what is going to keep your hosts websites virus and trojen-free as hackers often target plugins which have security issues. It is important to stay vigilant when it comes to hackers that might want to use your website to do bad things … send out spam emails, attach other systems etc.

You could subscribe to a pay service that will provide a plugin to scan for Viruses and Trojens and the cost is quite reasonable.

https://ispprotect.com/

But there is another way … and its free!

Installing Clamwin (Ubuntu)

First – Update the installation

apt update -y

Then Install Clamwin

apt install clamav clamav-daemon -y

You should be able to check that clamwin is installed with the below command

clamscan -V

This should look something like: ClamAV 0.103.8/26984/Sat Jul 29 07:26:39 2023

Once clamwin is installed we next need to add our scanning script.

use your preferred editor (I use nano) to create “clamscan_daily.sh”

nano clamscan_daily.sh
#!/bin/bash
LOGFILE_EMAIL="/var/log/clamav/clamav-email-$(date +'%Y-%m-%d').log";
LOGFILE_WEBSITES="/var/log/clamav/clamav-website-$(date +'%Y-%m-%d').log";
set HOST="$(hostname -f)"
EMAIL_FROM="clamav-daily@myinkbooks.com";
EMAIL_TO="rdwild@rayolightmedia.com";
DIRTOSCAN="/var/www";
EMAILTOSCAN="/var/vmail";

echo "Starting a daily scan of Websites";

for S in ${DIRTOSCAN}; do
 DIRSIZE=$(du -sh "$S" 2>/dev/null | cut -f1);

 echo "Starting a daily scan of "$S" directory.
 Amount of data to be scanned is "$DIRSIZE".";

 clamscan -ri "$S" >> "$LOGFILE_WEBSITES";

 # get the value of "Infected lines"
 MALWARE=$(tail "$LOGFILE_WEBSITES"|grep Infected|cut -d" " -f3);

 # if the value is not equal to zero, send an email with the log file attached
 if [ "$MALWARE" -ne "0" ];then
 # using heirloom-mailx below
 cat "$LOGFILE_WEBSITES" | mail -s "Malware Found on $HOST" "$EMAIL_FROM" "$EMAIL_TO";
 fi
done

echo "\n";
echo "Starting a daily scan of email";

for S in ${EMAILTOSCAN}; do
 DIRSIZE=$(du -sh "$S" 2>/dev/null | cut -f1);

 echo "Starting a daily scan of "$S" directory.
 Amount of data to be scanned is "$DIRSIZE".";

 clamscan --remove yes -ri "$S" >> "$LOGFILE_EMAIL";

 # get the value of "Infected lines"
 MALWARE=$(tail "$LOGFILE_EMAIL"|grep Infected|cut -d" " -f3);

 # if the value is not equal to zero, send an email with the log file attached
 if [ "$MALWARE" -ne "0" ];then
 # using heirloom-mailx below
 cat "$LOGFILE_EMAIL" | mail -s "Malware Found on $HOST" "$EMAIL_FROM" "$EMAIL_TO";
 fi
done


exit 0

You will notice a few parameters that need to be changed in the above code to change it for your needs. The first one is EMAIL_FROM and the second one is EMAIL_TO. If the above script finds a virus or trojen it sends and email using the from address to the email box in the email to address so both of those need to be changed for your system.

Once the clamscan_daily.sh script has been created it needs to be made executable.

chmod +x clamscan_daily.sh

Once you have added the above script to your system you can test it using the below command to do a pilot run.

sudo ./clamscan_daily.sh

You will notice that we use the sudo command here. The script needs to run as it would when running as a cron job which is the root user.


Once you have tested the script to make sure everything is working as it should you will need to add it to a daily cron job so that it runs every day.

I’m currently doing this by moving the script into the /etc/cron.daily folder.

 sudo mv clamscan_daily.sh /etc/cron.daily/clamscan_daily.sh

If the script finds something you will see an email similar to the one below

You will notice in the above email that nothing was found for websites (or they would have been listed here), but there were some spoofing emails that were found in the junk and trash folder. These were caught by other means and moved to trash but Clamav removed them. You will also notice that I obfuscated some of the text so I don’t get a bunch of junk emails.

Links

https://clamwin.com/ (main project website for clamwin)

Proxmox website admin web page

VMware vs proxmox

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For a great number of years, I have been using VMware (vsphere) as the virtual environment for my company’s virtual hosting environment. This has been overall a great product and still is.  But a number of years ago I started looking for alternatives because of the high cost of using and keeping vsphere up to date, the licensing cost is quite high.  At the time I came across a new product called proxmox that has some fairly good potential to be the replacement.  After several months of testing, I came to the conclusion that proxmox just was a little too buggy and was not ready for primetime.  Most of this was due to there not being a good backup system in place to create backups.  But there were critical bugs at the time that I could just not pass.  Despite these issues, I still felt that proxmox had potential and kept an eye on it.

Moving along three or four years and there is now a reasonable backup solution for proxmox and a lot of the original bugs I had have now been resolved so proxmox is now ready to be used in production.

Proxmox is an open-source virtual hosting environment and although proxmox is open source it is a  good idea to purchase a support package if you are using it in production so that each machine gets access to production (stable) updates and support for the proxmox environment.  This is going to be way less than what you would pay for vmware.

Links:

Proxmox: https://www.proxmox.com/en/
Proxmox Backup: https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-backup-server
Downloads: https://www.proxmox.com/en/downloads

Rodney Wild
A-Z Computer Solutions Logo Black

Keeping your system up to date!

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It does not matter what kind of computer you have, everyone can do a couple of things to ensure they don’t get infected with a virus, trojan, etc., and keep their systems running smoothly.  The number one thing you can do to avoid having to repair your computer is keep your anti-virus software up to date.  This means if you don’t have it, you can download a free basic version (there will be some links at the end of this document) or buy a paid version.  The most important thing you can do once it is installed is to make sure that it is running and kept up to date.  If you have a paid version and your license is coming up for renewal, don’t wait until the last min to renew.  Renew it a bit early to make sure you don’t get into a situation where your anti-virus license is expired and you are no longer getting updates.  Updates are the lifeblood of your anti-virus system and the moment you stop getting updates the increase in the possibility that you will get infected and this means a call to a computer repair company like ours.

Why is it important not to get infected

If your system gets infected all kinds of bad things can happen to you and your computer:

    1. Your system can get infected with new viruses
    2. People infect your system and get your websites, your computer system, and your bank passwords. Which gives them access to your MONEY!
    3. They can also encrypt your whole computer and all of your data and charge you to get back access to it.
    4. They can also get access to everything on your computer, your tax documents, all your documents (word, excel, PowerPoint), and all of your email.
    5. Lastly, they can also get access to all your pictures … in case you forgot, that means if you took any questionable pictures they get to see those too.  And potentially blackmail you with them.

Keeping your OS (for you windows people, that is windows 7 (if you are running this you should be upgrading), Windows 10, Windows 11)) up to date too.  The key way most hackers get access to your system and data is by not updating the software on it on a regular basis and that starts with your operating system.  software makers come out with updates to patch flaws in their software and that means you will need to update the software on a regular basis.  That means don’t delay any operating system update more than a day and if possible do it as soon as possible when the request pops up.  Its a good idea to make sure the other software you are running on your system also gets updates too.  If you need help with any of this contact our computer repair remote support group.

Rodney Wild

We are back!

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We are back.  After a number of years on hiatus  A-Z Computer Solutions is back doing support and website design work.  Over the years we have spent thousands of hours doing support and website design for residential clients, and businesses big and small.  For a few years we decided we wanted to try some other things.  We started a production company doing feature film and animation and we bought an energy drink company.  but now we are back doing the one thing I have always loved … computers.

Rodney Wild

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