How to SSH to an IPv6 address

Uli Köhler Linux, Networking

If your IPv6 address begins with fe80::

This type of IPv6 address is called link-local and is therefore specific to a network interface on your computer. You can use ifconfig to show information about the network interfaces. You are looking for an identifer like eth0, wlan0, enp3s0, wlp4s0 or tap1. For this example we’re using eth0.

Now you can connect to the IPv6 using:

ssh <username>@<ipv6 address>%<interface>

for example

ssh user@fe80::21b:21ff:fe22:e865%eth0

Replace <interface> by the correct interface (if you don’t know, try out every interface), replace <ipv6 address> by the correct IP address and replace <user> by the correct username.

If your IPv6 address does NOT begin with fe80::

You can just use

ssh <username>@<ipv6 address>

for example

ssh uli@2a01:4f9:c010:278::1

Replace <ipv6 address> by the correct IP address and replace <user> by the correct username.

How to find the size of a lxc container

Uli Köhler Container, Linux

In order to determine the size of a LXC container, first run lxc storage list to list your storage pools:

uli@myserver:~$ lxc storage list
+---------+-------------+--------+------------------------------------+---------+
|  NAME   | DESCRIPTION | DRIVER |               SOURCE               | USED BY |
+---------+-------------+--------+------------------------------------+---------+
| default |             | dir    | /var/lib/lxd/storage-pools/default | 2       |
+---------+-------------+--------+------------------------------------+---------+

If the driver is not dir, you are using a COW-type storage backend. Using this technology it is not possible to easily determine the storage size of a container. The following instructions apply only for the dir driver.

Now open a root shell and cd to the directory listed in the SOURCE column and cd to its containers subdirectory:

root@myserver ~ # cd /var/lib/lxd/storage-pools/default
root@myserver /var/lib/lxd/storage-pools/default # cd containers/
root@myserver /var/lib/lxd/storage-pools/default/containers #

This directory contains the storage directory for all containers. Run du -sh * in order to find the size of each container:

root@myserver /var/lib/lxd/storage-pools/default/containers # du -sh *
2.0G    my-container

In this example, the container my-container occupies 2.0 Gibibytes of disk space.

Routing public IPv6 addresses to your lxc/lxd containers

Uli Köhler Cloud, Container, Linux, Networking

The enormous amount of IPv6 addresses available to most commercially hosted VPS / root servers with a public IPv6 prefix allows you to route a public IPv6 address to every container that is running on your server. This tutorial shows you how to do that, even if you have no prior experience with routing,

Step 0: Create your LXC container

We assume you have already done this – just for reference, here’s how you can create a container:

lxc launch ubuntu:18.04 my-container

Step 1: Which IP address do you want to assign to your container?

First you need to find out what prefix is routed to your host. Usually you can do that by checking in your provider’s control panel. You’re looking for something like 2a01:4f9:c010:278::1/64. Another option would be to run sudo ifconfig

and look for a inet6 line in the section of your primary network interface (this only works if you have configured your server to have an IPv6 address). Note that addresses that start with fe80:: and addresses starting with fd, among others, are not public IPv6 addresses.

Then you can define a new IPv6 address to your container. Which one you choose – as long as it’s within the prefix – is entirely your decision.

Often, <prefix>::1 is used for the host itself, therefore you could, for example, choose <prefix>::2. Note that some providers use some IP addresses for other purposes. Check your provider’s documentation for details.

If you don’t want to make it easy to find your container’s public IPv6, don’t choose <prefix>::1, <prefix>::2, <prefix>::3 etc but something more random like <prefix>:af15:99b1:0b05:1, for example2a01:4f9:c010:278:af15:99b1:0b05:0001. Ensure your IPv6 address has 8 groups of 4 hex digits each!

For this example, we choose the IPv6 address 2a01:4f9:c010:278::8.

Step 2: Find out the ULA of your container

We need to find the ULA (unique local address – similar to a private IPv4 address which is not routed on the internet) of the container. Using lxc, this is quite easy:

uli@myserver:~$ lxc list
+--------------+---------+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
|     NAME     |  STATE  |         IPV4          |                     IPV6                      |
+--------------+---------+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| my-container | RUNNING | 10.144.118.232 (eth0) | fd42:830b:36dc:3691:216:3eff:fed1:9058 (eth0) |
+--------------+---------+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+

You need to look in the IPv6 column and copy the address listed there. In this example, the address is fd42:830b:36dc:3691:216:3eff:fed1:9058.

Step 3: Setup IPv6 routing

Now we can tell the host Linux to route your chosen public IPv6 to the container’s private IPv6. This is quite easy:

sudo ip6tables -t nat -A PREROUTING -d <public IPv6> -j DNAT --to-destination <container private IPv6>

In our example, this would be

sudo ip6tables -t nat -A PREROUTING -d 2a01:4f9:c010:278::8 -j DNAT --to-destination fd42:830b:36dc:3691:216:3eff:fed1:9058

First, test the command by running it in a shell. If it works (i.e. if it doesn’t print any error message), you can permanently store it e.g. by adding it to /etc/rc.local (after #!/bin/bash, before exit 0). Advanced users should prefer to add it to /etc/network/interfaces.

Step 4: Connect to your container using SSH on your public IPv6 (optional)

Note: This step requires that you have working IPv6 connectivity at your local computer. If you are unsure, check at ipv6-test.com

First, open a shell on your container:

lxc exec my-container bash

After running this, you should see a root shell prompt inside your container:

root@my-container:~#

The following commands should be entered in the container shell, not the host!

Now we can create a user to login to (in this example, we create the uli user):

root@my-container:~# adduser uli
Adding user `uli' ...
Adding new group `uli' (1001) ...
Adding new user `uli' (1001) with group `uli' ...
Creating home directory `/home/uli' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Enter new UNIX password: 
Retype new UNIX password: 
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for uli
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
        Full Name []: 
        Room Number []: 
        Work Phone []: 
        Home Phone []: 
        Other []: 
Is the information correct? [Y/n]

You only need to enter a password (you won’t see anything on screen when entering it) twice, for all other lines you can just press enter.

The ubuntu:18.04 lxc image used in this example does not allow SSH password authentication in its default configuration. In order to fix this, change PasswordAuthentication no to PasswordAuthentication yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and restart the SSH server by running service sshd restart. Be sure you understand the security implications before you do that!

Now, logout of your container shell by pressing Ctrl+D. The following commands can be entered on your desktop or any other server with IPv6 connectivity.

Now login to your server:

ssh <username>@<public IPv6 address>

in this example:

ssh uli@2a01:4f9:c010:278::8

If you configured everything correctly, you’ll see the shell prompt for your container:

uli@my-container:~$

Note: Don’t forget to configure a firewall for your container, e.g. ufw! Your container’s IPv6 is exposed to the internet and just assuming noone will guess it is not good security practice.

How to fix puppetteer error while loading shared libraries: libX11-xcb.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Uli Köhler Linux

Problem:

You are trying to run puppetteer on Ubuntu, but when it starts to run chrome, you are facing the following issue:

/home/user/erp/node_modules/puppeteer/.local-chromium/linux-555668/chrome-linux/chrome: error while loading shared libraries: libX11-xcb.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Solution:

Install the missing packages using

sudo apt-get install gconf-service libasound2 libatk1.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgcc1 libgconf-2-4 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 ca-certificates fonts-liberation libappindicator1 libnss3 lsb-release xdg-utils wget

Credits to @coldner on the puppetteer issue tracker for assembling the required pkgs.

If you encounter E: Unable to locate package errors, run sudo apt-get update.

How to make mongodump export JSON instead of BSON

Uli Köhler Databases

mongodump exports your MongoDB database to a BSON format, but if you want to use JSON instead, you need to use the mongoexport tool.

Examples:

mongoexport -d mydatabase -c mycollection # Prints to stdout
mongoexport -d mydatabase -c mycollection -o mycollections.json # Write to mycollections.json

Note that some datatypes that can be stored in MongoDB can only be represented in BSON – so in some cases, information may be lost by exporting to JSON.

Fixing npm/node-gyp Error: not found: make on Ubuntu

Uli Köhler Linux, NodeJS

When you run npm install and it tries to install a native package like bcrypt and you see an error message like this:

gyp ERR! build error 
gyp ERR! stack Error: not found: make
gyp ERR! stack     at getNotFoundError (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/which/which.js:13:12)
gyp ERR! stack     at F (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/which/which.js:68:19)
gyp ERR! stack     at E (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/which/which.js:80:29)
gyp ERR! stack     at /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/which/which.js:89:16
gyp ERR! stack     at /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/isexe/index.js:42:5
gyp ERR! stack     at /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/isexe/mode.js:8:5
gyp ERR! stack     at FSReqWrap.oncomplete (fs.js:182:21)

you simple need to install GNU Make. On Ubuntu, the easiest way of doing this is to run

sudo apt install build-essential

This will not only install make but also related tools like gcc and some standard header files and tools.

How to fix FreeCAD ‘No module named WebGui’ on Ubuntu 18.04

Uli Köhler CAD, Linux

On Ubuntu 18.04 there’s currently a known bug where FreeCAD starts but does not show any widgets at startup but this error message instead:

No module named WebGui

One way I’ve found of fixing this issue is to install FreeCAD not from the Ubuntu repositories but from the freecad-stable PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-stable
sudo apt-get update

Then you can install freecad again:

sudo apt install freecad

If you’ve installed previous versions of OpenCASCADE from the freecad PPAs, you might get an error message similar to this one:

Die folgenden Pakete haben unerfüllte Abhängigkeiten:
 freecad : Hängt ab von: libocct-data-exchange-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
           Hängt ab von: libocct-foundation-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
           Hängt ab von: libocct-modeling-algorithms-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
           Hängt ab von: libocct-modeling-data-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
           Hängt ab von: libocct-ocaf-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
           Hängt ab von: libocct-visualization-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
E: Probleme können nicht korrigiert werden, Sie haben zurückgehaltene defekte Pakete.

In that case, you need to force apt to install OpenCASCADE 7.2 along with freecad and deinstall OpenCASCADE 7.1

sudo apt install freecad libocct-data-exchange-7.2 libocct-foundation-7.2 libocct-modeling-algorithms-7.2 libocct-modeling-data-7.2 libocct-ocaf-7.2 libocct-visualization-7.2

How to set cell value to string using js-xlsx

Uli Köhler Javascript, NodeJS

This snippet reads a XLSX file using js-xlsx, sets the C2 cell to abc123 and writes the result to another file:

const XLSX = require('xlsx');

const table = XLSX.readFile('mytable.xlsx');
// Use first sheet
const sheet = table.Sheets[table.SheetNames[0]];

// Option 1: If you have numeric row and column indexes
sheet[XLSX.utils.encode_cell({r: 1 /* 2 */, c: 2 /* C */})] = {t: 's' /* type: string */, v: 'abc123' /* value */};
// Option 2: If you have a cell coordinate like 'C2' or 'D15'
sheet['C2'] = {t: 's' /* type: string */, v: 'abc123' /* value */};

XLSX.writeFile(table, 'result.xlsx');

 

How to iterate over XLSX rows using js-xlsx

Uli Köhler Javascript, NodeJS

This snippet allows you to easily iterate over rows in any XLSX files using the js-xlsx library (in this example we don’t iterate over all columns but rather only get the B column as an example):

const table = XLSX.readFile('mytable.xlsx');
const sheet = table.Sheets[table.SheetNames[0]];

var range = XLSX.utils.decode_range(sheet['!ref']);
for (let rowNum = range.s.r; rowNum <= range.e.r; rowNum++) {
    // Example: Get second cell in each row, i.e. Column "B"
    const secondCell = sheet[XLSX.utils.encode_cell({r: rowNum, c: 1})];
    // NOTE: secondCell is undefined if it does not exist (i.e. if its empty)
    console.log(secondCell); // secondCell.v contains the value, i.e. string or number
}

 

How to fix Angular4/5/6 Unexpected token ‘px’

Uli Köhler Angular, Javascript

If you encounter an error message like this:

Parser Error: Unexpected token 'px' at column 3 in [70px] in ng:///AppModule/MyComponent.html@5:34 ("="let string of strings">

look at the line the error is referring to. It will look similar to this:

<mat-expansion-panel-header [collapsedHeight]="70px">

You have two options of fixing this:

Option 1: Recommended if the value (70px in this case) is always constant.

Remove the brackets from the attribute: [collapsedHeight] to collapsedHeight. The brackets mean that the value shall be interpreted as Javascript and removing them means interpreting the value as attribute. You code should look like this:

<mat-expansion-panel-header collapsedHeight="70px">

Option 2: Force angular to interpret the value (70px in this case) as a string:

Add single quotes before and after the value makes it valid Javascript:

<mat-expansion-panel-header [collapsedHeight]="'70px'">

I recommend to use this option only if you expect the value to be a non-constant javascript expression in the future.

How to circumvent Google Cloud Storage 1000 read / 400 write limit in Python

Uli Köhler Cloud, Python

Google Cloud Datastore has a built-in 1000 keys limit for get requests and a 400 entities per request for put limit. If you hit it, you will see one of these error messages:

google.api_core.exceptions.InvalidArgument: 400 cannot get more than 1000 keys in a single call
google.api_core.exceptions.InvalidArgument: 400 cannot write more than 500 entities in a single call

You can fix it by chunking the requests, i.e. only do 1000 requests at one time for get etc.

This code provides a ready-to-use example for a class that automates this process. As an added benefit, it performs the requests in chunks of 1000 (for get) or 400 (for put) in parallel using a concurrent.futures.Executor. As the performance is expected to be IO-bound, it is recommended to use a concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor.
If you dont give the class an executor on construction, it will create one by itself.

import itertools
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor

def _chunks(l, n=1000):
    """
    Yield successive n-sized chunks from l.
    https://stackoverflow.com/a/312464/2597135
    """
    for i in range(0, len(l), n):
        yield l[i:i + n]

def _get_chunk(client, keys):
    """
    Get a single chunk
    """
    missing = []
    vals = client.get_multi(keys, missing=missing)
    return vals, missing

class DatastoreChunkClient(object):
    """
    Provides a thin wrapper around a Google Cloud Datastore client providing means
    of reading nd
    """
    def __init__(self, client, executor=None):
        self.client = client
        if executor is None:
            executor = ThreadPoolExecutor(16)
        self.executor = executor
    
    def get_multi(self, keys):
        """
        Thin wrapper around client.get_multi() that circumvents
        the 1000 read requests limit by doing 1000-sized chunked reads
        in parallel using self.executor.

        Returns (values, missing).
        """
        all_missing = []
        all_vals = []
        for vals, missing in self.executor.map(lambda chunk: _get_chunk(self.client, chunk), _chunks(keys, 1000)):
            all_vals += vals
            all_missing += missing
        return all_vals, all_missing

    def put_multi(self, entities):
        """
        Thin wrapper around client.put_multi() that circumvents
        the 400 read requests limit by doing 400-sized chunked reads
        in parallel using self.executor.

        Returns (values, missing).
        """
        for none in self.executor.map(lambda chunk: self.client.put_multi(chunk), _chunks(entities, 400)):
            pass

Usage example:

# Create "raw" google datastore client
client = datastore.Client(project="myproject-123456")
chunkClient = DatastoreChunkClient(client)

# The size of the key list is only limited by memory
keys = [...]
values, missing = chunkClient.get_multi(keys)

# The size of the entity list is only limited by memory
entities = [...]
chunkClient.put_multi(entities)

 

Saving an entity in Google Cloud Datastore using Python: A minimal example

Uli Köhler Cloud, Python

Here’s a minimal example for inserting an entity in the Google Cloud Datastore object database using the Python API:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
from google.cloud import datastore
# Create & store an entity
client = datastore.Client(project="myproject-12345")
entity = datastore.Entity(key=client.key('MyEntityKind', 'MyTestID'))
entity.update({
    'foo': u'bar',
    'baz': 1337,
    'qux': False,
})
# Actually save the entity
client.put(entity)

This assumes you have already created an entity kind with the name MyEntityKind in the project with ID myproject-12345.

How to fix Google Cloud Datastore ValueError: A Key must have a project set.

Uli Köhler Cloud, Python

Problem:

You are trying to connect to the Google Cloud Storage object database:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
from google.cloud import datastore
# Create, populate and persist an entity
entity = datastore.Entity(key=datastore.Key('MyEntityKind')) # Line of error
# ...

but when running that code, you get this error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./IndexIntoDB.py", line 4, in <module>
    entity = datastore.Entity(key=datastore.Key('MyEntityKind'))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/google/cloud/datastore/key.py", line 109, in __init__
    self._project = _validate_project(project, parent)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/google/cloud/datastore/key.py", line 512, in _validate_project
    raise ValueError("A Key must have a project set.")
ValueError: A Key must have a project set.

Solution:

Note: While the solution below fixes the error message listed above, you might be more interested in having a look at this minimal entity insertion example

As the error message indicates, you need to add a project name. If you don’t know the project name, go to the Google Cloud Console, select the right project at the top and then look at the URL:

https://console.cloud.google.com/datastore/welcome?project=perceptive-tape-12345

In this example, the project ID (which you have to use in the Python code is perceptive-tape-12345.

See also the Keys section of the google-cloud-datastore python documentation.

How to fix apt-get source You must put some ‘source’ URIs in your sources.list

Uli Köhler Linux

Problem:

You want to download an apt source package using

apt-get source <package name>

but instead you see this error message:

E: You must put some 'source' URIs in your sources.list

Solution:

In most cases, you can fix this easily using

sudo apt-get update

If this does not fix the issue, edit /etc/apt/sources.list, e.g. using

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

and ensure that the deb-src lines are not commented out.

Example: You need to change

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful main restricted
# deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful main restricted

to

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful main restricted
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful main restricted

How to fix lxd ‘Failed container creation: No storage pool found. Please create a new storage pool.’

Uli Köhler Linux, Virtualization

Problem:

You want to launch some lxd container using lxc launch […] but instead you get the following error message:

Failed container creation: No storage pool found. Please create a new storage pool.

Solution:

You need to initialize lxd before using it:

lxd init

When it asks you about the backend

Name of the storage backend to use (btrfs, dir, lvm) [default=btrfs]:

choosing the default option (btrfs) means that you’ll have to use a dedicated block device (or a dedicated preallocated file image) for storage. While this is more efficient if you run many containers at a time, I recommend to choose the dir backend for the default storage pool, because that option will be easiest to configure and will not occupy as much space on your hard drive.

See Storage management in lxd for more more details, including different options for storage pools in case you need a more advanced setup.

How to create a partition table using fdisk

Uli Köhler Linux

Warning: If you run fdisk on the wrong drive here or there is some important data left, you might lose all your data and it will be very hard to restore. Before running these commands, triple-check that you’ve used the correct device (e.g. /dev/sdh)!

In order to create a partition table on a device (e.g. /dev/sdh – /dev/sdh1 is not a device but a partition, so using that does not make any sense!), run these commands

sudo fdisk <device file>

If the device doesn’t have a valid partition table, fdisk will automatically create a partition table (but not write it to the disk yet). It will show this output if that is the case (the identifier is random and different every time):

Device does not contain a recognized partition table.
Created a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x81ee11ff.

Command (m for help):

If you are sure that you want to run the partition, enter w and press return to write the partition table to disk & exit.

The partition table will be effective immediately, but will not contain any partition. In order to create a partition (for this example we will create one partition being as large as the entire device), run

sudo fdisk <device file>

again.

This time, enter the n command (new partition). When it asks you about the partition type and its size, just press return every time to select the defaults. It should look like this (<return> added to show you where you should press return).

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
p primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
e extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): <return>
Partition number (1-4, default 1): <return>
First sector (2048-31143935, default 2048): <return>
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-31143935, default 31143935): <return>

After that, when fdisk prompts for a command again (i.e. when it says Command (m for help): ), enter w in order to write the changes (i.e. the new partition) to the disk & exit. After fdisk exits, you can see the partition in /dev, e.g. /dev/sdh1

After that, you’ll likely need to create a filesystem on that partition, e.g. sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdh1 or sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdh1 . Make sure to create the correct filesystem for the operating system and usecase the device will be used in.