S55MA HAM blog

Quick notes, how to add villa door station to hik-connect app, since Hikvision documentation is all over the place. We are assuming you already have network connectivity to the device.

Goal: add villa door station to hik-connect app, so you can remote view your cameras on mobile app

1. The device I’m configuring is DS-KV8113-WME1(B)

2. You will need serial number. It’s located on the back of device, there is a sticker. Alternatively, login to your device via web interface. Go To configuration, System Settings, and there is a section Serial No. Select text and scroll with your mouse to the right. The actual serial number is last 9 characters:

3. Create account and login at https://www.hik-connect.com/

4. Enable platform access on your device. Go back to your device via web browser and go to Configuration, Network, Advanced, Platform Access. Click Enable, and setup Stream Encryption/Encryption Key. This is the part where Hikvision documentation is lacking. When you are going to add device to hik-connect app, you will be asked for serial number and verification code. Some devices have verification code written on the label, but my device doesn’t. The verification code is Stream Encryption/Encryption Key.

5. Go back to https://www.hik-connect.com/ and click Add. You will be asked to enter serial number and verification code. If everything is done right, your devices will be online.

6. Download hik-connect mobile app. I’m using Android. Here lies another CAVEAT. Don’t download app from Google Playstore, because they are not updating the app anymore. Hikvision has it’s own app store at: https://appstore.hikvision.com/. Download Hik-Connect – for End user, install it, login to your hik-connect account and you’re done. You should be able to view and operate your cams via their cloud remotely.

A note of caution. Don’t put your camera in your bedroom, this goes on Hikvision cloud and they can probably spy on you, it’s a Chinese product nevertheless. Extra points if you put your device on separate VLAN and isolate it from the rest of your network.

Cisco DNA center currently lacks a feature to export all inventory. You can’t export serial numbers for power supplies and network modules. This bash script is very simple and primitive, it connects to Cisco device via SSH and collects inventory data. If you have a lot of devices, this will take a lot of time. You need to modify this script for parallel ssh connections if you have more than 100 devices. For more info, read the script comments.

#!/bin/bash

# SSH credentials for Cisco devices
# For security reasons, make sure the user is read only capable
user=CiscoUsername
password=CiscoPassword

# Path to file where IPs of devices are stored (one IP per line)
file=devices.txt

# Mail settings
mailrelay="smtp=some.mail.server:25"
sender=no-reply@somedomain.com
mailto=some.user@somedomain.com
mailsubject="inventory bash exporter - C9K2,C9K3,C9K5 devices"

# Path to output file (exported inventory file)
results=results.txt

# Cleanup from before

rm -f "$results"

# Check if necessary files exist
if [ ! -f "$file" ]; then
    echo
    echo "ERROR: Missing file with IP addresses. Exiting ..."
    echo
    exit 1
fi

lines=$(cat $file)

for line in $lines
do
        # Connect to device, read hostname and append output to file. I filter hostname by "-SDA-", because each device
        # contains "-SDA-" in hostname, in my case. You need to modify this to your own needs.
        sshpass -p "$password" ssh -t -q -o ConnectTimeout=5 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null\
        "$user"@"$line" 'show run | i hostname' | grep "\-SDA\-" | sed 's/=//g' | sed 's/\//g' | sed 's/ //g' >> "$results"

        # Connect to device, read inventory, filter output to get desired results (you can modify this to your own needs)
        # and append output to file. I filter out SFP modules, FAN trays, Stack modules.
        sshpass -p "$password" ssh -t -q -o ConnectTimeout=5 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null\
        "$user"@"$line" 'show inventory' | grep PID | awk '{print $2,$7,$8}' | sed 's/ //g' | grep -v "," | sort | uniq | sed 's/SN:/,Serial:/g' |\
        grep -v "SFP\|FANTRAY\|FTRJ\|GLC\|FTLF\|STACK" >> "$results"

        printf "\n" >> "$results"
done
    # Send results to an email 
    echo "Export generated: $(date). See attachment." | mailx -r "$sender" -S "$mailrelay" -s "$mailsubject" -a "$results" -v "$mailto"
    echo
    # Send done message to console
    echo "Done, check "$results"! or email"
    echo

Firefly III has a recurring transactions option. In order for that to work, you need to setup a cronjob. Without that, you get an error at the top of the page saying:

It seems the cron job that is necessary to support recurring transactions has never 
run. This is of course normal when you have just installed Firefly III, 
but this should be something to set up as soon as possible. Please check 
out the help-pages using the (?)-icon in the top right corner of the page.

Firefly III has an API to which you make a get request that triggers recurring transactions update. API call URL is:

http://FIREFLY_URL/api/v1/cron/TOKEN

To generate a token, go to your Firefly GUI -> Options -> Profile -> Command line token and copy token to URL.

Example:

http://firefly.example/api/v1/cron/6c57c098904f6f4765b52a4bc493687p

If you go to this URL now, your Firefly will run recurring transactions. Because we don’t want to do that manually, we will do it via cronjob that will run every day at 3 AM.

You can do it on any Linux box with normal cronjob:

crontab -e

and add this line:

0 3 * * * wget -qO- http://firefly.example/api/v1/cron/6c57c098904f6f4765b52a4bc493687p &> /dev/null

Because we are running Firefly 3 in Docker, more neat option is to add Alpine linux image to our docker compose and run it along within stack:

version: '3.3'

services:
  app:
    image: fireflyiii/core:latest
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - firefly_iii_upload:/var/www/html/storage/upload
    env_file: stack.env
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    depends_on:
      - db
  db:
    image: mariadb:10.8.2
    hostname: fireflyiiidb
    restart: always
    environment:
      - MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD=yes
      - MYSQL_USER=firefly
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=secret_firefly_password
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=firefly
    volumes:
      - firefly_iii_db:/var/lib/mysql
  cron:
     image: alpine
     command: sh -c "echo \"0 3 * * * wget -qO- http://firefly.example/api/v1/cron/6c57c098904f6f4765b52a4bc493687p &> /dev/null\" | crontab - && crond -f -L /dev/stdout"
volumes:
   firefly_iii_upload:
   firefly_iii_db:

After the stack is running, enter a shell of your Alpine container and check if cronjob is present:

crontab -l

There is a Python tool called pyang that can read yang files. To install it on Linux machine:

apt install git python3-pip
pip install pyang

Now, git clone yang data model to your linux machine:

cd ~;git clone https://github.com/YangModels/yang.git

Pyang by itself is capable of reading yang and present it as a tree. To get xpath, we need to install additional plugin from here: https://github.com/NSO-developer/pyang-xpath
Find your pyang installation, and put the the xpath plugin to the plugin folder:

find /usr/local/lib -iname pyang
/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/pyang

Download plugin:

wget -O /usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/pyang/plugins/xpath.py https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NSO-developer/pyang-xpath/master/xpath.py

Go to Yang model you cloned a few steps back (in this example, we’ll find xpath for Cisco IOS-XE cpu usage:

cd ~/yang/vendor/cisco/xe/1781/

Use xpath module on yang file to get xpath:

pyang -f xpath Cisco-IOS-XE-process-cpu-oper.yang 
>>> module: Cisco-IOS-XE-process-cpu-oper
/cpu-usage
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/five-seconds
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/five-seconds-intr
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/one-minute
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/five-minutes
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes/cpu-usage-process
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes/cpu-usage-process/pid
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes/cpu-usage-process/name
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes/cpu-usage-process/tty
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes/cpu-usage-process/total-run-time
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes/cpu-usage-process/invocation-count
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes/cpu-usage-process/avg-run-time
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes/cpu-usage-process/five-seconds
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes/cpu-usage-process/one-minute
/cpu-usage/cpu-utilization/cpu-usage-processes/cpu-usage-process/five-minutes

This are all xpaths, but we still need a prefix to construct a full path. It’s written at the start of the file:

grep prefix Cisco-IOS-XE-process-cpu-oper.yang
  prefix process-cpu-ios-xe-oper;

The whole xpath (level 1 depth) would look like this:

process-cpu-ios-xe-oper:cpu-usage/cpu-utilization

Depends on the depth and data needed, you can use this xpath with Cisco IOS-XE switch. Example:

telemetry ietf subscription 3305
 encoding encode-kvgpb
 filter xpath /process-cpu-ios-xe-oper:cpu-usage/cpu-utilization
 source-address 10.10.1.1
 stream yang-push
 update-policy periodic 3000
 receiver ip address 10.20.20.250 57000 protocol grpc-tcp

References:
https://community.cisco.com/t5/service-providers-knowledge-base/how-to-derive-exr-telemetry-yang-path-using-pyang/ta-p/3713864
https://github.com/NSO-developer/pyang-xpath
https://github.com/jeremycohoe/cisco-ios-xe-mdt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p94yetSTXdc
https://github.com/YangModels/yang

Looks like the latest MariaDB is not playing nice with Docker. It keeps on restarting, that’s why Firefly app can’t access it. This are the errors:

firefly_app-1 error:

getaddrinfo for db failed: Temporary failure in name resolution

firefly_db-1 error:

[Note] [Entrypoint]: Entrypoint script for MariaDB Server 1:10.9.2+maria~ubu2204 started.
[ERROR] [Entrypoint]: mariadbd failed while attempting to check config
        command was: mariadbd --verbose --help --log-bin-index=/tmp/tmp.UIQ7MFsJkX
        Can't initialize timers

Fix: use older version of Mariadb, in my example, 10.8.2

My docker-compose file:

version: '3.3'

services:
  app:
    image: fireflyiii/core:latest
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - firefly_iii_upload:/var/www/html/storage/upload
    env_file: stack.env
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    depends_on:
      - db
  db:
    image: mariadb:10.8.2
    hostname: fireflyiiidb
    restart: always
    environment:
      - MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD=yes
      - MYSQL_USER=firefly
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=secret_firefly_password
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=firefly
    volumes:
      - firefly_iii_db:/var/lib/mysql
volumes:
   firefly_iii_upload:
   firefly_iii_db:

My notes on converting Cisco Catalyst 9105, 9115, 9xxx series access points to autonomous AP with embedded wireless controller.

Connect to your AP with console cable.

User: Cisco
Pass: Cisco
Enable: Cisco

Setup connectivity betweeen TFTP (in my case running on windows PC – tftpd64) server and AP.

TFTP server IP: 192.168.1.1/24
AP IP: 192.168.1.2/24

capwap ap ip 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1

#version <= 8.9:

ap-type mobility-express ap-type ewc-ap tftp://192.168.1.1/ap1g7 tftp://192.168.1.1/C9800-AP-iosxe-wlc.bin

#version > 8.9:

ap-type ewc-ap tftp://192.168.1.1/ap1g7 tftp://192.168.1.1/C9800-AP-iosxe-wlc.bin

The conversion begins …

Would you like to enter the initial configuration dialog? [yes/no]: enter no

 The enable secret is a password used to protect
  access to privileged EXEC and configuration modes.
  This password, after entered, becomes encrypted in
  the configuration.
  -------------------------------------------------
  secret should be of minimum 10 characters with
  at least 1 upper case, 1 lower case, 1 digit and
  should not contain [cisco]
  -------------------------------------------------
  Enter enable secret: 

[0] Go to the IOS command prompt without saving this config.
[1] Return back to the setup without saving this config.
[2] Save this configuration to nvram and exit.

Select 0

conf t
hostname C9800

Create admin user – also used for web GUI:

user-name admin
priv 15
password test123

Set ap profile:

ap profile ap-default

Configure management user for access points:

mgmtuser username admin password 0 test123 secret 0 test123

Configure management IP address (you will access it via SSH or web GUI):

interface gigabitEthernet 0
ip address 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0
no shut
ip default-gateway 192.168.1.1

Enable web server and save config:

ip http secure-server
wr

Access EWLC via https://192.168.1.2

All commands together after conversion is done:

WLCA49B.FFFF.BEEF#configure terminal
WLCA49B.FFFF.BEEF(config)#hostname C9800
C9800(config)#user-name admin
C9800(config-user-name)#priv 15
C9800(config-user-name)#password test123
C9800(config-user-name)#ap profile ap-default
C9800(config-ap-profile)#$mgmtuser username admin password 0 test123 secret 0 test123
C9800(config-ap-profile)#interface gigabitEthernet 0
C9800(config-if)#ip address 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0
C9800(config-if)#no shut
C9800(config-if)#ip default-gateway 192.168.1.1
C9800(config)#ip http secure-server
C9800(config)#do wr
Building configuration...
[OK]
C9800(config)#

reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBt370eiQ3I

There seems to be some bug in the newest Cisco 5G cellular gateway (CG522-E), shipped with 17.05 firmware. When you insert a SIM card, Linux cwand subsystem crashes and it keeps cycling, not detecting the SIM card:

Subsystem stopped: cwand
CellularGateway# pid 4342's current affinity list: 0-3
pid 4342's new affinity list: 0
pid 4344's current affinity list: 0-3
pid 4344's new affinity list: 0
pid 4345's current affinity list: 0-3
pid 4345's new affinity list: 0
pid 4346's current affinity list: 0-3
pid 4346's new affinity list: 0
pid 4348's current affinity list: 0-3
pid 4348's new affinity list: 0
pid 4349's current affinity list: 0-3
pid 4349's new affinity list: 0

System message at 2022-07-28 07:35:27...
Subsystem started: cwand

Guessing this has something to do with congestion windows parameter settings in the Linux subsystem, in combination with our SIM card (mobile network) specifications.

The only solution was to downgrade to 17.04 firmware. That fixed the issue for now.

Note: scroll to bottom of the post for the final solution.

When you try to login to TPlink switch from pfSense console you get the following error:

ssh admin@10.10.10.1
Unable to negotiate with 10.10.10.1 port 22: no matching key exchange method found. Their offer: diffie-hellman-group1-sha1

Next you try to enable diffie-hellman group, another error pops up:

ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 admin@10.10.10.1
Unable to negotiate with 10.10.10.1 port 22: no matching host key type found. Their offer: ssh-dss

Now you also include ssh-dss, but you still get an error:

ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 -oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-dss admin@10.10.10.1
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that a host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the DSA key sent by the remote host is
SHA256:h1gD8T017XJ19NjY3wD9Vob81jHYUJubf2M23KLU7OU.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /root/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending RSA key in /root/.ssh/known_hosts:1
DSA host key for 10.10.10.1 has changed and you have requested strict checking.
Host key verification failed.

Now you disable strict host checking and you get the following error:

ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 -oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-dss -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no admin@10.10.10.1
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that a host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the DSA key sent by the remote host is
SHA256:h1gD8T017XJ19NjY3wD9Vob81jHYUJubf2M23KLU7OU.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /root/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending RSA key in /root/.ssh/known_hosts:1
Password authentication is disabled to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks.
Keyboard-interactive authentication is disabled to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks.
Permission denied (publickey,password).

The final working solution, enable diffie and ssh-dss, disable strict host checking and redirect known hosts file to /dev/null:

ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 -oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-dss -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o PasswordAuthentication=yes admin@10.10.10.1

Click on your Bitwarden container -> Duplicate/Edit -> Replace bitwarden/server:latest with vaultwarden/server:latest -> Deploy the container and confirm.

It should go smoothly but just in case, make a backup before.

When deploying paperless-ng stack with docker-compose file in Portainer you can’t login to paperless admin because superuser for login is missing (not created). You need to create it by going into container webserver CLI console and create it. Check screenshots for details.

python3 manage.py createsuperuser

For reference, this is my docker-compose.yml file with some additional services (Tika and Gotenberg – used for parsing and converting Office documents):

version: "3.4"
services:
  broker:
    image: redis:6.0
    restart: unless-stopped

  db:
    image: postgres:13
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: paperless
      POSTGRES_USER: paperless
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: paperless

  webserver:
    image: jonaswinkler/paperless-ng:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      - db
      - broker
      - gotenberg
      - tika
    ports:
      - 8010:8000
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:8000"]
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 5
    volumes:
      - data:/usr/src/paperless/data
      - media:/usr/src/paperless/media
      - ./export:/usr/src/paperless/export
      - ./consume:/usr/src/paperless/consume
    environment:
      PAPERLESS_REDIS: redis://broker:6379
      PAPERLESS_DBHOST: db
      PAPERLESS_TIKA_ENABLED: 1
      PAPERLESS_TIKA_GOTENBERG_ENDPOINT: http://gotenberg:3000
      PAPERLESS_TIKA_ENDPOINT: http://tika:9998
      PAPERLESS_TIME_ZONE: Europe/Ljubljana
      PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGES: slv
      # consumption directory.
      USERMAP_UID: 1000
      USERMAP_GID: 100

  gotenberg:
    image: thecodingmachine/gotenberg
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      DISABLE_GOOGLE_CHROME: 1

  tika:
    image: apache/tika
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  data:
  media:
  pgdata:

This is for Windows 10. You need supported bluetooth dongle, refer to cisco documentation. In my tests, I used ASUS BT-400 USB dongle.

Pair your switch to your Windows computer. Default pairing PIN is 9999. Now follow the screenshot bellow:

After the connection is completed, you can SSH to the device via default IP 172.16.0.1.

Bluetooth commands references – in enable mode:

staging config bluetooth on (this will turn on the bluetooth - it's on by default)
staging config bluetooth PIN OLD_PIN NEW_PIN (change default pairing PIN)

Default bluetooth interface is Bluetooth0

For Cisco C9000 series, you need different configuration as described here: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst9500/software/release/16-12/configuration_guide/int_hw/b_1612_int_and_hw_9500_cg/configuring_an_external_usb_bluetooth_dongle.pdf

Docker by default uses networks from 172.17.0.0/16 private range. This can sometimes conflicts with network you already have in your network environment. This will cause routing problems when clients from the same network subnets will try to access Docker services. In this case, Docker will route packets to containers instead back to clients.

To solve this, you need to define unused subnets and assign it to Docker. You can do this with daemon.json file.

Edit file (it if doesn’t exist, create it):

nano /etc/docker/daemon.json

Add this and edit to your needs:

{
  "bip": "172.17.192.1/26",
  "default-address-pools": [
    {
      "base": "172.17.192.64/28",
      "size": 29
    }
  ]
}

“bip”: “172.17.192.1/26” – This will be used for docker0 interface
“base”: “172.17.192.64/28” – This will be used for container bridges
“size”: 29 – Subnet prefix, means how large is going to be each bridge

Save file and restart docker:

service docker restart

In case you used docker-compose, first delete networks and containers with:

docker-compose down

In case you have more old bridges, list them with:

docker network ls

and delete with:

docker network rm network_name

or delete all networks with:

docker network prune

Alternatively, use a portion ob public network that you’re never going to use, for example:

{
  "bip": "100.100.100.1/26",
  "default-address-pools": [
    {
      "base": "100.100.100.64/28",
      "size": 29
    }
  ]
}

Or use host networking, this will bind container network directly to host. But you will lose container isolation with this method: https://docs.docker.com/network/host/

New unboxed Cisco ISR4331, command configure terminal didn’t work. Looks like the router is booted in controller mode by default. To get back to “legacy” mode you need to disable controller mode.

Router#conf t
This command is not supported

Router# controller-mode disable
Disabling controller mode will erase the nvram filesystem, remove all configuration files, and reload the box!
Ensure the BOOT variable points to a valid image
Continue? [confirm]
% Warning: Bootstrap config file needed for Day-0 boot is missing
Do you want to abort? (yes/[no]): no
 Mode change success

Wait a few minutes, router will reload.

Router>en
Router#conf t
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
Router(config)#

I added an extra network card to my Proxmox server (Mellanox Connect-X3) and some VLANs were not working. It turned out Mellanox Connect-X3 supports only about 128 VLANS in memory. Proxmox by default adds VLANs from 2-4094. You can see it in /etc/network/interfaces, line bridge-vids 2-4094.

When you try to reload networking from console, you get this error:

root@proxmox:~# ifreload -a
error: enp1s0: failed to set vid `{2,...4094}` (cmd '/sbin/bridge vlan add vid 2-4094 dev enp1s0' 
failed: returned 255 (RTNETLINK answers: No space left on device))

To fix this, open /etc/network/interfaces and add only VLANs you need. For example:

Original:

auto vmbr1
iface vmbr1 inet manual
        bridge-ports enp1s0
        bridge-stp off
        bridge-fd 0
        bridge-vlan-aware yes
        bridge-vids 2-4094

Fixed:

auto vmbr1
iface vmbr1 inet manual
        bridge-ports enp1s0
        bridge-stp off
        bridge-fd 0
        bridge-vlan-aware yes
        bridge-vids 20,21,30,40,50,60,90,200,210,254,600,664-668

Restart networking:

ifreload -a

Assign VLANs to your VMs now, it should work.