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Hosting Your Own Git Repositories – LandChad.net

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 07:19:51 -0400

Hosting Your Own Git Repositories

Once you have your own VPS or other Internet-available server, you can start hosting your own git repositories. The goal of this tutorial is for you to go from

git clone github.com/...

git clone YourLandChadDomainName.xyz/...

so you can cultivate your own homegrown, grass-fed code, rather than relying on a centralized proprietary service like GitHub.

Installing git

You most likely already have it installed on your server, but if not, run:

apt install git

We don't need any additional software, git itself ships with everything needed to host a remote repository!

Creating bare repositories

For each repository you want to host, you will need to manually create what's called a "bare" repository on your server. These hold all the commits and any other git data needed for your repository, but without an expanded "index" in which you can just browse all the files of a certain commit in the file system.

These repositories need to be owned by the git user, and you should probably pick a directory where you will store them all. One sane choice is under /srv/git/, and we will use this as the example directory for the rest of the tutorial, but any other path will do as well.

Become the git user and create the directory

If you're logged in to your server as root and have git installed, you can become the git user by executing

su git

Now navigate to/create your desired directory, for example

cd /srv
mkdir git

Create the repo

Now you can create the bare repository with

git init --bare my-repo.git

By convention, bare repository names end with ".git".

Repeat the above command for any other repositories you want to host.

Syncing local repositories with your server

Set up SSH login for the git user

You will need to be able to login remotely via ssh as the git user we've used before. To do this, you will either need to set up a password for the git user by running passwd git, or copy your public SSH key from your local machine to /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys. See the SSH keys instructional for details (just log in as git instead of root).

Syncing a new repository with your server

If you've just created a new repository on your local machine, you will need to tell git where the remote repository is to be able to sync with it (using commands like git push or git pull). We do this by defining a "remote" for your repository.

A remote is just a named URL remembered in your repo's configuration. So we need a name and a URL. By convention, the "main" remote is called "origin". The URL has the format user@host:path, where:

user is git, the git user we've already worked with before.
host is your domain name. Alternatively you could even use your server's raw IP address.
path is the absolute path to the repository on the server, in our example /srv/git/my-repo.git

So, to create a new remote, run:

git remote add origin git@yourdomain.xyz:/srv/git/my-repo.git

Now you'll be able to run git push origin master to push your commits or git pull origin to pull from the remote.

Syncing an existing repository

If you've already set up your local repository to sync with a service like GitHub it probably already has a remote called "origin". You can see your repo's remotes with:

git remote -v

You can follow the above instructions, substituting an arbitrary other name other than "origin" to create a differently named remote, e.g.

git remote add vps git@...

Now you'll be able to push/pull with git push vps master and git pull vps, respectively.

Or, to completely sever ties with your centralized git provider, first remove the original origin with: git remote remove origin and then follow the instructions as above.

Contribution

Martin Chrzanowski -- website, donate

Requiring Passwords for Webpages (HTTP Authentication) – LandChad.net

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 07:19:27 -0400

Requiring Passwords for Webpages

HTTP basic authentication will allow you to secure parts (or all) of your website with a username and password without the trouble of PHP or Javascript. This will work with any Nginx server.

Installation

We will be using the command htpasswd to make username and password pairs.

apt install apache2-utils

Now think of a username and password and remember them.

htpasswd -c /etc/nginx/myusers username

Type out your password twice to confirm. You can do this as many times as you'd like.

Check out user name password pairs (the password will be securely hashed):

cat /etc/nginx/myusers

Nginx Config and Auth Basic

From here, we are going to edit our websites config file in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled. Have in mind which folder you'd like to secure. Add something like this:

server {
    #...
    location /secret-folder  {
        auth_basic "What's the Password?" ;
        auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/myusers ;
    }
    #...
}

If you'd like to do the opposite, such as making the entire site private except for a public section, do this:

server {
    #...
    auth_basic "What's the Password?" ;
    auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/myusers ;
    location /public/ {
        #...
        auth_basic off ;
    }
    #...
}

IP Addresses

If passwords aren't enough we can ban an ip or accept one.

location /api {
    #...
    allow 192.168.1.23:8080 ;
    deny 127.0.0.1 ;
}

If you want to check both a username and password with an ip address, use the satisfy directive.

location /api {
    #...
    satify all ;
    allow 192.168.1.23:8080 ;
    deny 127.0.0.1 ;
    auth_basic "What's the Password?" ;
    auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/myusers ;
}

Complete Example

http {
    server {
        listen 80;
        root /var/www/website ;
        #...
        location /secret-folder {
            satisfy all ;
            allow 192.168.1.3/24;
            deny 127.0.0.1 ;
            auth_basic "What's the Password?" ;
            auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/myusers ;
        }
    }
}

Now check your configuration with nginx -t

Reload nginx and you're good to go!

Contributor - tomfasano.xyz

Cronjobs – LandChad.net

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 07:19:04 -0400

Using Cronjobs to run scheduled tasks

Cron is a service that lets you run scheduled tasks. These tasks are called cronjobs. If you have already followed the initial course you will have already used cron when you set up certbot.

What tasks would I want to schedule?

You can schedule anything! Some examples of what you might have done already include:

updatedb to update your locate database
certbot to update renewing of your https certs

Some tasks that you might want to schedule may include:

Package updates - if you really just want to leave your server alone you can automated updating packages on your server
Backups - you may want to backup certain files every day and some every week, this is possible with cron

And many more, anything you can do can be turned into a cronjob.

Basic Cronjobs

This the preferred method for personal tasks and scripts, it's also the easiest to get started with. Run the command crontab -e to access your users crontab

Once you have figured out the command you want to run you need to figure out how often you want to run it and when. I am going to schedule my system updates once a week on at 3:30 AM on a Monday.

We now have to convert this time (Every Monday at 3:30 AM) into a cron time. Cron uses a simple but effective way of scheduling when to run things.

Crontab expressions look like this * * * * * command-to-run The five elements before the command tell when the command is supposed to be run automatically.

So for our Monday at 3:30AM job we would do the following:

 .---------------- minute (0 - 59)
 | .------------- hour (0 - 23)
 | | .---------- day of month (1 - 31)
 | | | .------- month (1 - 12
 | | | | .---- day of week (0 - 6)
 | | | | |
 * * * * *
30 3 * * 1 apt -y update && apt -y upgrade

Some notes

On the day of the week option, Sunday is 0 and counting up from there, Saturday will be 6.
* designates "everything". Our command above has a * in the day of month and month columns. This means it will run regardless of the day of the month or month.
The hour option uses 24 hour time. 3 = 3AM, while use 15 for 3PM.

More examples

Let's add another job, our backup job (for the purposes of this our backup command is just called backup) We want to run backup Every evening at 11PM, once we work out the timings for this we can add the to the same file as the above by running crontab -e This would mean our full crontab would look like this:

0 23 * * * backup

Consecutive times

Suppose we want a command to run every weekday. We know we can put 1 (Monday), but we can also use 1-5 to signify from day 1 (Monday) to day 5 (Friday).

0 6 * * 1-5 echo "Wakey, wakey, wagie!" >> /home/wagie/alarm

The above echo command runs every Monday through Friday at 6:00AM.

Non-consecutive times

We can also randomly specify non-consecutive arguments with a comma. Suppose you have a script you want to run at the midday of the 1st, 15th, and 20th day of every month. You can specify that my putting 1,15,20 for the day of the month argument:

0 12 1,15,20 * * /usr/bin/pay_bills_script

"Every X minutes/days/months"

We can also easily run a command very several minutes or months, without specifying the specific times:

*/15 * * * * updatedb

This cronjob will run the updatedb command every 15 minutes.

Beware of this Rookie Mistake Though...

Suppose you want to run a script once every other month. You might be tempted write this:

* * * */2 *

That might feel right, but this script will be running once every minute during that every other month. You should specify the first two arguments, because with * it will be running every minute and hour!

0 0 1 */2 *

This makes the command run only at 0:00 (12:00AM) on the first day of every two months, which is what we really want.

Consult the website crontab.guru for an intuitive and interactive tester of cronjobs.

User vs. Root Cronjobs

It is important to note that user accounts all have different cronjobs. If you have a user account chad and edit his crontab with crontab -e, the commands you add will be run as the chad user, not root or anyone else.

Bear in mind that if you need root access to run a particular command, you will usually want to add it as root.

System-wide cron directories

crontab -e is the typical interface for adding cronjobs, but it's important to at least know that system-wide jobs are often stored in the file directory. Some programs which need cronjobs will automatically install them in the following way.

Run the command ls /etc/cron* you should see a list of directories and there contents. The directories should be something like the below

/etc/cron.d This is a crontab like the ones that you create with crontab -e
/etc/cron.hourly
/etc/cron.daily
/etc/cron.weekly
/etc/cron.monthly

The directories cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly} are where you can put scripts to run at those times. You don't put normal cron entries here. I prefer to use these directories for system wide jobs that don't relate to an individual user.

Contribution

Mark McNally -- website, Youtube
Edits and examples by Luke

Mirror your site over tor

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 07:15:39 -0400

Mirror Your Site Over Tor

Now that you have a website, why not offer it on a private alternative such as the onion network?

Setting up Tor

Installing Tor

Firstly we need to add the tor repo's to have the latest up to date version or tor.

apt install -y apt-transport-https gpg
echo "deb https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org buster main
deb-src https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org buster main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tor.list

Then we need to add the gpg keys to our keyring

curl -s https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89.asc | gpg --import
gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | apt-key add -

Now update and install tor

apt update
apt install tor deb.torproject.org-keyring

Enabling Tor

Then edit the file /etc/tor/torrc, uncommenting the following lines:

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80

Now start and enable tor at boot

 systemctl enable --now tor

If the next command outputs active in green you're golden!

 systemctl status tor

Now you're server is on the dark web. The following command will give you your onion address:

 cat /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/hostname

Adding the Nginx Config

From here, the steps are almost identical to setting up a normal website configuration file. Follow the steps as if you were making a new website on the webserver tutorial up until the server block of code. Instead, paste this:

        server {
            listen 127.0.0.1:80 ;
            root /var/www/landchad ;
            index index.html ;
            server_name your-onion-address.onion ;
        }

From here we are almost done, all we have to do is enable the site and reload nginx which is also covered in the webserver tutorial.

Update regularly!

Make sure to update Tor on a regular basis by running:

apt update
apt install tor

Contributor - tomfasano.xyz

Cryptocurrency Tutorials Completed

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 08:10:31 -0400

There is now a set of basic tutorials on cryptocurrency wallets and concepts up. The goal here is to allow people to receive tips for sites using all free and open source and peer-to-peer technology.

More tutorials on crypto management and exchanging may be added later, but these focus simply on basic concepts and setting up wallets. They include:

Welcome to LandChad.net!

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 08:21:44 -0400

Welcome to LandChad.net!

This website is for step-by-step tutorials that allow people to host and maintain their own website and other web services on the cheap or free.

There is already a full basic tutorial on website creation on the site here. Following the tutorials can take as little as an hour, but will help you set up a VPS, and NginX server and encrypt your new webpage with Certbot.

Next I plan adding general info on HTML and CSS and how to manage a website.

More stuff like running your own email server and more will be added shortly as more articles are finalized.