In an effort to improve monitoring, I setup an ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) server and setup my different servers to forward their logs. Filebeat is typically installed on the servers to do the forwarding and normally this installation is pretty straight forward.

However, Filebeat is dependent on Go 1.7 and OpenBSD 6.0 only provides 1.6 as a binary package.

The following steps will setup an OpenBSD ports build machine, update the ports to current, build the required packages; then copy the packages to the target OpenBSD server, install the packages, install and configure Filebeat.

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If you have ever had a server exposed to the Internet, you will often see attempts to login to ssh on port 22.

After improving my log monitoring, these login attempts annoyed me enough to take action. So I installed Fail2ban.

Fail2ban monitors logs and will add ip addresses to your firewall to block based on rules. Fail2ban is written in Python and available for several platforms and can monitor different logs (not just ssh).

I have setup Fail2ban to watch for 3 failed logins (one failed login will allow 3 password attempts) and then block that IP address for 1 day.

The following instructions are for:

OpenBSD 6.0
Fail2ban 0.9.5

The instructions also assume that you have an OpenBSD server running with ssh port 22 exposed to the Internet and use Packet Filter (PF) for your firewall.

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The Why

I have a collection of USB keys each different version of OS X and Ubuntu so that I can do a complete reinstall from scratch. The collection was rattling around in my desk drawer, which was annoying.

What I really wanted was to put them in a case, ideally one that matched the other dvd and cd cases.

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This is a follow up to my setup notes for OS X, here are my notes to setup Kinect, OpenNI, NiTE and Nuimotion on Ubuntu Desktop LTS 12.04 Precise.

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Messing around with a Kinect, OpenNI, NiTE led me to a node.js app called Nuimotion.

In an effort to document successful install of all the required packages I created these instructions.

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A few months ago I setup a web browser based dashboard running on a Raspberry Pi, displaying weather, time and transit information.  It worked out well, but it’s success revealed another problem.  Turning the screen on and off multiple times a day was getting old.

So I did what any technically inclined person would do.  I decided to create a device to turn the screen on and off by responding to dramatic changes in ambient light.  The device would also provide a manual power toggle and button to refresh the browser.

This is part 3 of 3 describing the final hardware that was built from the prototype.

• Arduino Screen Controller for Raspberry Pi Part 1 Hot Keys
• Arduino Screen Controller for Raspberry Pi Part 2 Hardware Prototype
• Arduino Screen Controller for Raspberry Pi Part 3 Hardware Final

Although intended to be used with a Raspberry Pi, the screen controller can be used to emulate a USB keyboard and send any desired keystrokes.

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A few months ago I setup a web browser based dashboard running on a Raspberry Pi, displaying weather, time and transit information.  It worked out well, but it’s success revealed another problem.  Turning the screen on and off multiple times a day was getting old.

So I did what any technically inclined person would do.  I decided to create a device to turn the screen on and off by responding to dramatic changes in ambient light.  The device would also provide a manual power toggle and button to refresh the browser.

This is part 2 of 3, describing how to use an Arduino to build a USB keyboard emulator to call the hot keys.

• Arduino Screen Controller for Raspberry Pi Part 1 Hot Keys
• Arduino Screen Controller for Raspberry Pi Part 2 Hardware Prototype
• Arduino Screen Controller for Raspberry Pi Part 3 Hardware Final

Although intended to be used with a Raspberry Pi, the screen controller can be used to emulate a USB keyboard and send any desired keystrokes.

Read More

A few months ago I setup a web browser based dashboard running on a Raspberry Pi, displaying weather, time and transit information.  It worked out well, but it’s success revealed another problem.  Turning the screen on and off multiple times a day was getting old.

So I did what any technically inclined person would do.  I decided to create a device to turn the screen on and off by responding to dramatic changes in ambient light.  The device would also provide a manual power toggle and button to refresh the browser.

This is part 1 of 3, describing how to create a script to turn on and off the screen and hot keys to call this script.

• Arduino Screen Controller for Raspberry Pi Part 1 Hot Keys
• Arduino Screen Controller for Raspberry Pi Part 2 Hardware Prototype
• Arduino Screen Controller for Raspberry Pi Part 3 Hardware Final

Although intended to be used with a Raspberry Pi, the screen controller can be used to emulate a USB keyboard and send any desired keystrokes.

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After building my Raspberry Pi dashboard, I decided to go for the geek double crown and use an Arduino to build an Ethernet attached thermometer.  Then I would know how cold it was outside my window, not at Pearson International Airport.

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