Category Archives: Web

CLI, Web

apache reverse proxy with basic authentication

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I have an old Apache server that’s serving as a reverse proxy for my webcam. I swapped webcams out and unfortunately the new one requires authentication. I had to figure out how to get Apache to reverse proxy with the proper authentication. The best information I found was given by user ThR37 at superuser.com

Essentially you have to use an Apache module called headers to add an HTTP header to the request. On my Debian system this was not enabled, so I had to install it (thanks to Andy over at serverfault)

sudo a2enmod headers
#if you're on ubuntu then it's mod_headers

I then needed to generate the basic authentication hash for the header to pass. This was done via a simple python script:

#replace USERNAME:PASSWORD below with your credentials
import base64
hash = base64.b64encode(b'USERNAME:PASSWORD')
print hash

Save the above script into a file hash.py and then run it by typing 

python hash.py

With headers enabled and hash acquired I just needed to tweak my config by adding a RequestHeader line:

RequestHeader set Authorization "Basic <HASH>"
#Replace <HASH> with hash acquired above

After adding that one line and restarting apache, it worked!

CLI, Web

Headless Private Internet Access with OpenVPN & Port Forwarding

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I wanted to initiate a connection to my VPN provider Private Internet Access (PIA) from one of my headless CentOS 7 servers. Unfortunately PIA software requires a GUI to work. Fortunately, PIA provides ovpn files that fully work with the openVPN software, which does work headlessly.

I followed this guide from htpcguides.com to get me going. I tweaked it a bit to work with CentOS 7. I then used this guide to help me set up port forwarding to work with transmission-daemon.

First, install openvpn & iproute

sudo yum -y install openvpn

Next grab PIA’s ovpn files for their servers:

wget https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/openvpn/openvpn.zip
sudo unzip openvpn.zip -d /etc/openvpn/pia

Now create a credentials file to specify your PIA username and password. The format is simply the first line being your PIA username, and the second line being your PIA password, nothing else.

#Create file
sudo vim /etc/openvpn/pia/.secret

#Enter PIA credentials into the file, then save and exit
USERNAME
PASSWORD

#Change permissions to be readable only by root
sudo chmod 700 /etc/openvpn/pia/.secret

Test if it’s working by manually running OpenVPN

sudo openvpn --config /etc/openvpn/PIA_SITE_FILENAME.ovpn --auth-user-pass /etc/openvpn/pia/.secret

Create a systemd service file to get OpenVPN to run on startup

sudo vim /usr/lib/systemd/system/pia.service

[Unit]
Description=OpenVPN
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
PrivateTmp=true
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/openvpn --daemon --config "/etc/openvpn/PIA_SITE_FILENAME.ovpn" --auth-user-pass /etc/openvpn/.secret

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload systemd daemons and enable at boot:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable pia.service

Start the service (or reboot) and then use curl to verify your external IP has changed

sudo systemctl start pia.service
curl https://ipinfo.io/ip

Port Forwarding

PIA is awesome because it supports port forwarding to facilitate things like torrents. I took the script from this guide and tweaked it a bit to suit my needs (and to correct a syntax error)

Note: PIA only supports port forwarding from specific regions. Here is the current list.

Download script to pia directory

sudo wget -O /etc/openvpn/pia/portforward.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HTPCGuides/pia-port-forwarding-scripts/master/transmission-pia-port-forwarding.sh
sudo chmod +x /etc/openvpn/portforward.sh

Edit the script to provide PIA username and pass, and Transmission user/pass (if you have that configured.) The variables to change are USERNAME,PASSWORD, TRANSUSER, and TRANSPASS

Test the script by running it manually (make sure both your pia service and transmission services are already running.) I’ve noticed that the script will say success even on failure which is why I suggest using bash -x so you can see actual error messages from PIA regarding port forwarding:

sudo bash -x /etc/openvpn/pia/portforward.sh

After that’s run you can check your transmission daemon to ensure it is listening on the PIA port that’s been forwarded.

Configure to run on startup and every two hours by invoking cron:

sudo crontab -e

@reboot sleep 60 && /etc/openvpn/pia/portforward.sh | while IFS= read -r line; do echo "$(date) $line"; done >> /var/log/pia_portforward.log 2>&1 #PIA Port Forward
0 */2 * * * /etc/openvpn/pia/portforward.sh | while IFS= read -r line; do echo "$(date) $line"; done >> /var/log/pia_portforward.log 2>&1 #PIA Port Forward

If you are paranoid about transmission running without the VPN working you can tweak your transmission service to rely on the pia service before starting. Modify /usr/lib/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service and tweak the After line and add a Required line so it now reads this:

Required=pia.service
After=network.target pia.service

Don’t forget to run a sudo systemctl daemon-reload afterward.

Troubleshooting

If you get the error message “/etc/openvpn/pia/portforward.sh: line 35: [: : integer expression expected” it means you have to tweak the script a bit (it’s broken?)

Change line 35 to be the following:

if [ "$SPLITVPN" == 1 ]; then

CLI, Web

Rotate videos for WordPress using ffmpeg

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WordPress has an extremely annoying issue with reading EXIF data when posting photos and videos. There is a plugin to fix rotated pictures, but I couldn’t find one for rotated videos. If you happen to upload a video from your phone that was shot in portait orientation, it will likely upload to wordpress in landscape orientation (sideways.) Very annoying.

My fix to this is to re-encode the video so it is at the proper orientation before uploading to wordpress. Thanks to this site for the information – ffmpeg does this automatically for you. So the syntax is simple:

ffmpeg -i SOURCE_VIDEO_FILENAME -c:a copy FIXED_VIDEO_FILENAME.mp4

Success.

CLI, OS, Web

Active Directory / LDAP integration with WordPress

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I struggled for a while to get WordPress to use Active Directory credentials on CentOS 7. Below is how I finally got it to work.

First, install necessary packages:

sudo yum -y install openldap-clients php-ldap

If you use self-signed certificate for ldaps, you’ll need to modify /etc/openldap/ldap.conf

HOST <HOSTNAME_OF_LDAP_SERVER>
PORT 636
TLS_CACERT <PATH_TO_CA_CERT>
TLS_REQCERT demand

With the above settings you can test your ldap string with ldapsearch

ldapsearch -x -D "<BIND USERNAME>" -b "<BASE_DN>" -H ldaps://<LDAP_SERVER_HOSTNAME> -W sAMAccountName=<USER_TO_QUERY>

Once ldapsearch works properly, install your AD integration plugin.  I use AuthLDAP by Andreas Heigl

I struggled with which LDAP strings and filters to use. This is what finally got everything working with our Active Directory environment:

LDAP URI: ldaps://<BIND_USERNAME>:<BIND_PASSWORD>@<AD_SERVER_ADDRESS>:636/<BASE DN>

Filter: (sAMAccountName=%s)

Name-Attribute: givenName

User-ID Attribute: sAMAccountName

Second Name Attribute: sn

Group-Attribute:memberOf

Group-Separator:  _

Group-Filter: (&(objectClass=user)(sAMAccountName=%s)(memberOf=*))

Role – group mapping

I had to change Group-Separator to _ above, because in Role – group mapping for active directory, you must put the FQDN, which includes commas. Put an underscore separated list of FQDNS for each of these fields you want.

Web

Rewrite HTTP host request with Varnish

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I had a stubborn WordPress plugin that somehow was remembering the URL of the site it was installed on. It became a problem when I changed the site URL. Despite changing the URL everywhere I could think of, this particular plugin was calling CSS files for the URL of the original site. I did a search and replace in the site database and searched all files for any reference to that site but couldn’t find anything. I never did find the culprit. My workaround was to use varnish to rewrite the request before it hit the browser.

Thanks to this answer by Jorge Nerin on Stack Overflow, I found my answer on how to do this.

backend www {
  .host = "www.example.com";
  .port = "http";
}

sub vcl_recv {
  if (req.http.host ~ "(?i)^(www.)?example.com$") {
    set req.backend_hint = www;
  }
}

In my case I had a default backend (no other backends configured) so my varnish config was simply adding these line in sub vcs_recv (varnish 4 syntax)

if (req.http.host ~ "(?i)^(www.)?old.host.name$") {
     set req.backend_hint = default;
}

That did the trick!

CLI, Web

Fix wordpress PHP change was reverted error

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Since WordPress 4.9 I’ve had a peculiar issue when trying to edit theme files using the web GUI. Whenever I tried to save changes I would get this error message:

Unable to communicate back with site to check for fatal errors, so the PHP change was reverted. You will need to upload your PHP file change by some other means, such as by using SFTP.

After following this long thread I saw the suggestion to install and use the Health Check plugin to get more information into why this is happening. In my case I kept getting this error message:

The loopback request to your site failed, this may prevent WP_Cron from working, along with theme and plugin editors.<br>Error encountered: (0) cURL error 28: Connection timed out after 10001 milliseconds

I researched what a loopback request is in this case. It’s the webserver reaching out to its own site’s url to talk to itself. My webserver was being denied internet access, which included its own URL, so it couldn’t complete the loopback request.

One solution, mentioned here, is to edit the hosts file on your webserver to point to 127.0.0.1 for the URL of your site. My solution was to open up the firewall to allow my server to connect to its URL. I then ran into a different problem:

The loopback request to your site failed, this may prevent WP_Cron from working, along with theme and plugin editors.<br>Error encountered: (0) cURL error 60: Peer's Certificate issuer is not recognized.

After digging for a while I found this site which explains how to edit php.ini to point to an acceptable certificate list. To fix this on my Cent7 machine I edited /etc/php.ini and added this line (you could also add it to /etc/php.d/curl.ini)

curl.cainfo="/etc/pki/tls/cert.pem"

This caused php’s curl module to use the same certificate trust store that the underlying OS uses.

Then restart php-fpm if you’re using it:

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm

Success! Loopback connections now work properly.

Update 7/16/2018: I still had a wordpress site that was giving me certificate grief despite the above fix. After MUCH frustration I finally found this post where André Gayle points out that wordpress ships with its own certificate bundle, independent of even curl’s ca bundle! It’s located in your wordpress directory/wp-includes/certificates folder.

My solution to this extremely frustrating problem was to remove their bundle and symlink to my own (Cent 7 box – adjust your path to match where your wordpress install and certificate trust store is located)

sudo mv /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt.old
sudo ln -s /etc/pki/tls/cert.pem /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt

FINALLY no more loopback errors in the Health Check plugin, and thus the ability to edit theme files in the editor.

CLI, OS, Web

Make Java run on privileged ports in CentOS 7

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I recently gnashed my teeth at trying to get java to directly bind to port 443 instead of using nginx to proxy to a java application I had to use. I was surprised at the complication of finding the solution, but I eventually did thanks to the following sites:

https://superuser.com/questions/710253/allow-non-root-process-to-bind-to-port-80-and-443/892391

https://github.com/kaitoy/pcap4j/issues/63

First, determine the full path of your current java install:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

In my CentOS 7 install, the java binary was located here:

/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.151-1.b12.el7_4.x86_64/jre/bin/java

Next, use setcap to configure java to be able to bind to port 443:

sudo setcap CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE=+eip /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.151-1.b12.el7_4.x86_64/jre/bin/java

Now, test to make sure java works:

java -version

java: error while loading shared libraries: libjli.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The above error means that after setting setcap, it breaks how java looks for its library to run. To fix this, we need to symlink the library it’s looking for into /usr/lib, then run ldconfig

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.151-1.b12.el7_4.x86_64/jre/lib/amd64/jli/libjli.so /usr/lib/
sudo ldconfig

Now test Java again:

java -version

It took longer than I like to admit to get this working, but it it does indeed work this way.

Web

Whitelist IPs with varnish

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I recently needed to restrict which IP addresses can access wp-login.php for a wordpress site of mine. This site is sitting behind varnish cache for speed. Modifying htaccess doesn’t work in this case so I have to modify the varnish configuration in order to get this to work.

The varnish documentation is actually quite good at telling you what you need to do.  You have to first specify an acl and then in the vcl_recv function specify the action when these IPs are used.

I kept running into a problem where varnish wouldn’t compile. I kept receiving this error:

"Expected CSTR got 'admin_net'" (C String?)

It turns out my load balancer does not support the PROXY protocol, so client.ip is always the IP of the load balancer, not the IP of the person making the request.

The solution was finally found here where it was explained that in absence of PROXY protocol you can use the std.ip() function to convert a string containing an IP address to the value varnish expects an IP address to be, in order to check it against an ACL (see here for syntax reference.)

I then had to take it a step further to trim all the extraneous commas and quotes from X-Forwarded-For so that the std.ip() function would work:

# set realIP by trimming CloudFlare IP which will be used for various checks
set req.http.X-Actual-IP = regsub(req.http.X-Forwarded-For, "[, ].*$", "");

With these three bits combined I was able to properly restrict access to wp-login.php to a specified whitelist of IP addresses:

acl admin {
 "10.0.0.0/24";
 "10.0.1.0/24";
 "10.0.2.0/24";
}

...

sub vcl_recv {
...

 # set realIP by trimming CloudFlare IP which will be used for various checks
 set req.http.X-Actual-IP = regsub(req.http.X-Forwarded-For, "[, ].*$", "");

 #Deny wp-login.php access if not in admin ACL
 if ((std.ip(req.http.X-Actual-IP, "0.0.0.0") !~ admin) && req.url ~ "^/wp-login.php") {
  return(synth(403, "Access denied."));
 }
...
}

Success.

CLI, Web

Fix WordPress “Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page.”

35 Comments

I recently came across an issue with my WordPress installation. It’s situated behind a load balancer where SSL is terminated. The load balancer takes HTTPS traffic, then forwards it as HTTP on port 80 to the wordpress server.

I was running issues with a redirect loop after installing wordpress. The solution was to add this bit of code to wp-config.php:

define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);
if ($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'] == 'https')
 $_SERVER['HTTPS']='on';

This solves the redirect loop issue but then I ran into a different problem. When I tried to sign into wp-admin I would get this message:

Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page.

After much digging I found this post which emphasizes that you must place that code BEFORE anything else in wp-config.php (except for the beginning PHP tag.) Success!