Tag Archives: BASH

CLI

Convert TIF to JPG with ImageMagick

Leave a comment

My new project is digitizing film negatives. Following advice found on the DataHoarder subreddit, I’m scanning these files in the highest possible quality in uncompressed TIF files. These TIF files are too big for regular consumption, thus the need to convert to JPG.

ImageMagick is amazing, and does the job nicely. Make sure you have the imagemagick package installed, and it’s as simple as using the convert command.

This is my simple script for converting all TIF files to JPG, and outputting them to the same directory:

for file in *.tif; do echo converting "$file" to "${file%.*}.jpg"; convert "$file" "${file%.*}.jpg"; done

It uses bash substitution to remove the TIF extension in the resulting JPG file. It works beautifully!

Update 4/14/2023:

I have re-worked this a bit to handle multiple directories. It involves setting the Internal Field Separator to be ‘ \n’ instead of space (default) and using the find command. The multi-directory command is below:

IFS=$'\n'; for file in $(find . -name *.tif); do echo converting "$file" to "${file%.*}.jpg"; convert "$file" "${file%.*}.jpg"; done;unset IFS

CLI, Hardware, Networking

piKVM pushover startup script

Leave a comment

I’ve had an issue where I wasn’t sure if my dynamic DNS provider registered properly. I then realized that I have a piKVM attached to one of my servers that boots on powerup, even if the server does not. I could utilize this piKVM to help me out.

Thanks to inspiration from Chris Dzombak I was able to whip up a little script that runs on startup. This script waits 5 minutes to allow for my firewall and modem to boot up, then sends a pushover notification to let me know the piKVM is online and what its external IP address is.

To get it working on the piKVM I had to enter into RW mode, write and save the script, add execute permissions to the script, then configure a systemd service to run the script at startup.

Here is the script, saved under /root/boot-pushover.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -eu

#Wait 5 minutes to allow router bootup
sleep 300

TOKEN="PUSHOVER_APPLICATION_TOKEN"
USER="PUSHOVER_USER_TOKEN"
EXTERNAL_IP="$(curl ifconfig.me)"
MESSAGE="$(hostname) is online. External IP: $EXTERNAL_IP"

#Send pushover command to alert it's up and send its external IP
curl -s \
  --form-string "token=$TOKEN" \
  --form-string "user=$USER" \
  --form-string "message=$MESSAGE" \
  https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json

Set executable: chmod +x /root/boot-pushover.sh

Here is the systemd service, saved under /etc/systemd/system/boot-pushover-notification.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/root/boot-pushover.sh
RemainAfterExit=yes
User=root
Group=root
RestartSec=15
Restart=on-failure

[Unit]
Wants=network.target
After=network.target nss-lookup.target

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload daemons & enable startup: 

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable boot-pushover-notification.service

Test by exiting rw mode and rebooting the piKVM:

ro
reboot

It works really well!

CLI, Hardware, OS, Virtualization

Threadripper / Epyc processor core optimization

1 Comment

I had a pet project (folding@home) where I wanted to maximize computing power. I became frustrated with default CPU scheduling of my folding@home threads. Ideal performance would keep similar threads on the same CPU, but the threads were jumping all over the place, which was impacting performance.

Step one was to figure out which threads belonged to which physical cores. I found on this site that you can use cat to find out what your “sibling threads” are:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu{0..15}/topology/thread_siblings_list

The above command is for my Threadripper & Epyc systems, which each have 16 cores hyperthreaded to 32 cores. Adjust the {0..15} number to match your number of cores (core 0 being the fist core.) This was my output:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu{0..15}/topology/thread_siblings_list

0,16
1,17
2,18
3,19
4,20
5,21
6,22
7,23
8,24
9,25
10,26
11,27
12,28
13,29
14,30
15,31

Now that I know the sibling threads are offset by 16, I can use this information to optimize my folding@home VMs. I modified my CPU pinning script to take this into consideration. The script ensures that each VM is pinned to only use sibling threads (ensuring they all stay on the same physical CPU.)

This script should be used with caution. It pins processes to specific CPUs, which limits the kernel scheduler’s ability to move things around if needed. If configured badly this can cause the machine to lock up or VMs to be terminated.

I saw some impressive results spinning up four separate 8 core VMs and pinning them to sibling cores using this script. It almost doubled the rate at which I completed folding@home work units.

And now, the script:

#!/bin/bash
#Properly assign CPU cores to their respective die for EPYC/Threadripper systems
#Based on how hyperthreads are done in these systems
#cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu{0..15}/topology/thread_siblings_list

#The script takes two arguments - the ID of the Proxmox VM to modify, and the core to begin the VM on
#If running this against multiple VMs, make sure to increment this second number by half of the cores of the previous VM
#For example, if I have one 8 core VM and I run this script specifying 0 for the offset, if I spin up a second VM, the second argument would be 4
#this would ensure the second VM starts on core 4 (the 5th core) and assigns sibling cores to match

set -eo pipefail

#take First argument as which VMID to pin CPU cores to, the second argument is which core to start pinning to
VMID=$1
OFFSET=$2

#Determine offset for sibling threads
SIBLING_THREAD_OFFSET=$(cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/topology/thread_siblings_list| sed 's/,/ /g' | awk '{print $2}')

#Function to determine number of CPU cores a VM has
cpu_tasks() {
	expect <<EOF | sed -n 's/^.* CPU .*thread_id=\(.*\)$/\1/p' | tr -d '\r' || true
spawn qm monitor $VMID
expect ">"
send "info cpus\r"
expect ">"
EOF
}

#Only act if VMID & OFFSET are set
if [[ -z $VMID  || -z $OFFSET ]]
then
	echo "Usage: cpupin.sh <VMID> <OFFSET>"
	exit 1
else
	#Get PIDs of each CPU core for VM, count number of VM cores, and get even/odd PIDs for assignment
	VCPUS=($(cpu_tasks))
	VCPU_COUNT="${#VCPUS[@]}"
	VCPU_EVEN_THREADS=($(for EVEN_THREAD in "${VCPUS[@]}"; do echo $EVEN_THREAD; done | awk '!(NR%2)'))
	VCPU_ODD_THREADS=($(for ODD_THREAD in "${VCPUS[@]}"; do echo $ODD_THREAD; done | awk '(NR%2)'))

	if [[ $VCPU_COUNT -eq 0 ]]; then
		echo "* No VCPUS for VM$VMID"
		exit 1
	fi

	echo "* Detected ${#VCPUS[@]} assigned to VM$VMID..."
	echo "* Resetting cpu shield..."

	#Start at offset CPU number, assign odd numbered PIDs to their own CPU thread, then increment CPU core number
	#0-3 if offset is 0, 4-7 if offset is 4, etc
	ODD_CPU_INDEX=$OFFSET
	for PID in "${VCPU_ODD_THREADS[@]}"
	do
		echo "* Assigning ODD thread $ODD_CPU_INDEX to $PID..."
		taskset -pc "$ODD_CPU_INDEX" "$PID"
		((ODD_CPU_INDEX+=1))
	done

	#Start at offset + CPU count, assign even number PIDs to their own CPU thread, then increment CPU core number
	#16-19 if offset is 0,	20-23 if offset is 4, etc
	EVEN_CPU_INDEX=$(($OFFSET + $SIBLING_THREAD_OFFSET))
	for PID in "${VCPU_EVEN_THREADS[@]}"
	do
		echo "* Assigning EVEN thread $EVEN_CPU_INDEX to $PID..."
		taskset -pc "$EVEN_CPU_INDEX" "$PID"
		((EVEN_CPU_INDEX+=1))
	done
fi
CLI, OS, Virtualization

Proxmox HA management script

Leave a comment

I was a bit frustrated at the lack of certain functions of ProxMox. I wanted an easy way to tag a VM and manage that tag as a group. My solution was to create HA groups for VMs with various functions. I can then manage the group and tell them to migrate storage or turn off & on.

I wrote a script to facilitate this. Right now it only covers powering on, powering off, and migrating the location of the primary disk, but more is to come.

Here’s what I have so far:

#!/bin/bash
#Proxmox HA management script
#Migrates storage, starts, or stops Proxmox HA groups based on the name and function passed to it.
#Usage: manage-HA-group.sh <start|stop|migrate> <ha-group-name> [local|remote]

#Change to the name of your local storage (for migrating from remote to local storage)
LOCAL_STORAGE_NAME="pve-1TB"

function get_vm_name() {
    #Determine the name of the VMID passed to this function
    VM_NAME=$(qm config "$1" | grep '^name:' | awk '{print $2}')
}

function get_group_VMIDs() {
    #Get a list of VMIDs based on the name of the HA group passed to this function
    group_VMIDs=$(ha-manager config | grep -B1 "$1" | grep vm: | sed 's/vm://g')
}

function group_power_state() {
    #Loop through members of HA group passed to this function
    for group in "$1" 
    do
        get_group_VMIDs "$group"
        for VM in $group_VMIDs
        do
            get_vm_name "$VM"
            echo "$OPERATION $VM_NAME in HA group $group"
            ha-manager set $VM --state $VM_STATE
        done
    done
}

function group_migrate() {
    #This function migrates the VM's first disk (scsi0) to the specified location (local/remote)
    #TODO String to determine all disk IDs:  qm config 115 | grep '^scsi[0-9]:' | tr -d ':' | awk '{print $1}'
    disk="scsi0"    

    #Loop through each VM in specified group name (second argument passed on CLI)
    for group in "$2" 
    do
        get_group_VMIDs "$group"
        for VM in $group_VMIDs
        do
            #Determine the names of each VM in the HA group
            get_vm_name "$VM"

            #Set storage location based on argument
            if [[ "$3" == "remote" ]]; then
                storage="$VM_NAME"
            else
                storage="$LOCAL_STORAGE_NAME"
            fi

            #Move primary disk to desired location
            echo "Migrating $VM_NAME to "$3" storage"
            qm move_disk $VM $disk $storage --delete=1

        done
    done
}

case "$1" in 
    start)
        VM_STATE="started"
        OPERATION="Starting"
        group_power_state "$2" 
        ;;
    stop)
        VM_STATE="stopped"
        OPERATION="Stopping"
        group_power_state "$2"
        ;;
    migrate)
        case "$3" in
            local|remote)
                group_migrate "$@"
                ;;
            *)
                echo "Usage: manage-HA-group.sh migrate <ha-group-name> <local|remote>"
                ;;
        esac        
    ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: manage-HA-group.sh <start|stop|migrate> <ha-group-name> [local|remote]"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

CLI

Add colors to bash scripts

Leave a comment

A quick note on how to easily add colors to your bash scripts. Thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5947742/how-to-change-the-output-color-of-echo-in-linux

Here are a few ANSI escape codes for reference

Black        0;30     Dark Gray     1;30
Red          0;31     Light Red     1;31
Green        0;32     Light Green   1;32
Brown/Orange 0;33     Yellow        1;33
Blue         0;34     Light Blue    1;34
Purple       0;35     Light Purple  1;35
Cyan         0;36     Light Cyan    1;36
Light Gray   0;37     White         1;37
#Set colors to variables
RED='\033[0;31m'
GREEN='\033[0;32m'
LIGHTBLUE='\033[0;34m'
NC='\033[0m' #No color

Reference the variables using echo -e like so:

echo -e "${RED} $instance is not a valid instance. Exiting. ${NC}"

Profit.

OS, Virtualization

Run startup / shutdown on every VM in PRoxmox HA group

Leave a comment

I wanted to run a stop operation on all VMs in one of my HA groups in Proxmox and was frustrated to see there was no easy way to do so. I wrote a quick & dirty bash script that will let me start & stop all VMs within an HA group to do what I wanted. 

#!/bin/bash
#Proxmox HA start/stop script
#Takes first argument of the operation to do (start / stop) and any additional arguments for which HA group(s) to do it on, then acts as requested.

if [[ "$1" != "start" && "$1" != "stop" ]]; then
    echo "Please provide desired state (start | stop)"
    exit 1
fi

if [ "$1" == "start" ]; then
    VM_STATE="started"
    OPERATION="Starting"
elif [ "$1" == "stop" ]; then
    VM_STATE="stopped"
    OPERATION="Stopping"
else exit 1 #should not ever get here
fi

#Loop through each argument except for the first
for group in "${@:-1}" 
do
    group_members=$(ha-manager config | grep -B1 $group | grep vm: )
    for VM in $group_members
    do
        echo "$OPERATION $VM in HA group $group"
        ha-manager set $VM --state $VM_STATE
    done
done
CLI, Hardware, OS, Virtualization

proxmox suspend & resume scripts

Leave a comment

Update 12/17/2019: Added logic to wait for VM to be suspended before suspending the shypervisor

Update 12/8/2019: After switching VMs I needed to tweak the pair of scripts. I modified it to make all the magic happen on the hypervisor; the VM simply needs to SSH into the hypervisor and call the script. The hypervisor now also needs access to SSH via public key to the VM to tell it to suspend.

#!/bin/sh
#ProxMox suspend script part 1 of 2
#To be run on the VM 
#All this does is call the suspend script on the hypervisor
#This could also just be a bash alias

####### Variables #########
HYPERVISOR=        #Name / IP of the hypervisor
SSH_USER=          #User to SSH into hypervisor as
HYPERVISOR_SCRIPT= #Path to part 2 of the script on the hypervisor

####### End Variables ######

#Execute server suspend script
ssh $SSH_USER@$HYPERVISOR "$HYPERVISOR_SCRIPT" &
#!/bin/bash
#ProxMox suspend script part 2 of 2
#Script to run on the hypervisor, it waits for VM to suspend and then suspends itself
#It relies on passwordless sudo configured on the VM as well as SSH keys to allow passwordless SSH access to the VM from the hypervisor
#It resumes the VM after it resumes itself
#Called from the VM

########### Variables ###############

VM=             #Name/IP of VM to SSH into
VM_SSH_USER=    #User to ssh into the vm with
VMID=           #VMID of VM you wish to suspend

########### End Variables############

#Tell guest VM to suspend
ssh $VM_SSH_USER@$VM "sudo systemctl suspend"

#Wait until guest VM is suspended, wait 5 seconds between attempts
while [ "$(qm status $VMID)" != "status: suspended" ]
do 
    echo "Waiting for VM to suspend"
    sleep 5 
done

#Suspend hypervisor
systemctl suspend

#Resume after shutdown
qm resume $VMID

I have a desktop running ProxMox. My GUI is handled via a virtual machine with physical hardware passed through it. The challenge with this setup is getting suspend & resume to work properly. I got it to work by suspending the VM first, then the host; on resume, I power up the host first, then resume the VM. Doing anything else would cause hardware passthrough problems that would force me to reboot the VM.

I automated the suspend process by using two scripts: one for the VM, and one for the hypervisor. The first script is run on the VM. It makes an SSH command to the hypervisor (thanks to this post) to instruct it to run the second half of the script; then initiates a suspend of the VM.

The second half of the script waits a few seconds to allow the VM to suspend itself, then instructs the hypervisor to also go into suspend. I had to split these into two scripts because once the VM is suspended, it can’t issue any more commands. Suspending the hypervisor must happen after the VM itself is suspended.

Here is script #1 (to be run on the VM) It assumes you have already set up a private/public key pair to allow for passwordless login into the hypervisor from the VM.

#!/bin/sh
#ProxMox suspend script part 1 of 2
#Tto be run on the VM so it suspends before the hypervisor does

####### Variables #########
HYPERVISOR=HYPERVISOR_NAME_OR_IP
SSH_USER=SSH_USER_ON_HYPERVISOR
HYPERVISOR_SCRIPT_LOCATION=NAME_AND_LOCATION_OF_PART2_OF_SCRIPT

####### End Variables ######

#Execute server suspend script, then suspend VM
ssh $SSH_USER@$HYPERVISOR  $HYPERVISOR_SCRIPT_LOCATION &

#Suspend
systemctl suspend

Here is script #2 (which script #1 calls), to be run on the hypervisor

#!/bin/bash
#ProxMox suspend script part 2 of 2
#Script to run on the hypervisor, it waits for VM to suspend and then suspends itself
#It resumes the VM after it resumes itself

########### Variables ###############

#Specify VMid you wish to suspend
VMID=VMID_OF_VM_YOU_WANT_TO_SUSPEND

########### End Variables############

#Wait 5 seconds before doing anything to allow for VM to suspend
sleep 5

#Suspend hypervisor
systemctl suspend

#Resume after shutdown
qm resume $VMID

It works on my machine 🙂

CLI, Hardware, OS, Virtualization

Primary VGA passthrough in ProxMox

Leave a comment

I recently decided to amplify my VFIO experience by experimenting with passing my primary display adapter to a VM in proxmox. Previously I had just run tasksel on the proxmox host itself to install a GUI. I wanted better separation from the server side of proxmox and the client side. I also wanted to be able to distro-hop while maintaining the proxmox backend.

Initially I tried following my guide for passing through a secondary graphics card but ran into a snag. It did not work with my primary card and kept outputting these errors:

device vfio-pci,host=09:00.0,id=hostdev0,bus=pci.4,addr=0x0: Failed to mmap 0000:09:00.0 BAR 1. Performance may be slow

After much digging I finally found this post which explained I needed to unbind a few things for it to work properly: 

echo 0 > /sys/class/vtconsole/vtcon0/bind
echo 0 > /sys/class/vtconsole/vtcon1/bind
echo efi-framebuffer.0 > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/efi-framebuffer/unbind

After more searching I found this post on reddit which had a nifty script for automating this when VM startup is desired. I tweaked it a bit to suit my needs.

Find your IDs for GPU by doing lspci and looking for your adapter. Find the IDs by running lspci -n -s <GPU location discovered with lspci>. Lastly VMID is the promxox ID for the VM you wish to start.

#!/bin/sh
#Script to launch Linux desktop
#Adapted from from https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/abfjs8/cant_seem_to_get_vfio_working_with_qemu/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

GPU=09:00
GPU_ID="10de 1c82"
GPU_AUDIO="10de 0fb9"
VMID=116

# Remove the framebuffer and console
echo 0 > /sys/class/vtconsole/vtcon0/bind
echo 0 > /sys/class/vtconsole/vtcon1/bind
echo efi-framebuffer.0 > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/efi-framebuffer/unbind

# Unload the Kernel Modules that use the GPU
modprobe -r nvidia_drm
modprobe -r nvidia_modeset
modprobe -r nvidia
modprobe -r snd_hda_intel

# Load the vfio kernel module
modprobe vfio
modprobe vfio_iommu_type1
modprobe vfio-pci

#Assign card to vfio-pci
echo -n "${GPU_ID}" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/vfio-pci/new_id
echo -n "${GPU_AUDIO}" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/vfio-pci/new_id

#Start desktop
sudo qm start $VMID

#Wait here until the VM is turned off
while [ "$(qm status $VMID)" != "status: stopped" ] 
do
 sleep 5
done

#Reassign primary graphics card back to host
echo -n "0000:${GPU}.0" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/vfio-pci/unbind
echo -n "0000:${GPU}.1" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/vfio-pci/unbind
echo -n "${GPU_ID}" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/vfio-pci/remove_id
echo -n "${GPU_AUDIO}" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/vfio-pci/remove_id
rmmod vfio-pci
modprobe nvidia
modprobe nvidia_drm
modprobe nvidia_modeset
modprobe snd_hda_intel
sleep 1
echo -n "0000:${GPU}.0" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/nvidia/bind
echo -n "0000:${GPU}.1" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/snd_hda_intel/bind
sleep 1
echo efi-framebuffer.0 > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/efi-framebuffer/bind
echo 1 > /sys/class/vtconsole/vtcon0/bind
echo 1 > /sys/class/vtconsole/vtcon1/bind

With my primary adapter passed through I realized I also want other things passed through, mainly USB. I tried Proxmox’s USB device passthrough options but it doesn’t work well with USB audio (stutters and choppy.) I wanted to pass through my whole USB controller to the VM.

This didn’t work as well as I had planned due to IOMMU groups. A great explanation of IOMMU groups can be found here. I had to figure out which of my USB controllers were in which IOMMU group to see if I could pass the whole thing through or not (some of them were in the same IOMMU group as SATA & network controllers, which I did not want to pass through to the VM.)

Fortunately I was able to discover which USB controllers I could safely pass through first by running lspci to see the device ID, then running find to see which IOMMU group it was in, then checking against lspci to see what other devices were in that group. The whole group comes over together when you pass through to a VM.

First determine the IDs of your USB controllers

lspci | grep USB

01:00.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43ba (rev 02)
08:00.0 USB controller: Renesas Technology Corp. uPD720201 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03)
0a:00.3 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 145c
43:00.3 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 145c

Next get which IOMMU group these devices belong to

find /sys/kernel/iommu_groups/ -type l|sort -h|grep '01:00.0\|08:00.0\|0a:00.3\|43:00.3'

/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:01:00.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/15/devices/0000:08:00.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/19/devices/0000:0a:00.3
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/37/devices/0000:43:00.3

Then see what other devices use the same IOMMU group (the group is the number after /sys/kernel/iommu_groups/)

find /sys/kernel/iommu_groups/ -type l|sort -h | grep '/14\|/15\|/19\|/37'

/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:01:00.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:01:00.1
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:01:00.2
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:02:00.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:02:04.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:02:05.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:02:06.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:02:07.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:04:00.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:05:00.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/14/devices/0000:06:00.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/15/devices/0000:08:00.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/19/devices/0000:0a:00.3
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/37/devices/0000:43:00.3

As you can see one of my USB controllers (01:00.0) has a whole bunch of stuff in its IOMMU group, so I don’t want to use it lest I bring all those other things into the VM with it. The other three, though, are isolated in their groups and thus are perfect for passthrough.

In my case I passed through 0a:00.3 & 43:00.3 as 08:00.0 is a PCI card I want passed through to my Windows VM. This passed through about 2/3 of the USB ports on my system to my guest VM.

CLI

mountpoint check script

Leave a comment

I have a few NFS mounts that I want to be working at all times. If there is a power outage, sometimes NFS clients come up before the NFS server does, and thus the mounts are not there. I wrote a quick little bash script to fix this utilizing the mountpoint command.

Behold (Change the mountpoint(s) to the one you want to monitor.)

#!/bin/bash
#Simple bash script to check mount points and re-mount them if they're not mounted
#Authored by Nick Jepspon 8/11/2019

### Variables ###
# Changes these to suit your needs

MOUNTPOINTS=(/mnt/1 /mnt/2 /mnt/3)  #space separated list of mountpoints to monitor

### End Variables ###


for mount in $MOUNTPOINTS 
do
    if  ! mountpoint -q $mount
    then
        echo "$mount is not mounted, attempting to mount."
        mount $mount
    fi
    #otherwise do nothing
done

I have this set as a cronjob running every 5 minutes

*/5 * * * * /mountcheck.sh

Now the system will continually try to mount the specified folder if it isn’t already mounted.

CLI, Hardware, Networking

Automate USG config deploy with Ubiquiti API in Bash

Leave a comment

I have a new Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway Pro 4 which is pretty neat; however, the Unifi web interface is pretty limited. Most advanced firewall functions must be configured outside of the GUI. One must create a .json file with the configuration they need, copy that file to the Unifi controller, and then force a provision of the gateway to get it to pick up the new config.

I wanted a way to automate this process but very frustratingly Ubiquiti hasn’t documented their Unifi Controller API. I had to resort to reverse engineering their API by using my browser’s developer console to figure out which API calls were needed to do what I wanted. I then took the API functions from https://dl.ui.com/unifi/5.10.25/unifi_sh_api (the current unifi controller software download link which has unifi_sh_api) and embedded them into a bash script. Thanks to this forum post for the information on how to do this.

This bash script copies the specified config file to the Unifi controller via SCP, then uses curl to issue the API call to tell the controller to force a provision to the device having the supplied mac address. 

#!/bin/bash
# Written by Nick Jeppson 08/01/2019
# Inspired by posts made from ubiquiti forums: https://community.ui.com/questions/API/82a3a9c7-60da-4ec2-a4d1-cac68e86b53c
# API interface functions taken from unifi_sh_api shipped with controller version 5.10.25, https://dl.ui.com/unifi/5.10.25/unifi_sh_api
#
# This bash script copies the specified config file to the Unifi controller via SCP
# It then uses curl to issue an API call to tell the controller to force a provision to the device with the supplied mac address. 

#### BEGIN VARIABLES ####
#Fill out to match your environment

gateway_mac="12:34:56:78:90:ab" #MAC address of the gateway you wish to manage
config_file="your_config_file.json"   #Path to config file
unifi_server="unifi_server_name"         #Name/IP of unifi controller server
unifi_gateway_path="/usr/lib/unifi/data/sites/default/config.gateway.json"    #Path to config.gateway.json on the controller
ssh_user="root"                 #User to SSH to controller as
username="unifi_admin_username"             #Unifi username
password="unifi_admin_password" #Unifi password
baseurl="https://unifi_server_name:8443" #Unifi URL
site="default"                  #Unifi site the gateway resides in

#### END VARIABLES ####

#Copy updated config to controller
scp $config_file $ssh_user@$unifi_server:$unifi_gateway_path

#API interface functions
cookie=$(mktemp)
curl_cmd="curl --tlsv1 --silent --cookie ${cookie} --cookie-jar ${cookie} --insecure "
unifi_login() {
    # authenticate against unifi controller
    ${curl_cmd} --data "{\"username\":\"$username\", \"password\":\"$password\"}" $baseurl/api/login
}

unifi_logout() {
    # logout
    ${curl_cmd} $baseurl/logout
}

unifi_api() {
    if [ $# -lt 1 ] ; then
        echo "Usage: $0 <uri> [json]"
        echo "    uri example /stat/sta "
        return
    fi
    uri=$1
    shift
    [ "${uri:0:1}" != "/" ] && uri="/$uri"
    json="$@"
    [ "$json" = "" ] && json="{}"
    ${curl_cmd} --data "$json" $baseurl/api/s/$site$uri
}

#Trigger a provision
unifi_login 
unifi_api /cmd/devmgr {\"mac\": \"$gateway_mac\", \"cmd\": \"force-provision\"}
unifi_logout

No more manually clicking provision after manually editing the config file on the controller!