Category: Linux

fping6 from rpmforge doesn’t work on CentOS 7

Peter Tavenier8 Comments

I’m running CentOS Linux release 7.0.1406 (Core) and was installing SmokePing.

I added FPing6 to the configuration file and added this as a probe to some websites:

+ FPing6
binary = /usr/sbin/fping6

+ Hosts
menu = Misc

++ somehost
menu = somehost
probe = FPing6
host = www.example.org

After the config changes I tried to restart smokeping but it failed:

# service smokeping restart
Restarting smokeping (via systemctl):  Job for smokeping.service failed. See 'systemctl status smokeping.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.
                                                           [FAILED]

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LPI Linux Essentials

Peter Tavenier8 Comments

Yes, I got my LPI Linux Essentials certification!

As a network engineer I’m on Linux systems on a daily basis and therefor I think it is important to have basic skills of Linux as well.

On the the InfoSecurity.nl event I got the chance to subscribe for an paper basis exam for any of the LPI certifications. Since this certification track was new for me I started with the very basics, LPI Linux Essentials, also known as LPI-010.

If you subscribe for paper basis Linux exams via the LPI events, you can save some money as well. The LPI event exams are about 50% cheaper then the normal exams which are computer based at Pearson VUE Test centers. The only disadvantage of the paper basis exams is that you don’t have an immediate result. It normally takes about 3-4 weeks, in my case this was only 17 days.

Here you can find a nice Free Linux Essentials Training Manual I used for my exam preparations.

Installing Nortel VPNC on Ubuntu

Peter Tavenier2 Comments

I’m running Ubuntu 12.04.1 wheezy/sid and I needed a way to connect to the office Nortel VPN server. On a Windows machine you normally use Nortel Contivity Client. But this is not available for Linux. There is a nortel branch available of vpnc which you can find here.

The first step is to install svn-buildpackage, use the command below for this. There some extra packages coming with this install, but this is OK.

apt-get install svn-buildpackage

Now you can do a check-out on the SVN repository:

svn co -r517 http://svn.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/vpnc/branches/vpnc-nortel

This downloads the files in a new directory (vpnc-nortel) in the location you are at this moment.

Now it is time to install the vpnc client. go to the vpnc-nortel directory you just downloaded and perform the command:

make

This should make the compile the files for your OS, but the first time this failed form me with the error message:

root@ubuntu:~/vpnc-nortel# make
Package gnutls was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gnutls.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'gnutls' found
...

To solve this issue you should first install libgnutls-dev:

apt-get install libgnutls-dev

Then you can try again:

make
make install

The make install should give an output like this:

root@ubuntu:~/vpnc-nortel# make install
install -d /etc/vpnc /usr/local/bin /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/share/man/man1 /usr/local/share/man/man8 /usr/local/share/doc/vpnc
if [ "`uname -s | cut -c-6`" = "CYGWIN" ]; then \
		install vpnc-script-win /etc/vpnc/vpnc-script; \
		install vpnc-script-win.js /etc/vpnc; \
	else \
		install vpnc-script /etc/vpnc; \
	fi
install -m600 vpnc.conf /etc/vpnc/default.conf
install -m755 vpnc-disconnect /usr/local/sbin
install -m755 pcf2vpnc /usr/local/bin
install -m644 vpnc.8 /usr/local/share/man/man8
install -m644 pcf2vpnc.1 /usr/local/share/man/man1
install -m644 cisco-decrypt.1 /usr/local/share/man/man1
install -m644 COPYING /usr/local/share/doc/vpnc
install -m755 vpnc /usr/local/sbin
install -m755 cisco-decrypt /usr/local/bin

The last thing to do is to edit the configuration file to the settings of your company. In my case this configuration file (/etc/vpnc/default.conf) looks like:

IPSec gateway 
IPSec ID 
IPSec secret 
Xauth username 
Vendor nortel
IKE Authmode gpassword
Enable Single DES
IKE DH Group dh1

Now your ready!
To start vpnc perfrom:

vpnc

en to stop vpnc:

vpnc-disconnect