Archive for September, 2018

My first self-created course on memrise.com

Friday, September 28th, 2018

I’ve been posting about memrise on a couple of occasions. This time rather than bragging how many words I’ve learned and how many points I made, I created my own course:

https://www.memrise.com/course/2053021/qian-shui-shi-shi-yan-nodan-yu/

It’s a Japanese -> English course supposed to help you with vocabulary required to help passing the Japanese dive theory test called 潜水士試験

(I have no idea why the URL uses the Mandarin pinyin pronounciation for the test… I’ve inputted Japanese kanji – I also opened a help call with memrise but no reaction so far)

Creating the course was not difficult but you need to prepare the list(s) ahead and put the colums in the right order if you want to mass-import the lists.

Good luck, give it a try yourself (the course as well as creating your own course ^^)

A script to allow non-admin users to install security updates on CentOS

Thursday, September 27th, 2018

At work, I needed to come up with a script that allows non-admin users to install security updates on CentOS servers.

The only real dependency is yum-utils (because it uses the binary needs-restart to check the status of things) but you should also create a folder to store the script and of course a sudo command for the users to run.

Please also note the creative accumulation of several copied scripts to create the multiple choice menus…. I patched together some code samples found on the usual websites where coding is discussed.

HTH someone out there…

#!/bin/bash

######################################
## only root can run this (or sudo) ##
######################################

# Make sure only root can run our script
if [[ $EUID -ne 0 ]]; then
echo “This script must be run using sudo (“sudo /opt/yumcleanup/restartsetupscript”) or as root. Exiting…” 1>&2
exit 1
fi

###############
## functions ##
###############

display_help () {
echo “The script can be run without interaction using the following”
echo “command line option: –non-interactive”
echo “This will silently install security updates only and restart”
echo “affected services.”
echo ” ”
echo “Calling the script with –help will also display this help text”
echo “as does calling the script with an unknown option.”
exit
}

set_exports () {
export http_proxy=”http://my.proxy.server.local:11111″
export https_proxy=”http://my.proxy.server.local:11111″
export proxy=”http://my.proxy.server.local:11111″
}

unset_exports () {
unset http_proxy
unset https_proxy
unset proxy
}

outputs_preparation () {
`rm -f $outputs`
touch $outputs
chmod 600 $outputs
}

outputr_preparation () {
`rm -f $outputr`
touch $outputr
chmod 600 $outputr
}

outputs_filling () {
`$mybin -s >> $outputs`
}

outputr_filling () {
`$mybin -r >> $outputr`
}

services_restart () {
while read line
do
# Restarting $line
`/bin/systemctl stop $line`
`/bin/systemctl start $line`
done < $outputs
}

#################
## getopt test ##
#################

getopt –test > /dev/null
if [[ $? -ne 4 ]]; then
echo “I’m sorry, `getopt –test` failed in this environment.”
exit 1
fi

#######################
## setting variables ##
#######################

outputs=/tmp/myoutputs
outputr=/tmp/myoutputr
mybin=/bin/needs-restarting

getopt –test > /dev/null
if [[ $? -ne 4 ]]; then
echo “I’m sorry, `getopt –test` failed in this environment.”
exit 1
fi

LONGOPTIONS=non-interactive,help

PARSED=$(getopt –options=$OPTIONS –longoptions=$LONGOPTIONS –name “$0” — “$@”)
if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then
# e.g. $? == 1
# then getopt has complained about wrong arguments to stdout
echo “something wrong, showing help instead in one second”
display_help
exit 2
fi

# echo “$PARSED”

# read getopt’s output this way to handle the quoting right:
eval set — “$PARSED”

# now enjoy the options in order and nicely split until we see —
while true; do
case “$1” in
–non-interactive)
n=y
# echo “doing silent stuff now… TODO: disable this line”
# should do these steps: (probably better to put this in its own function)
set_exports
`yum -y -d0 –security update`
outputs_preparation
outputs_filling
services_restart
unset_exports
exit
shift
;;
–help)
h=y
# echo “displaying help in two seconds”
display_help
shift
;;
–)
#echo “instead of — showing help in three seconds”
#display_help
shift
break
;;
*)
echo “Programming error”
echo “displaying help instead in four seconds”
display_help
exit 3
;;
esac
done

set_exports
#export http_proxy=”http://my.proxy.server.local:11111″
#export https_proxy=”http://my.proxy.server.local:11111″
#export proxy=”http://my.proxy.server.local:11111″

# cleanup before we do anything
#`rm -f $outputs`
#`rm -f $outputr`

# install updates, ask user which type of updating he wants to do
echo “”
echo “Please select the type of updates you want to install: ”
echo “”
PS3=’Enter your choice: ‘
options=(“All updates (will most certainly require a reboot)” “Security updates only (reboot probably not required)” “All updates except kernel and kernel-related packages (reboot might be required)” “Quit (you will need to run the script again later)”)
select opt in “${options[@]}”
do
case $opt in
#”Option 1″)
“All updates (will most certainly require a reboot)”)
echo “Installing all updates… please wait”
`yum -y -d0 update` &
PIDD=`ps -ef|grep yum | grep -v yumclean |grep -v grep | awk ‘{print $2}’`
while sleep 8; do echo “still installing…” && kill -0 $PIDD 2>/dev/null || break; done
break
;;
#”Option 2″)
“Security updates only (reboot probably not required)”)
echo “Installing only security updates…. please wait”
`yum -y -d0 –security update` &
PIDD=`ps -ef|grep yum | grep -v yumclean |grep -v grep | awk ‘{print $2}’`
while sleep 8; do echo “still installing…” && kill -0 $PIDD 2>/dev/null || break; done
break
;;
#”Option 3″)
“All updates except kernel and kernel-related packages (reboot might be required)”)
echo “Installing all updates except kernel and kernel-related packages… please wait”
`yum –exclude=kernel* -y -d0 update` &
PIDD=`ps -ef|grep yum | grep -v yumclean |grep -v grep | awk ‘{print $2}’`
while sleep 8; do echo “still installing…” && kill -0 $PIDD 2>/dev/null || break; done
break
;;
#”Quit”)
“Quit (you will need to run the script again later)”)
echo “Quitting… bye!”
exit
;;
*) echo “invalid option $REPLY”;;
esac
done

unset_exports
#unset http_proxy
#unset https_proxy
#unset proxy

##############################
## section services restart ##
##############################

outputs_preparation
outputs_filling

# `$mybin -s >> $outputs`
# chmod 600 $outputs

if [ `wc -l $outputs | awk ‘{ print $1 }’` -ge 1 ]; then
echo “”
echo “The following services should be restarted:”
echo “******************************”
cat $outputs
echo “******************************”

while true
do
read -p “Do you want to restart the above services? (y/N)” answer

case $answer in
[yY]* ) #
echo “restarting services….”

while read line
do
echo Restarting $line
`/bin/systemctl stop $line`
`/bin/systemctl start $line`
done < $outputs

break;;

[nN]* )echo “exiting…” && break ;;

* ) echo “Please enter Y or N”;;
esac
done
else
echo “******************************”
echo “No services need to be restarted.”
echo “******************************”
fi

# section reboot

outputr_preparation
outputr_filling

# `$mybin -r >> $outputr`
# chmod 600 $outputr

echo “”
echo “Please check the following output and decide whether a reboot is required:”
echo “***************”
cat $outputr
echo “***************”

while true
do
echo “If you need to disable some kind of monitoring before rebooting the server,”
echo “please cancel this script (Ctrl+c) and disable the monitoring now,”
echo “then re-run this script again.”
read -p “Do you want to reboot the server in 60 seconds? (y/N)” answer

case $answer in
[yY]* ) #
echo “Scheduling reboot….”

shutdown -r -t 1

break;;

[nN]* )echo “exiting…” && exit;;

* ) echo “Please enter Y or N”;;
esac
done