Make your home smarter: installation

When installing a Raspberry Pi, I have a checklist of steps I take each time to ensure my Raspberry Pi's are (mostly) configured in the same way. They have the same way to backup their data, use the same user configurations (ntp, syslog, sendmail...) and have the same security provisioning. We will also introduce logs into memory with Log2Ram, to avoid too much SD card writing/wearing, which will eventually break your RPi. Feel free to comment on any step that is documented here. Some steps might be optional or unnecessary in your case.

Do the physical installation, plugin the network and HDMI cables (except the power cable of course) and screw your RPi into a cover or box.
Prepare SD card on Mac with Raspberry Pi Imager
Plugin the SD card into your RPi and now also plugin the power cable. Boot your RPi for the first time now. Create a user with password for using later. (e.g. user:pi, password:raspberry)
When booted, you'll be provided with a prompt to login for the first time. Mind the QWERTY keyboard layout.
Run the setup tool
```
sudo raspi-config
```
Configure the setup tool

Set the hostname (1 System Options > S4 Hostname)
Expand Filesystem (6 Advanced Options > A1 Expand file system)
Change Timezone, set Keyboard Layout (if needed) and change Wifi Country (5 Localization Options > L2 Change Timezone, L3 Change Keyboard Layout, L4 Change Wi-fi Country)
Enable SSH (3 Interfacing Options > I2 SSH)
Press 'Finish' and Reboot

After reboot, login again via SSH and change your user password:
passwd
Generate a SSH key-gen pair, which is more robust than the default one.
```
ssh-keygen -o -a 100 -t ed25519
```
Change the root password
```
sudo passwd root
```

Set the ETH0 IP address to a fixed IP. I hardly ever use the Wifi module in a Raspberry Pi

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

Add at the end of the file the following:

# Added by user on 2023-XX-XX
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 192.168.0.240/24
        network 192.168.0.0
        broadcast 192.168.0.255
        gateway 192.168.0.1
        dns-nameservers 192.168.0.1 8.8.8.8
# End of Addition

sudo systemctl restart networking.service

And test with

ip add show

Reboot your RPi again (or do it later if you plan to reboot anyway)

Check for updates & upgrades for Bullseye, but first become root. Don't forget to reboot if kernel patches were installed.
```
sudo -i
apt-get update -y && apt-get upgrade -y
```

Fix a common issue with Syslog flooding your logs

sudo sed -i '/# The named pipe \/dev\/xconsole/,$d' /etc/rsyslog.conf
sudo service rsyslog restart

Alternatively, you could also install Syslog-NG
```
sudo apt-get install -y syslog-ng
```
Install Git
```
sudo apt-get install -y git dirmngr
```
Install Log2Ram as this will allow us to keep logs in memory and reduce the SD card writing significantly. From time to time, the logs are still made persistent to disk.
```
cd /home/pi
git clone https://github.com/azlux/log2ram.git
cd log2ram
chmod +x install.sh
sudo ./install.sh
Change the log size value to 128M
sudo vi /etc/log2ram.conf
```
Reboot

Install Sendmail and configure to work with a local mail relay server, or alternatively Gmail.

sudo apt-get install -y sendmail mailutils sendmail-bin
sudo mkdir -m 700 /etc/mail/authinfo/
sudo cd /etc/mail/authinfo/

Create a Sendmail authentication file:

sudo vi sendmail-auth

And paste the following info:

AuthInfo: "U:root" "I:YOUR LOGIN" "P:YOUR PASSWORD"

Save and exit vi. Next do the makemap:

sudo makemap hash sendmail-auth < sendmail-auth
sudo chmod 400 sendmail-auth

Change the Sendmail configuration now

sudo vi /etc/mail/sendmail.mc
Add the following below right above first "MAILER_DEFINITIONS" line:
# Added by yourname on 2018-XX-XX
define(`SMART_HOST',`[192.168.Y.XX]')dnl
define(`RELAY_MAILER_ARGS', `TCP $h 587')dnl
define(`ESMTP_MAILER_ARGS', `TCP $h 587')dnl
define(`confAUTH_OPTIONS', `A p')dnl
TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`EXTERNAL DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN')dnl
define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS', `EXTERNAL GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN')dnl
FEATURE(`authinfo',`hash -o /etc/mail/authinfo/sendmail-auth.db')dnl
# End of Addition

Apply the changes to the configuration and restart Sendmail:

sudo make -C /etc/mail
sudo /etc/init.d/sendmail reload

Test if you can send an email to yourself:

echo "Just testing my Sendmail email relay" | mail -s "Sendmail email relay" you@here.com

Setup NTP sync

sudo apt-get install -y ntp ntpdate
sudo vi /etc/ntp.conf

And replace the XX with your country code

0.XX.pool.ntp.org
sudo /etc/init.d/ntp stop

And query to see NTP being in sync

sudo ntpd -gq
sudo /etc/init.d/ntp start
sudo ntpd -pn

Setup SNMP

sudo apt-get install snmp snmpd
sudo vi /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

And put the following configuration lines

agentAddress udp:161
rocommunity public 192.168.X.0/24

Restart your SNMP daemon

sudo /etc/init.d/snmpd restart

And test on your local machine

snmpwalk -Os -c public -v 1 localhost

Setup NFS backup share, install a backup tool, rsnapshot and configure
Fix rpcbind issue (Make yourself root first)

su -
cat >/etc/systemd/system/nfs-common.service <<\EOF
[Unit]
Description=NFS Common daemons
Wants=remote-fs-pre.target
DefaultDependencies=no

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/etc/init.d/nfs-common start
ExecStop=/etc/init.d/nfs-common stop

[Install]
WantedBy=sysinit.target
EOF

cat >/etc/systemd/system/rpcbind.service <<\EOF
[Unit]
Description=RPC bind portmap service
After=systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
Wants=remote-fs-pre.target
Before=remote-fs-pre.target
DefaultDependencies=no

[Service]
ExecStart=/sbin/rpcbind -f -w
KillMode=process
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=sysinit.target
Alias=portmap
EOF

cat >/etc/tmpfiles.d/rpcbind.conf <<\EOF
#Type Path        Mode UID  GID  Age Argument
d     /run/rpcbind 0755 root root - -
f     /run/rpcbind/rpcbind.xdr 0600 root root - -
f     /run/rpcbind/portmap.xdr 0600 root root - -
EOF

systemctl enable rpcbind.service
systemctl enable nfs-common

Install raspiBackup (from this website)

sudo mkdir -p /backup

Avoid accidental file storage, when folder is not mounted
And put the following configuration lines

sudo chattr +i /backup
sudo vi /etc/fstab

And add

server.yourdomain.com:/volume1/backups/host.yourdomain.com/backup      nfs     rsize=8912,wsize=8912,timeo=14     0       0
sudo mount /backup

Now install the raspiBackup tool

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/framps/raspiBackup/master/installation/install.sh | sudo bash

Go through the configuration tool, later on you can go back to it via: raspiBackupInstallUI.sh
-Backup versions: smart strategy
-Backup to tar
-No compression
-Backup mode standard
-Email notification set
Uncomment the crontab (backup will run every Sunday at 5am):
sudo vi /etc/cron.d/raspiBackup 
And finally test
sudo raspiBackup

Generate an SSH keypair for easy login
ssh-keygen
ssh-copy-id -p 22 admin@server.yourdomain.com 
Log into your server, make yourself root and copy the public key into the raspberry

cat /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh user@hhost.yourdomain.com "mkdir -p ~/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Test if it's working by using:

ssh user@host.yourdomain.com

Setup unattended upgrade based on this tutorial
sudo apt update
sudo apt install unattended-upgrades 
Configure unattended upgrades and uncomment:

sudo vi /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

"origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename}-updates";
"origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename}-proposed-updates";
"origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename},label=Debian";
"origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename},label=Debian-Security";
"origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename}-security,label=Debian-Security";

And uncomment:

Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies "false";

Now enable Automatic Updates (and press Yes)

sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades

To view the unattended upgrades:sudo systemctl status unattended-upgrades.service-

Make your home smarter

Monday, September 25, 2023

Advanced installation of a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian Bullseye

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Installing (and updating) Unifi Controller as a docker image on your Synology NAS

Prerequisites

Installation

Updating