Alternative to manually install 3rd party repositories

There is an alternative to manually manage repositories and keys and that is to use extrepo

extrepo is a curated list of 3rd party repositories and keys and it's a debian package.
It's only been around a couple of years so I don't know how widely used it is yet.

Installation

To install it run

apt install extrepo Add repository

To add postgreSQL repository for example:

extrepo enable postgresql Disable repository

To disable a repository, for example:

extrepo disable postgresql Where do files go?

extrepo puts apt config files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d as you would manually but manages keys in it's own directory /var/lib/extrepo/keys

Repositories available

Currently these repositories are in there:

anydesk apertium-nightly apertium-release bareos belgium_eid_continuous brave_beta brave_nightly brave_release caddyserver consol debian_official dns-oarc docker-ce edge elbe eturnal eyrie fai feistermops gitlab_ce gitlab_ee gitlab_runner google_chrome google_cloud grafana grafana_beta grafana_enterprise grafana_enterprise_beta haproxy-2.8 i2pd janitor jellyfin jenkins jitsi-stable kea keybase kicksecure kicksecure_developers kicksecure_proposed kicksecure_testers lihas liquorix matrix mobian msteams neurodebian_software newrelic nginx node_12.x node_14.x node_16.x node_18.x notesalexp ooni openmodelica-contrib-nightly openmodelica-contrib-release openmodelica-contrib-stable openmodelica-nightly openmodelica-release openmodelica-stable openstack_antelope openstack_zed openvpn opera_stable opsi passbolt postgresql prosody proxmox-ceph-quincy proxmox-pve proxmox-pve8 r-project raspberrypi raspbian-addons realsense rspamd signal skype slack speedtest-cli spotify steam surface-linux sury syncevolution syncthing teamviewer_default teamviewer_preview torproject trinity vector vscode vscodium weechat whonix whonix_developers whonix_proposed whonix_testers winehq wire-desktop wire-internal-desktop wtf wtf-lts x2go x2go-extras x2go-lts x2go-nightly xpra xpra-beta yarnpkg zammad zulu-openjdk

@Pete-S said in 3CX Desktop VoIP Client Hit with Supply Chain Attack:

But if I understand correctly it was only there it had been compromised, not upstream.

That's what it seems like from all of the reports. Otherwise there should have been a HUGE report of an open source ecosystem hit. Closed source vendors would have been all over that.

@Pete-S said in Force password change on first login over RDP:

Great, so it works if you use RDWeb.

But if you RDP directly to any Windows server or workstation it won't.

Nope. It won't. There's no way around that.

We also have Exchange on-premises so OWA works for that password change.

I don't think that you can do workdrive backups in general as it is not file based and you don't have database access.

...

@Pete-S using your little snippet did not clean up the pinned start menu of the initial admin user that ran it, nor the non admin user account that I subsequently created.

f2e6d053-0b72-4407-9ba8-b1d9dd3d75c8-image.png

It xbox was still in the start menu, but the rest looked gone.
da69b05a-32c4-40e7-ba6d-03ae78e2b092-image.png

@Danp said in How to use different accounts on the same website/service with profiles:

With Firefox, you also have the option of using the Multi-Account Containers extension.

been using this for 3+ years - damn I just wish Chrome supported it.

@dbeato said in Anyone using yubikey, smart card or other hardware device for MFA?:

@Pete-S I have used it for DUo and Office 365 and works well. It makes it so much easier for users that refuse to have a mobile or digital device.

That sounds good. I think I'll order a pair of keys to try it myself.

@krzykat said in Management of NAS for SOHO?:

I really like Synology for this. Plus you get extra little benefits like complete backups of workstations, and then you can backup your critical synology folders to any cloud platform you like including another dedicated Synology for backups.

We like to use the built in B2 integration. Really nice.

@scottalanmiller said in Manage domains and DNS for customers?:

Then you have other issues. Which lots of people do, of course, where you can't let them have admin access to anything as they can't stop handing out their passwords (and yes, we see this all the time, too.)

It's amazing how true this is!

@PhlipElder said in How to fix RDP dpi awareness problems:

@Pete-S said in How to fix RDP dpi awareness problems:

@PhlipElder said in How to fix RDP dpi awareness problems:

@Pete-S We have a few older accounting apps we support that don't scale well in RemoteApp no matter what the client setting is. The menu items appear to be microscopic.

90d87eb7-6122-43bb-8892-390312fb198a-image.png

Great for Session Host desktops but what about RemoteApp?

Windows DPI scaling is not working 100% so it is what it is.

I have on purpose avoided purchasing any display / resolution combination that doesn't fall between 90 to 110 dpi. So I don't really get into much trouble.

Anyway, I don't have any specific experience with remoteapp. But since it uses RDP I would disable the scaling in the registry on the server. And then work on setting the dpi on the server to whatever is needed. There is also the possibility of setting DPI scaling behavior on a per application basis.

That's the route I would go.

DPI settings are normally per user but if you have users with multiple devices with widely different dpi I don't think you can get it right.

Yeah, we learned that lesson with the first batch of ultra-high resolution laptops that we deployed and users started complaining almost immediately. We were able to bandaid to some degree as the Session Host settings would get picked up by the RemoteApps after the user tweaked them and logged out of the SH Desktop but those legacy menus never did get addressed.

Folks need a magnifying glass.

Besides buying new laptops there is also the option of changing the resolution to a non-native resolution.
From 3840x2160 to 1920x1080 for example. That always work.

Not ideal of course but better than not seeing it at all...

@notverypunny said in "Snapshots" on win10 laptops?:

Am I imagining things or did Windows licensing at one point allow for use of a virtual environment on top of the physical install? If this is (still?) the case, would a W10 install in vbox do the trick?

Licenses fo Windows Server editions allow this.
Standard Windows 10 licenses do not allow running in VMs.

@Yonah-S said in Turn server into backup storage for remote servers?:

@Pete-S have you thought of selling it? there is a big market right now for getting rid of old/unused hardware. Especially if you have any SSD's in there.

Thanks, but we're keeping it. Just want to extract the maximum value out of it while it's occupying rack space 🙂

There is a utility called stress for that. I've never used it myself. But here is a guide, should be easy.

https://www.linuxshelltips.com/create-cpu-load-linux/

I don't know if ubuntu has a similar cloud kernel.

Update: It looks like there is a linux-kvm kernel amongst others. Haven't tried it though.

BTW, in Debian/Ubuntu and other distros the different kernels are often referred to as kernel flavors. Good to know if you want to search for them.

@Pete-S said in ssh to new cloud instance?:

@scottalanmiller said in ssh to new cloud instance?:

@Pete-S said in ssh to new cloud instance?:

If you add another admin in the cloud control panel, is an account for that user created on all cloud instances that person can access?

In Vultr, there aren't users in the cloud panel at all. There are keys that you can choose to deploy at deploy time for root. Other than that, if we wanted to deploy keys (as an example), we'd do that through our management system (script, Salt, Ansible, etc.). I would not want the cloud platform to be touching my users.

OK, got it.

Does that also mean that only one person can have access to the actual Vultr account as well? I'm guessing it's multi-user.

Yeah, the cloud level is multi-user. But just as you can have multiple people with access to a data closet, and multiple people with access to a Windows instance housed in that closet, you don't want the physical closet to maintain the Windows logins. Same here, your cloud provider is like a data center or data closet with its own level of access unrelated to applications or other workloads running higher up the stack and 99.999% of the time, no association or commonality between them.

@stacksofplates said in Windows 11 versus 10:

and the ever changing landscape of screen sizes.

I think we all want giant screens. That's more just a manufacturing and cost thing IMHO.

You don't need "development" for me to tell you that I want enormous screens with high resolutions, lol. I just need them to be affordable and available.

@Pete-S said in Typical services and software in SMBs?:

I'd always thought that the ones running on-prem was perhaps medium sized businesses that had enough scale for it to make economic sense.

Typically the opposite, only those so small as to not have the mechanisms to evaluate. If you are big enough for on premises to start being cheaper, you are big enough for the big players to give you discounts to make sure it doesn't.