Why does sudo call fork() and exec() rather than just exec()? - process

Why does sudo (among other similar commands) start a new process by calling fork() before exec(), rather than just running the command within the same process? sudo doesn't do anything after it runs the command. (Or does it?)

If sudo merely called exec, then sudo couldn't have done things like run any cleanup tasks after the exec'd code completed. Take pam_open_session and pam_close_session for example.
Hope this helps!

Related

WSL2 Clock is out of sync with Windows

WSL2 clock goes out of sync after resuming from sleep/hibernate.
A workaround was shared on GitHub sudo hwclock -s to resync clock in WSL, but you have to do this every time you resume from sleep/hibernate.
UPDATE: THIS BUG IS FIXED, just check for updates! See the Clock Sync fix
In case anyone finds this via search and doesn't notice that there is actually a solution listed in the question, you can fix WSL clock drift via.
sudo hwclock -s
If you just need to do it occasionally, this is a fine solution. If you need to do it more frequently, consider #piouson's solution
Update
The fix is now in WSL2 Linux kernel 5.10.16.3 and newer! Note you may need to install WSL2 from the Windows Store to get the latest kernel version per this thread with Craig from Microsoft.
Older Answer
sudo hwclock -s gets you kind of there, but for some reason doesn't get the exact time - I often find it's a minute or so in the future!
sudo ntpdate pool.ntp.org should get you the correct time.
But this is all because of a bug in the Linux kernel which should be included in a Windows update at some point...
There are a number of hacks referenced in the the GitHub issue which can work around this, mostly, but not always, in my experience...
just restart wsl, it works fine for me
wsl --shutdown
then
wsl
in PowerShell
UPDATE: as mentioned by drkvogel, the Clock Sync fix was released in WSL2 kernel version 5.10.16.3
OBSOLETE
At time of writing, this GitHub Issue was open for the bug.
The workaround I chose for my situation (single distro in WSL2) is to use Windows Task Scheduler to run hwclock in WSL whenever Windows resyncs hardware clock.
Windows: Open PowerShell as Administrator
schtasks /create /tn WSLClockSync /tr "wsl.exe sudo hwclock -s" /sc onevent /ec system /mo "*[System[Provider[#Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General'] and (EventID=1)]]"
Set-ScheduledTask WSLClockSync -Settings (New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet -AllowStartIfOnBatteries)
WSL2: Run sudo visudo and add hwclock to sudoers to skip password prompt
# bottom of my file looks like this
...
...
#includedir /etc/sudoers.d
<username> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/hwclock, /usr/bin/apt update, /usr/bin/apt upgrade
Results
See image for how to get Event XPath from Windows Event filtering. Use as provided to let task scheduler auto-display scheduled triggers.
Use cron to schedule sudo hwclock -s
As others said before sudo hwclock -s syncs the clock,
but you will need to do this after every sleep/hibernate.
Solution is to add an hourly cron task to sync the clock.
Open crontab with sudo (must open with sudo since the command uses sudo):
sudo crontab -e
and add this code with a new line after the task (it's a cron requirement):
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
#hourly hwclock -s
You must either set PATH since root-cron do not has it or use absolute paths e.g. /usr/sbin/hwclock.
cron troubleshooting:
To verify cron is working you may add a dummy task (don't forget to add a new line):
* * * * * date > /tmp/log.txt
If no file is created, verify cron is working: pgrep cron.
If no PID shows, start cron with: sudo service cron start.
To learn cron timing method: cron timing generator
Necro'ing this: As of May 2022, this issue persists to a degree.
There are two components.
First, Windows time sync needs to be decent to start with. It's not, out of the box, on machines that aren't domain-joined.
Change w32time to start automatically. In Administrator cmd, but not PowerShell, sc triggerinfo w32time start/networkon stop/networkoff. Verify with sc qtriggerinfo w32time. To get into cmd that way, you can start Admin PowerShell and then just type cmd.
Make a few changes in regedit.
In Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\w32time\Config, set MaxPollInterval to hex c, decimal 12.
Check Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\w32time\Parameters\NtpServer. If it ends in 0x9 you are done. If it ends in 0x1 you need to adjust SpecialPollInterval in Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\w32time\TimeProviders\NtpClient to read 3600
Reboot, then from Powershell run w32tm /query /status /verbose to verify that w32time service did start. If it didn't, check triggers again. If all else fails, set it to Automatic Delayed startup
Second, WSL2 needs to actually stay in sync. MS will likely release another kernel fix. In the meantime a scheduled task can bring it back into sync periodically:
schtasks /Create /TN WSL2TimeSync /TR "wsl -u root hwclock -s" /SC ONEVENT /EC System /MO "*[System[Provider[#Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power'] and (EventID=107 or EventID=507) or Provider[#Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General'] and (EventID=1)]]" /F
This GitHub Issue was closed
You can also run the below command in Powershell Terminal so sync it.
wsl.exe sudo hwclock -s
You can manually update the WSL2 kernel to 5.10.16 by following the method in this comment: #5650 (comment). I have fixed the issue by this method.
I've added this to Windows Task Scheduler, set to run every 12 hours:
wsl.exe -d ubuntu -u root -- ntpdate time.windows.com
To install ntpdate:
sudo apt install ntpdate
For me this issue seems to be happening when the system goes to sleep. So I have registered a bash command to call whenever, it goes out of sync. I did it by adding a function.sh file and sourced it in ~/.bashrc.
function.sh:
YELLOW='\033[0;33m'
NC='\033[0m'
TIME_SERVER=ntp.ubuntu.com
# Sync wsl time
sync_date () {
echo -e "${RED}sudo ntpdate $TIME_SERVER ${NC}"
echo
sudo ntpdate $TIME_SERVER
}
~/.bashrc:
source ~/Linux/funtions.sh
Note that I have added a bit of color and some customizations (TIME_SERVER: [windows time server is other option]).
You can sync the time using sync_date command in cli.

Intellij Idea - ignoring non-zero exit code of external tool

I'm using external tool to run fuser -k 1099 command before actually launching my run configuration
But if external tool returns non-zero status, build configuration stops. That is perfectly correct, but I can not find any way to ignore failure. If it was a plain bash, I'd do something like fuser -k 1099 || true. But at Idea, that seems to be not possible
Any ideas?
You can use /bin/bash as the program and the following as the arguments:
-c 'fuser -k 1099'; true
This way the exit code of the tool will be always zero.
Correct answer was not working for me (see my comment under it) I then found a solution that is to create a script that exits with 0, here under windows (let us call it KillMyExeNoError.bat):
taskkill /IM my.exe /F
exit /B 0
Then put C:\Path\To\KillMyExeNoError.bat in Program and leave Arguments empty.
Maybe under Linux you need to put bash in Program and /path/to/script.sh in Arguments.
Not the best solution since it would be good not to have to create a separate script but at least it works.

Is it possible to abort a pacman installation from pre_install()

When creating a PKGBUILD file one can execute hooks at pre_install(), post_install(), etc.
I now have a custom arch linux pacman package that I need some custom checks done before it is installed to determine if it is safe to install or not.
I would like to run my test in the pre_istall() script and have pacman abort the installation if I say so in the script.
So, how can this be accomplished? So far all I have accomplished is getting an error message in the log but pacman continues with the istall...
I would not recommend this as it sounds like a code smell: in my opinion the pre_install() hook is designed to perform actions before package files are actually installed on your drive, but it is not meant to check whether the package should be installed.
In my opinion, such a check belongs to some other place out of the package.
You could call a command, which returns a non-zero exit-code, to cancel the build process. The simplest command I could think of is sh -c "exit 1", since just exit 1 results in an immediate exit without any proper cleanup.
Here is a simple example that checks if a file exists and cancels the build process if not:
prepare() {
if ! [ -f "/usr/bin/ffmpeg" ]; then
echo "Error: FFmpeg executable '/usr/bin/ffmpeg' is missing."
sh -c "exit 1"
fi
}
However, galaux is right. Usually such checks should happen upstream.

Proper way to automatically start and expose ssh when running my app container

I have containers with python apps and I need them to automatically start and expose ssh when running them. I know it's against Docker's best practices, but right now I don't have any other solution. I'd be interested to know the best way to automatically run an additionnal service in a docker container anyway.
Since Docker will only start one process, installing sshd isn't enough. There are apparently multiple options to deal with it:
use a process manager like Monit or Supervisor
use the ENTRYPOINT option
append a command (service sshd start, for instance) at the end of /etc/bash.bashrc (see this answer)
Option 1 seems overkill to me. Also I suppose I'll have to run the container with a cmd calling the process manager instead of bash or my python app: not exactly what I want.
I don't know how to use Option 2 for such a case. Should I write a custom script starting sshd and then running the provided command if any ? How should this script look like ?
Option 3 is very straightforward but quite dirty. Also it won't work if I run the container with another command than /bin/bash.
What's the best solution and how to set it up ?
You mention that option 1 seems like overkill. Why is it overkill? Supervisor is very simple to configure and will basically do what you want.
First, write supervisor config files that starts your python app and sshd:
[supervisord]
nodaemon=true
[program:sshd]
command=/usr/sbin/sshd -D
[program:pythonapp]
command=/path/to/python myapp.py -x args etc etc
Call that file supervisord.conf and commit it somewhere in your repo. In your Dockerfile, copy that file to the container as one of the container build steps, expose the ports for SSH and your app (if needed) and set the CMD to start supervisord:
COPY supervisord.conf /etc/supervisor/conf.d/supervisord.conf
EXPOSE 22 80
CMD ["/usr/bin/supervisord"]
This is clean and easy to understand. It's how I run multiple processes in a container when needed. It is even suggested in the Docker docs as a nice solution.
If you don't want to use a process manager, you can wrap your actual container command inside a shell script and sudo service ssh start, then execute your actual command.
sudo service ssh start
python myapp.py -x args blah blah
This will start up ssh as a daemon, and then your python app will start up after.
Yes, We can configure the Supervisord for the multi process in a container. If you want to use Openssh-server we can configure the Supervisor like below-:
[supervisord]
nodaemon=true
[program:sshd]
command=/usr/sbin/sshd -D
in supervisord.conf file.
We can add the supervisord.conf file in the docker image update a line in Dockerfile.
RUN apt update && apt install -y supervisor openssh-server
COPY supervisord.conf /etc/supervisor/conf.d/supervisord.conf
EXPOSE 22
CMD ["/usr/bin/supervisord"]
Reference link-: Gotechnies

Run a php script in background on debian (Apache)

I'm trying to make a push notification work on my debian vps (apace2, mysql).
I use a php script from this tutorial (http://www.raywenderlich.com/3525/apple-push-notification-services-tutorial-part-2).
Basically, the script is put in an infintive loop, that check a mysql table for new records every couple of seconds. The tutorial says it should be run as a background process.
// This script should be run as a background process on the server. It checks
// every few seconds for new messages in the database table push_queue and
// sends them to the Apple Push Notification Service.
//
// Usage: php push.php development &
So I have four questions.
How do I start the script from the terminal? What should I type? The script location on the server is:
/var/www/development_folder/scripts/push2/push.php
How can I kill it if I need to (without having to restart apace)?
Since the push notification is essential, I need a way to check if the script is running.
The code (from the tutorial) calls a function is something goes wrong:
function fatalError($message)
{
writeToLog('Exiting with fatal error: ' . $message);
exit;
}
Maybe I can put something in there to restart the script? But It would also be nice to have a cron job or something that check every 5 minute or so if the script is running, and start it if it doens't.
4 - Can I make the script automatically start after a apace or mysql restart? If the server crash or something else happens that need a apace restart?
Thanks a lot in advance
You could run the script with the following command:
nohup php /var/www/development_folder/scripts/push2/push.php > /dev/null &
The nohup means that that the command should not quit (it ignores hangup signal) when you e.g. close your terminal window. If you don't care about this you could just start the process with "php /var/www/development_folder/scripts/push2/push.php &" instead. PS! nohup logs the script output to a file called nohup.out as default, if you do not want this, just add > /dev/null as I've done here. The & at the end means that the proccess will run in the background.
I would only recommend starting the push script like this while you test your code. The script should be run as a daemon at system-startup instead (see 4.) if it's important that it runs all the time.
Just type
ps ax | grep push.php
and you will get the processid (pid). It will look something like this:
4530 pts/3 S 0:00 php /var/www/development_folder/scripts/push2/push.php
The pid is the first number you'll see. You can then run the following command to kill the script:
kill -9 4530
If you run ps ax | grep push.php again the process should now be gone.
I would recommend that you make a cronjob that checks if the php-script is running, and if not, starts it. You could do this with ps ax and grep checks inside your shell script. Something like this should do it:
if ! ps ax | grep -v grep | grep 'push.php' > /dev/null
then
nohup php /var/www/development_folder/scripts/push2/push.php > /dev/null &
else
echo "push-script is already running"
fi
If you want the script to start up after booting up the system you could make a file in /etc/init.d (e.g. /etc.init.d/mypushscript with something like this inside:
php /var/www/development_folder/scripts/push2/push.php
(You should probably have alot more in this file)
You would also need to run the following commands:
chmod +x /etc/init.d/mypushscript
update-rc.d mypushscript defaults
to make the script start at boot-time. I have not tested this so please do more research before making your own init script!