MikroTik and L2TP alternative for Android

Uncategorized

Android 12 dropped support for L2TP. If you are looking for alternative and OpenVPN is not possible, because it’s setup in TAP mode, which is not supported on Android nor iPhone, you may try SSTP instead. SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol) is protocol developed by Microsoft.

There is a open source client Open SSTP available Google Play. However MikroTik’s PAP implementation does not seem to work, so your only option is to use MS-CHAPv2, but it is more secure anyway!

Migrate subfolder to separate git repository

Arch Linux, Git

Let’s say you have a repository structure like below (eg. because previously it was SVN repository where everything was on one place).

  • .\Web
    • .\example.com
    • .\example.net
    • …

Now you would like to move example.com to separate git repository.

First of all, you need to install git-filter-repo.

# Clone old repository to new directory
git clone OLD_REPOSITORY example.com
cd example.com/

# Remove everything else except example.com directory
git filter-repo --path example.com/

# Make example.com new root directory
git filter-repo --subdirectory-filter example.com

# Push to a new repository
git remote add origin NEW_REPOSITORY
git push -u origin master

Connect to Mac using VNC from Windows using encrypted connection

Mac, VNC

On Mac you need to enable Remote Login and Screen Sharing.

Note: If Remote Login is not starting with message “Remote Login starting…” you might need to manually add a launch daemon:
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist

On Windows run Powershell and create encrypted SSH tunnel. Replace USERNAME with your user name and MAC_IP_ADDRESS with IP address of your Mac.

ssh -L 25900:127.0.0.1:5900 USERNAME@MAC_IP_ADDRESS

Now use a VNC client (eg. RealVNC Viewer) and connect to 127.0.0.1:25900. RealVNC will still complain about unsecure connection but the connection will be local only (127.0.0.1).

UniFi Protect behind nginx proxy

NGINX, UniFi

Below is a snippet of nginx configuration that will enable access to your UniFi Controller (eg. Unifi Cloud Key Gen2) using nginx reverse proxy.

server {
        listen 443 ssl;
        server_name example.com;

        location / {
                include /etc/nginx/proxy_params;
                proxy_pass https://IP_ADDRESS_OF_THE_CONTROLLER/;

                # WebSocket support
                proxy_http_version 1.1;
                proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
                proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        }
}

Installing Arch Linux ARM on Raspberry PI 3

Arch Linux

Insert SD card to your system.

sudo fdisk -l
sudo fdisk /dev/sdX

Create partitions.

  • Clear partitions (o)
  • Create boot partition (n, p, 1, enter, +500M, t, c)
  • Create system partition (n, p, 2, enter, enter)
  • Write partitions (w)
sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdX1
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX2

Mount new partitions.

sudo mkdir /mnt/boot/
sudo mkdir /mnt/root/

sudo mount /dev/sdx1 /mnt/boot/
sudo mount /dev/sdx2 /mnt/root/

Download and install Arch Linux ARM.

wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-rpi-aarch64-latest.tar.gz
sudo su
tar zxvf ArchLinuxARM-rpi-aarch64-latest.tar.gz -C /mnt/root
mv /mnt/root/boot/* /mnt/boot
sync
umount /mnt/boot/
umount /mnt/root/

Remove SD card, insert it into Raspberry PI and boot it to complete the installation.

pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate archlinuxarm
pacman -Syu

Append value to Multi SZ Registry value using PowerShell

PowerShell

In the sample bellow the PowerShell script will append a service into RemoteAccessCheckExemptionList in registry. It also checks whether the value already exists there or not.

$subkey = 'SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurePipeServers\SCM'
$value  = 'RemoteAccessCheckExemptionList'

$reg = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey('LocalMachine', $server)
$key = $reg.OpenSubKey($subkey, $true)
$list = $key.GetValue($value)

if ($list -notcontains 'MyServiceName') {
  $list += 'MyServiceName'
}

$key.SetValue($value, [string[]]$list, 'MultiString')