core-tools

This is the central module for managing my scripts and tools.

Setup

To set up the core module, run the setup script:

./tools/scripts/setup/setup-tools.sh

The scripts/setup/ directory also contains the following setup assist scripts:

• crontab-setup.sh: Setup core cron jobs.
• tmux-configuration.sh: Set up tmux theme.
• all.sh: A lazy setup script that runs all of the above (including setup-tools.sh).

Useful Features

The core tools hold a number of useful scripts and functions.

Ansible

The files/ansible/ directory is made to hold playbooks that I use for setting up my environments.

Battery

If you are using a laptop, then you can use battery to display your remaining battery life.

Conky

My conky display was made to support multiple systems with little to no reconfiguration. For more information on conky's parameters, see the conky directory.

Network Connection Listing

You can use the connections command to list incoming and outgoing network connections.

This function has a number of switches for controlling output. Use connections -h for a full options listing.

The script also has a number of aliases for convenience:

• connections-in-local/connections-out-local: The inverse of connections-in, list all connections involving localhost.
• connections-in-lan: List incoming connections coming from IP addresses that are within 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16.
• connections-in-remote: The inverse of connections-in-lan, lists IPs not within 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16.
• connections-in-all: List all incoming connections.
• connections-out-lan: List outgoing connections coming from IP addresses that are within 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16.
• connections-lan: A lazy alias of connections-out-lan.
• connections-out-remote: The inverse of connections-out-lan, lists IPs not within 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16.
• connections-out-all: List all outgoing connections.

Other similar functions/aliases:

• connections-in-ipv6: List incoming IPv6 connections.
• connections-out-ipv6: List outgoing IPv6 connections.

SSH Configuration Compilation

I use my module system to store SSH configurations in sub-modules. The sensitive nature of SSH configurations are a major part of why the module system even exists, and I wanted to create a convenient method of deploying them and applying changes.

ssh-compile-config

SSH configuration compilation detects changes to your modules' SSH configuration files, and updates your ~/.ssh/config file. It then reports in on modules that have had updated configurations. If you wish to test this feature without meddling with your current ~/.ssh/config file, provide a path as your first argument:

ssh-compile-config demo-config

For more information on ssh-compile-config, see the README.md file in the SSH directory directory.

Prompt

I've added a number of bells and whistles my prompt:

• Dynamic colouring for the following areas:
  • Username changes depending on who the current user is.
  • Hostname:
    • Certain network-only servers have blue hostnames.
    • Servers that I use for a desktop environment have green hostnames.
    • Some development or work machines have red hostnames.
  • File Path:
    • Local filesystems (ext2, ext3, ext4, xfs) are green.
    • Network file systems (nfs, cifs) are blue.
    • OS and memory-based filesystems (sysfs, proc, any kind of tmpfs) are purple.
    • Hot-plugged filesystems (udf, fuseblk, any kind of ntfs or fat filesystem) are red.
  • Box edges are set by the output of uname:
    • Linux systems are in a blue box.
    • FreeBSD systems are in a red box.
    • Mac OSX systems are in a yellow box.
    • Windows systems using MobaXterm are in a cyan box. This feature is currently not tested for other Unix-in-Windows environments.
  • Prompt Symbol ($ for non-root, # for root):
    • If the previous command was not found (exit code 127), then the symbol will be yellow.
    • If we attempted to run a script without the execute permission (exit code 126), then the symbol will be cyan.
    • If the previous command gave a non-zero exit code not covered above, then the symbol will be red.
    • If the previous command exited successfully with an exit code of 0, then the symbol will be white.
• Remote SSH client.
  • The remote address will not be displayed if your terminal session was started within a tmux, screen, or vnc session.
  • This feature will be disabled if the PROMPT_IGNORE_SSH environment variable has a non-zero value.
  • Use the prompt-toggle-ssh function to toggle this feature off or on.
• Version control information:
  • SVN version information (Credit: Eric Leblond)
  • Git branch and status information (Credit: http://ezprompt.net/).
  • If you need a reminder of what the red indicators in git repository mean, use the git-prompt-reminder function.
  • Version control information will not be printed for NFS/CIFS file systems due to performance concerns.
  • SVN output will take precedence over Git output, if you have a directory that for some reason has both.
  • This feature will be disabled if the PROMPT_IGNORE_VC environment variable has a non-zero value.
  • Use the prompt-toggle-version-control function to toggle this feature off or on. (Set a value to PROMPT_IGNORE_VC to disable this)
• Compression. If the prompt gets to be so large that you begin running out of room, then the prompt will be shortened:
  • Hostname will be shortened to one character.
  • Username will be shortened to one character.
  • Only the name of the current directory will be displayed.
  • This feature will be permanently enabled if the PROMPT_ALWAYS_COMPRESS environment variable has a non-zero value.
  • Use the prompt-toggle-compression function to toggle dynamic compression off or on.
  • There is currently not an option for "never compress".
• Temporary hostname/username display change, useful for when you are debugging or recording demonstration videos.
  • Setting DISPLAY_USER will override the display of your session's real username in the prompt.
  • Setting DISPLAY_HOSTNAME will override the display of your server's real hostname in the prompt.

Variables

If you want to disable all of these bells and whistles, set the BASIC_PROMPT variable to 1.

rdp

The scripts/networking/rdp.py is made to make the xfreerdp command more convenient to use. It is available in bin/ under the name rdp.

It boils down basic usage to a basic rdp target-server, whether you are using a older version of xfreerdp or a modern one.

Arguments:

Argument	Description	Example
-d domain	Sets the login domain.	-d LOCALDOMAIN
-e	Key file, implying an EC2 instance. Requires boto3 and pycrypto	-e path-to-keyfile
-g	Single-argument for display geometry (WxH).	-g 800x600, -g 800,600
--height	Sets display height.	--height 600
-p password	Sets the login password.	-p swordfish
-P	Prompt for a password.	-P
-u user	Sets the login user. Also accepts domain name using backslash.	-u user, -u DOMAIN\\user
-width	Sets display width.	-width 800

Variables

You can set the following environment variables to adjust your default RDP parameters:

• RDP_WIDTH sets the width of the rdp window (default: 1600).
• RDP_HEIGHT sets the height of the rdp window (default: 900).
• RDP_DOMAIN sets the domain.
• RDP_USER sets the user.

Each of these environment variables can be overridden by manually specifying a value in the rdp.sh script.

Sleep

A few lazy functions for sleeping (each one only accepts integers):

• sleep-minutes
• sleep-hours
• sleep-days
• countdown-seconds
• countdown-minutes
• countdown-hours
• countdown-days

Modules

I made a module-based system for storing functions in order to limit unneeded data leaks.

Module Creation

A directory is considered to be a module if it has a bash/bashrc file that defines a tools directory variable.

The tools directory variable must:

• Have a unique amongst the tool directories.
• Draw off of $__current_module_dir variable, which is set in the cycling of the bashrc file of these core tools that loads in modules.
  • The exception to this is $toolsDir, which is set in a system bashrc or ~/.bashrc by the setup script.
    • A number of modules do fall back to guessing at a location, but this is not recommended.
• End in ToolsDir (case-insensitive). This is necessary because some functions (ssh-compile-config, for example) actually looks for tool directory variables in order to work.

Locations

Modules are read out of the following directories:

Location	Example(s)
~/tools directory	~/tools, ~/tools/core-tools
~/workdirectory	~/work/company-a-tools, ~/work/company-b/tools
modulesdirectory, nested within core tools checkout (SVN checkout only)	modules/audio-tools
secure directory, nested within core tools checkout (SVN checkout only)	secure/

History

The original tools were just a single directory stored in SVN in order to avoid having to manually keep my different scripts in sync.

As my needs for my tools expanded, I wanted to start placing them on more systems. The problem with this was that the original tools directories had some very sensitive material on them, such as network configurations, passwords, and SSH keys.

I originally only had one "secure" module, which would be checked out to the secure/ path within the tools checkout. The nesting relied on the svn command throwing an error if someone tried to add it to tools. Even with .gitignore as an option, the modern core-tools will not accept nesting in a git checkout.

Over time, I needed to split things up even more. The following kind of problems were not covered by just the main tools and "secure" tools:

• Sharing functions/aliases affecting a private resource.
• Needing specific pieces of the "secure" tools on a system that I didn't want other information on.
• A lot of functions that would never even need to be considered on certain systems. For example:
  • A headless server will never need sound-playing aliases.
  • A headless server or work-oriented machine should never need to load game aliases.
• Work-related information that I did not want to live in any locally hosted repository.