Ansible Error – An unhandled exception occurred while templating

}}'. Error was a <class 'ansible.errors.AnsibleError'>, original message: An unhandled exception occurred while templating '{{ ntfy_visitor_request_limit_exempt_hosts_container_networks_inspect_commands_string | split('###') }}'. Error was a <class 'ansible.errors.AnsibleError'>, original message: template error while templating string: no filter named 'split'. String: {{ ntfy_visitor_request_limit_exempt_hosts_container_networks_inspect_commands_string | split('###') }

To solve the issue, update Ansible. If you are already on the “latest” version of ansible available to for your distro, uninstall, and then install it again following the directions on Ansible’s website

For Ubuntu we can simply do that with

sudo apt remove ansible
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible
sudo apt install ansible

An HTTPS version of Simple Whisper Web Interface

This version is the same as we previously posted, but adds a security certificate, and lots of extra new stuff! You will need a valid certificate, this is fairly easy to setup using Let’s Encrypt, or you could do a self signed certificate.

Setting up Prerequisite

Installing whisper-ctranslate2

pip install -U whisper-ctranslate2

Install NodeJS

sudo apt install nodejs

or

sudo dnf install nodejs

Install Node Dependencies

npm install formidable
npm install https
npm install fs

Setting up Simple Whisper Web Interface

First we need a web directory to use.

Next lets make an uploads folder

mkdir uploads

Code for main.js. Change WEBSITE.COM to your website name. Node will need access to the certificates. You can run this web app as root (If you do that, then root needs node, and prerequisites), or copy the certs to the users directory, and change the path. If you do the later, look at using a script/cronjob to copy the updated certificates to the users directory.

const http = require('http')
const https = require('https')
const formidable = require('formidable')
const fs = require('fs')

const execSync = require('child_process').execSync

let newpath = ''
let modelSize = 'medium.en'
const { exec } = require('node:child_process')
const validModels = [
  'medium.en',
  'tiny',
  'tiny.en',
  'base',
  'base.en',
  'small',
  'small.en',
  'medium',
  'medium.en',
  'large-v1',
  'large-v2'
]

var options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync('/path/to/privkey.pem'),
  cert: fs.readFileSync('/path/to/fullchain.pem')
}
fs.readFile('./index.html', function (err, html) {
  if (err) throw err

  https
    .createServer(options, function (req, res) {
      if (req.url == '/fileupload') {
        res.write(html)
        res.write(`<div class="loading results"></div>`)
        var form = new formidable.IncomingForm()
        form.parse(req, function (err, fields, files) {
          console.log('Fields ' + fields.modeltouse)
          console.log('File ' + files.filetoupload)
          var oldpath = files.filetoupload.filepath
          newpath = './uploads/' + files.filetoupload.originalFilename
          modelSize = validModels.includes(fields.modeltouse)
            ? fields.modeltouse
            : 'medium.en'
          console.log('modelSize::' + modelSize)
          fs.rename(oldpath, newpath, function (err) {
            if (err) {
              console.log('No file selected!') // throw err
              res.write(`<div class="results">No file selected</div>`)
            } else {
              console.log(newpath)
              if (fields.timestamps) {
                      console.log("true check")
                var output = execSync(
                  `./whisper.sh "${newpath}" ${modelSize} "true"`,
                  { encoding: 'utf-8' }
                )
              } else {
                var output = execSync(
                  `./whisper.sh "${newpath}" ${modelSize} false`,
                  { encoding: 'utf-8' }
                )
              }
        res.write(`<script>document.querySelector('.loading').classList.add('hidden')</script>`)
              res.write(
                `<div class="results"><h2>Results:</h2> <p>${output}</p></div>`
              )
              res.end()
            }
          })
        })
      } else {
        res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/html' })
        res.write(html)
        return res.end()
      }
    })
    .listen(8443)
})

Add the following to index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <title>Voice Transcribing Using Whisper</title>
    <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
  </head>
  <style>
    body {
      background-color: #b9dbe7;
      align-items: center;
    }

    .box {
      border-radius: 25px;
      padding: 25px;
      width: 80%;
      background-color: azure;
      margin: auto;
      border-bottom: 25px;
      margin-bottom: 25px;
                    font-family: 'advent_prothin', Arial, sans-serif;
    }

    .button {
      border-radius: 25px;
      margin: auto;
      width: 50%;
      height: 50px;
      display: flex;
      justify-content: center;
      border-style: solid;

      background-color: #e8d2ba;
    }

    h1 {
      text-align: center;
      padding: 0%;
      margin: 0%;
    }
    @font-face {
    font-family: 'advent_prothin';
    src: url('Typewriter.otf');
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;

}


p {
      font-size: larger;
      font-family: 'MyWebFont', Arial, sans-serif;
    }
    .headings {
      font-size: large;
      font-weight: bold;
    }
    input {
      font-size: medium;
    }
    .checkboxes {
      transform: scale(1.5);
    }
    select {
      font-size: medium;
    }
    .results {
      white-space: pre-wrap;
      border-radius: 25px;
      padding: 25px;
      width: 80%;
      align-self: center;
      background-color: azure;
      margin: auto;
      font-family: Typewriter;
    }
    .hidden {
              display: none;
    }
    .note {
      font-style: italic;
      font-size: small;
      font-weight: normal;
    }
        .loading {
      border: 16px solid azure;
      border-radius: 50%;
      border-top: 16px solid rgb(207, 255, 255);
      width: 64px;
      height: 64px;
      animation: spin 1s linear infinite;
    }
    /* Safari */

    @keyframes spin {
      0% {
        transform: rotate(0deg);
      }
      100% {
        transform: rotate(360deg);
      }
    }
  </style>
  <body>
    <script>
    </script>
    <div class="box">
      <h1>Simple Whisper Web Interface</h1>
      <br />
      <p>
        Welcome to the very Simple Whisper Web Interface!<br /><br />
        This is a very basic, easy to use, web interface for OpenAI's Whisper
        tool. It has not been extensively tested, so you may encounter bugs or
        other problems.
        <br /><br />
        Instructions for use. <br />1. Select audio file <br />2. Select the
        Model you want to use <br />
        3. Click Transcribe! <br />4. Copy your transcription
      </p>
      <br />
      <br />
      <div class="headings">
        <form action="fileupload" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
          Audio File: <input type="file" name="filetoupload" /><br />

          <br />
          Model:
          <select name="modeltouse" id="modeltouse">
            <option value="medium.en">medium.en</option>
            <option value="tiny">tiny</option>
            <option value="tiny.en">tiny.en</option>
            <option value="base">base</option>
            <option value="base.en">base.en</option>
            <option value="small">small</option>
            <option value="small.en">small.en</option>
            <option value="medium">medium</option>
            <option value="medium.en">medium.en</option>
            <option value="large-v1">large-v1</option>
            <option value="large-v2">large-v2</option>
          </select>
          <p class="note">
            Large-v2 and medium.en seem to produce the most accurate results.
          </p>
          Timestamps?
          <input class="checkboxes" type="checkbox" id="timestamps" name="timestamps" />
          <br />
          <br />
          <br />
          <input class="button" type="submit" value="Transcribe!" />
        </form>
      </div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Run the server with

node main.js

If we want to start it in the background, run

node ./main.js &

Next steps are to setup a SystemD file so we can auto start on system boot and also make the installation quicker/easier.

Using FasterWhisper on Ubuntu

faster-whisper is a faster implementation of OpenAI’s Whisper.

https://github.com/guillaumekln/faster-whisper

Someone else has added a “front end” to it so we can just about use it as a drop in replacement for Whisper.

https://github.com/jordimas/whisper-ctranslate2

We can easily install it with pip.

pip install -U faster-Whisper
pip install -U whisper-ctranslate2

For some reason initially the quality was worse then vanilla Whisper. Adding the “–compute_type float32” option improved the quality to where there was not any difference between them.

How to Bypass NVIDIA NVENC Limits on RTX Cards on Linux

It appears that NVIDIA has limited the number of NVEncoding streams on consumer GPUs. Guess it is so people have to buy the more expensive professional cards.

Fortunately, the limit is only applied to the driver, and there is a patch available that let’s us bypass the limiter.

https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch

Install Patch

This assumes you already have the driver installed. If you do not, or run into issues with the commands below, refer to the above link.

Download the tool

https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch/archive/refs/heads/master.zip

wget https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch/archive/refs/heads/master.zip

Unzip the file

unzip nvidia-patch-master.zip

Run the patch script

cd nvidia-patch-master
sudo bash ./patch.sh

And we are finished!

Further reading

NVIDIA has a matrix of which cards support how many streams etc.

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

And while we are on the topic of artificial limits, check out the vGPU license bypass

https://github.com/KrutavShah/vGPU_LicenseBypass

JavaScript check if a string matches any element in an Array

In the following code we will be checking a string and check if any of the words in the string match some or any elements in an array.

We can imagine that our “stringToCheck” variable is an email or message response. We want to know if it contains a mention to afternoon, tomorrow, or evening. Presumably so we can automate something. Note that the matches are case sensitive.

// Check if any text in a string matches an element in an array

const stringToCheck = "Let's grab lunch tomorrow";
const arrayToCompareTo =["afternoon", "tomorrow", "evening"];

// We are checking to see if our string "stringToCheck" 
// Has any of the words in "arrayToCompareTo".
// If it does, then the result is true.  Otherwise false.
const resultsOfCompare = arrayToCompareTo.some(checkVariable => stringToCheck.includes(checkVariable));

if (resultsOfCompare == true){
    console.log(stringToCheck + " Contains a value in our Array " + arrayToCompareTo);
} else {
    console.log(stringToCheck + " Does NOT contain a value in our Array " + arrayToCompareTo);
}

More examples and ways to do it are available at the following link.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37428338/check-if-a-string-contains-any-element-of-an-array-in-javascript

Reversing Obfuscated Phishing Email

Ran across an email that had an attachment named Payment.htm. This kind of phishing attack isn’t anything new, but the htm file had some interesting obfuscation inside of it.

https://news.trendmicro.com/2022/10/31/html-email-attachments-phishing-scam/

Doing some online searching brought up the following analysis on Joe Sandbox

https://www.joesandbox.com/analysis/831537/0/html

Opening up the file in a virtual a Kali virtual machine, starts to load what appears to look like a Microsoft Sharepoint site. Notice the URL is the local file. It’s setup to pull the photos from the web. Since the VM had no internet available, the images never loaded.

After spinning around for a second, it loads the “log on page”, already populated with our email address. Note I changed the email address before taking the screenshot.

Typing in a random password and hitting Sign in triggers the sign in page.

Notice the ipinfo.io network connection

Going to https://ipinfo.io/json gives us a good bit of info about our IP address, location etc. It looks like this information is requested and then sent to the hackers.

Since there was not an internet connection, the malicious htm web page never received the IP information and so didn’t continue on to the next stage, it just sat there loading. Should be able to setup a fake local server and feed it the information to continue on to the next stage. Or we can just do some static code analysis

Base64, Base64 and more Base64

Opening up the file in a text editor shows tons of Base64 encoded data. The file is only about 20 lines long, but the individual lines are super long.

This first section of Base64 encoded data is by far the shortest. atob is a javascript function that decodes Base64 data. There are multiple atob functions, meaning that to actually get the data, we’ll need to decode the data multiple times. Or we can just copy out the atob functions, and run them directly in Node.js to get the output.

This is fairly easy to do, run nodejs from the command line, set the variable, and print it to console

# nodejs
> let b64 = atob(atob(etc...etc...etc...))
> console.log(b64)

Unfortunately, the next few lines are too large to do what we just did. What we can do is duplicate the file, then delete all non javascript text. Next we can replace the beginning lines where it says “document.head……atob” to

console.log(atob(atob(atob(.....))));

After we have cleaned up the file and made those changes, we save it, and now run it as a javascript file.

nodejs ./Payment.htm

If we want to, we can pipe the output into another file with the > operator

nodejs ./Payment.htm > Decoded_Payment.js

Deobfuscating the important stuff

Looking at the decoded code shows that there is still some obfuscated stuff in that last line.

The var _0x8378= array contains a lot of human unreadable text.

Fortunately, this is not hard to decode at all. In a terminal, launch nodejs again, copy the whole array as a variable, and then just print the whole array.

nodejs
> var _0x8378 [.....]
> > console.log(_0x8378);
[
  '.loaderxBlock',
  'querySelector',
  '.overlay',
  '.loginForm',
  '.lds-roller',
  '#logoPage2',
  '.backArrow',
  '.emailBlock',
  '.passwordBlock',
  '#next',
  '#signin',
  '.emailInvalid',
  '.passwordError',
  '.passwordNull',
  '#boilerText',
  '.passwordImput',
  '.emailInput',
  'ssvv',
  'getAttribute',
  'rrt',
  'getElementById',
  '#bbdy',
  '.canvas',
  '.imgclass',
  '.loader',
  '.logerMe',
  '.tittleText',
  'aHR0cHM6Ly9zdXBwb3J0Lm1pY3Jvc29mdC5jb20vZW4tdXMvb2ZmaWNlL2ZpeC1vbmVkcml2ZS1zeW5jLXByb2JsZW1zLTA4OTliMTE1LTA1ZjctNDVlYy05NWIyLWU0Y2M4YzQ2NzBiMg==',                                                                                                                                 
  'test',
  'Email =',
  'log',
  'load html',
  'href',
  'location',
  '#',
  'backgroundImage',
  'style',
  'body',
  'dXJsKCdodHRwczovL2FhZGNkbi5tc2F1dGgubmV0L3NoYXJlZC8xLjAvY29udGVudC9pbWFnZXMvYmFja2dyb3VuZHMvMl9iYzNkMzJhNjk2ODk1Zjc4YzE5ZGY2YzcxNzU4NmE1ZC5zdmcnKQ==',                                                                                                                             
  'display',
  'none',
  'block',
  'value',
  '5823592882:AB1830h83D83DjWmnaEao398JHEXhueXE83',
  '-839602468',
  'aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkudGVsZWdyYW0ub3Jn',
  'aHR0cHM6Ly9pcGluZm8uaW8vanNvbg==',
  'userAgent',
  'navigator',
  '0',
  'padStart',
  'getDate',
  'getMonth',
  'getFullYear',
  '/',
  'json',
  'ip',
  'city',
  'country',
  'org',
  'postal',
  '/bot',
  '/sendMessage?chat_id=',
  '&text=<b>OFFICE365-HTML-LOGS@ZERO</b>%0A[',
  '] ',
  '%0A<b>USER-AGENT: </b>',
  '%0A<a>see me: @mrcew</a>%0A<b>EMAIL: </b><pre>',
  '</pre>%0A<b>PASSWORD: </b><a>',
  '</a>%0A<b>Location: </b>IP: ',
  ' | CITY: ',
  ' | COUNTRY: ',
  ' | ORG: ',
  ' | POSTAL: ',
  '&parse_mode=html',
  'obago!',
  'borderColor',
  '#0067b8',
  'onLine',
  'reload',
  '.emailLabel',
  'innerHTML',
  'grid',
  'red',
  'click',
  'addEventListener',
  'length',
  'Done 2 times',
  'replace',
  '',
  ' ',
  'src',
  'keyup',
  'keyCode',
  'preventDefault'
]

Notice we have some more Base64 encoded URLs.

These are easy to decode.

> console.log(atob("aHR0cHM6Ly9zdXBwb3J0Lm1pY3Jvc29mdC5jb20vZW4tdXMvb2ZmaWNlL2ZpeC1vbmVkcml2ZS1zeW5jLXByb2JsZW1zLTA4OTliMTE1LTA1ZjctNDVlYy05NWIyLWU0Y2M4YzQ2NzBiMg=="));
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/fix-onedrive-sync-problems-0899b115-05f7-45ec-95b2-e4cc8c4670b2
> console.log(atob("dXJsKCdodHRwczovL2FhZGNkbi5tc2F1dGgubmV0L3NoYXJlZC8xLjAvY29udGVudC9pbWFnZXMvYmFja2dyb3VuZHMvMl9iYzNkMzJhNjk2ODk1Zjc4YzE5ZGY2YzcxNzU4NmE1ZC5zdmcnKQ=="));
url('https://aadcdn.msauth.net/shared/1.0/content/images/backgrounds/2_bc3d32a696895f78c19df6c717586a5d.svg')
> console.log(atob("aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkudGVsZWdyYW0ub3Jn"));
https://api.telegram.org
> console.log(atob("aHR0cHM6Ly9pcGluZm8uaW8vanNvbg=="));
https://ipinfo.io/json

The last URL is the ipinfo.io one we saw in the browser developer tools. Some of the variables from the above variable also seem to map to the return info from ipinfo.

What is Cisco VTY?

vty stands for Virtual Teletype. What is Teletype?

The teletype, or teleprinter, is a device used for communicating text over telegraph lines, public switched telephone network, Telex, radio, or satellite links.

Wikipedia explanation of teletype

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter

This means vty is essentially like a virtual computer screen plugged into the router that we can remotely access.

Both SSH and Telnet use this virtual monitor to let you see the router/switch.

The command

line vty 0 4

Configures 5 of these virtual teletypes (vty’s) for us to use. Can think of it having 5 monitors connected to the router. When you SSH to it, you are claiming one of these monitors. Cisco devices support up to a maximum of 16. 0-15

AAA – What is the difference between Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting?

Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting or AAA is an framework that allows access to a computer network/resource,

Authentication

Authentication identifies the user. It’s from the Greek authentikos “real, genuine”. We can think of it as proving the identity of the user. Bob sits down at the computer and types in his password (Something he knows) and confirms that he is in fact Bob.

Authorization

Authorization is the privileges that the user has to the system. For instance, Bob is now authenticated to the computer, but he may only be authorized to access email and a web browser.

Authorization and Authentication can get confusing. In simple terms

  • Authentication – Who are you?
  • Authorization – What you have access to.

Accounting

Accounting is the auditing or logging arm of AAA. It is for answering the 5 Ws Who did what, when, where, and how. For instance, accounting could log that Bob checked his email at 9:30AM, Improved his mind by reading posts on incredigeek.com for a couple hours, then checked email again before shutting the computer down.

Hopefully that is a short helpful explanation of AAA. For more information, check out the following links.

https://afteracademy.com/blog/authentication-vs-authorization/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(computer_security)

OIDs for UI / Ubiquiti Solar Charge Controller

Here is a list of OIDs for Ubiquiti’s solar charge controller. You can download the

Top interesting ones are

  • Battery Voltage 1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.1.2
  • Panel Voltage 1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.2.2
snmptranslate -Pu -Tz -m ./UBNT-MIB:./UBNT-SUNMAX-MIB
"org"                   "1.3"
"dod"                   "1.3.6"
"internet"                      "1.3.6.1"
"directory"                     "1.3.6.1.1"
"mgmt"                  "1.3.6.1.2"
"mib-2"                 "1.3.6.1.2.1"
"transmission"                  "1.3.6.1.2.1.10"
"experimental"                  "1.3.6.1.3"
"private"                       "1.3.6.1.4"
"enterprises"                   "1.3.6.1.4.1"
"ubnt"                  "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112"
"ubntMIB"                       "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1"
"ubntORTable"                   "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.1"
"ubntOREntry"                   "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.1.1"
"ubntORIndex"                   "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.1.1.1"
"ubntORID"                      "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.1.1.2"
"ubntORDescr"                   "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.1.1.3"
"ubntSnmpInfo"                  "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2"
"ubntSnmpGroups"                        "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.1"
"ubntORInfoGroup"                       "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.1.1"
"ubntORCompliance"                      "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.1.2"
"ubntAirosGroups"                       "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.2"
"ubntAirFiberGroups"                    "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.3"
"ubntEdgeMaxGroups"                     "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.4"
"ubntUniFiGroups"                       "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.5"
"ubntAirVisionGroups"                   "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.6"
"ubntMFiGroups"                 "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.7"
"ubntUniTelGroups"                      "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.8"
"ubntAFLTUGroups"                       "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.9"
"ubntSunMaxGroups"                      "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.10"
"sunMaxCompliances"                     "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.10.1"
"sunMaxGroups"                  "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.2.10.2"
"ubntAirFIBER"                  "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.3"
"ubntEdgeMax"                   "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.5"
"ubntUniFi"                     "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.6"
"ubntAirVision"                 "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.7"
"ubntMFi"                       "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.8"
"ubntUniTel"                    "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.9"
"ubntAFLTU"                     "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.10"
"ubntSunMax"                    "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11"
"sunMaxMIB"                     "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1"
"sunMaxBatteryStats"                    "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.1"
"sunMaxBatCurrent"                      "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.1.1"
"sunMaxBatVoltage"                      "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.1.2"
"sunMaxBatPower"                        "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.1.3"
"sunMaxBatTemp"                 "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.1.4"
"sunMaxPvPanelStats"                    "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.2"
"sunMaxPVCurrent"                       "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.2.1"
"sunMaxPVVoltage"                       "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.2.2"
"sunMaxPVPower"                 "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.2.3"
"sunMaxOutPutStats"                     "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.3"
"sunMaxOutCurrent"                      "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.3.1"
"sunMaxOutVoltage"                      "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.3.2"
"sunMaxOutPower"                        "1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.3.3"
"security"                      "1.3.6.1.5"
"snmpV2"                        "1.3.6.1.6"
"snmpDomains"                   "1.3.6.1.6.1"
"snmpProxys"                    "1.3.6.1.6.2"
"snmpModules"                   "1.3.6.1.6.3"
"zeroDotZero"                   "0.0"

Get battery voltage

We can get the battery voltage from the controller with the following SNMP walk command. Change the community “ubnt” to your SNMP community.

snmpwalk -c ubnt -v2c 10.96.1.9 1.3.6.1.4.1.41112.1.11.1.1.2

Return value is

SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.41112.1.11.1.1.2.0 = INTEGER: 24990

You may need to add a zero if you are trying to add the OID in LibreNMS for a custom OID.

Hardening SNMP on Debian

Hardening SNMP on Debian by disabling SNMP v1 and v2c, and configuring SNMP v3.

Modify /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

First we’ll want to open up the /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf file and comment out all lines that begin with

  • rocommunity
  • view
  • rouser authPriv <– “This may be the last line by default, we don’t need it”

Alternatively, you can copy and paste the following sed commands instead of manually editing the file.

sudo sed -i 's/^rocommunity/# rocommunityc/g' /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
sudo sed -i 's/^view/# view/g' /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
sudo sed -i 's/^rouser authPriv/# rouser authPriv/g' /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

Create SNMP v3 User

We can create a SNMP v3 user with the following command. There it will ask you for the username and passwords.

sudo net-snmp-create-v3-user -ro -a SHA-512 -x AES

You may receive an error about not being able to touch /snmp/snmpd.conf. I am not sure why Debian is attempting to create that file. Take the “rouser snmpuser” line and add it to the end of the /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf config.

Debian SNMP Error

Now we can start SNMPD

sudo systemctl start snmpd

Troubleshooting

My created user is not working! This could result from two different issues.

  1. It appears that Debian/SNMP doesn’t like pass phrases with special characters. You can try using a different password or escaping the special characters in “/var/lib/snmp/snmpd.conf” file before starting SNMPD.
  2. The user didn’t get added to /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf To fix, add “rouser snmpuser” (Change snmpuser to your snmp username) to the bottom of the config file.