2024-11-28 17:34:00
Earlier this month I bought an additional Unifi Flex G3 camera, for our security setup.
Adoption of the camera into the network went perfectly fine and it started streaming across the site-to-site VPN immediately. The image quality was bad though and judging by the sticker on the box, the camera had been packages two years ago. It's an old model after all.
The Unifi Protect app quickly identified that the camera had very, very outdated firmware. I don't even remember what version it was, something like 4.17.x. And it offered to apply the latest update! Lovely!
Except that it didn't.
Not even after I brought the camera back on-site to where the Protect appliance is installed. The updates weren't happening. There were no error messages... Just, no updates applied.
I have mixed feelings about Ubiquiti. On the one hand they have great documentation and a decent forum. On the other hand, there's so much activity on those forums that finding answers becomes pretty hard.
Well, after digging and digging, I found a suggestion to just download the latest available update manually from the UVC-G3-Flex product page. You can then open a browser, and browse to web interface of your camera. Yes, the camera has its own web UI!
For example, go to https://10.0.30.210/camera/system
You will need to login! The username is "ubnt" and the password can be found in the Unifi Protect app. But not in the mobile app on your phone! You need the webapp! Go to https://unifi.ui.com/consoles then visit your Protect console and go into Protect > Settings > General. There you will find Recovery Code. That field has the password you need!
Wow, that's hidden away!
Once you login to the camera UI, you can go into the System tab, where you can upload a new firmware version. This finally took me from 4.17 to 4.30, which is the latest version available on the website.
From there on out, the theory is that Protect will do the next update automatically.
But it didn't. I still had the same symptoms! Updates were not being applied and no error messages appeared!
So I hopped back into the camera web interface, to download the support logs. That gave me hundreds of lines of application and Linux logging. :) Among those lines I found some key error messages!
{"anonymous_controller_id":"REDACTED","controller_version":"5.1.57","anonymous_device_id":"REDACTED","version":"4.30.0","model":"UVC-G3-Flex","board_rev":12,"is_default":false}1732818347 P6 360,598 ctl[669]: ubnt_ctlserver[669]: trace.put_trace(): https://REDACTED:7444/internal/device/traces1732818347 P6 360,882 ctl[669]: ubnt_ctlserver[669]: trace.put_trace(): http_code = 2021732818947 P4 960,847 ctl[669]: Firmware validation failed, uri=https://REDACTED:7444/internal/update?platform=s2l&product=uvc&updateType=firmware&version=4.73.71, status=/tmp/bin/precheck-mergeall: .: line 3: can't open '/tmp/hooks/ubnt_utils.sh': No such file or directory
This suggests a few things:
This suggests that firmware version 4.30.0 for the UVC-G3-Flex is too outdated to actually upgrade to 4.73! That's problematic!
The logs also gave me an idea!
What if I just download that update file using Curl or WGet, from the console onto my laptop? And what if I then go back into the camera's onboard web interface and just upload that file?
Well, that worked! :D
The G3 Flex is now happily running firmware 4.73.
kilala.nl tags: sysadmin,
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2024-11-26 15:02:00
Ever since LinkedIn introduced their Verifications, they've been constantly pushing all their members to get verified because (of course!) other members will be more likely to trust you. Since the verification process generally involves using Persona to read your passport, a lot of people are flat out refusing to do so. Be it for privacy, be it for deadnaming or for other reasons, there's plenty of discussion about red flags.
Reading through LinkedIn's verification options, I noticed there's an alternative: employment verification, where your employer will confirm that you are indeed in their service. Interesting!
Since I am self-employed and I own an actual company, does that mean I can verify myself? Why yes, yes it does.
I did some reading and pieced together some documentation:
The process I followed is as such:
*: If you do not have a photograph of yourself setup under My Account, Face Check will fail. It will give you an error message like "No face detected in Verified ID. Use a different Verified ID with a better photo and try again.".
After setting myself up with a Verified ID, I used Microsoft's Woodgrove public test app. Here, I clicked the option that I have a Verified ID, which now gives me a QR to scan. I do so with the Azure MFA app, which prompts me if I indeed want to share my identity.
The Azure MFA app then starts the front-facing camera, makes a whole bunch of photographs and then uses Microsoft's AI to compare it to the photograph that's setup in my Verified ID. This is why I earlier ran into the "No face detected" error message: my account avatar was the Unixerius logo instead of my actual face.
And it works!
Next up: I have submitted a request to LinkedIn / Microsoft, as per the instructions detailed here. I hope that they will in fact enable Workplace Verification for Unixerius.
This has been an educational day!
kilala.nl tags: work, sysadmin,
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2024-11-08 14:39:00
Almost a year ago I had my first frustrating experience with the OnVue checkin process on my mobile phone. Today I learned a new aspect to this: the OnVue checkin process does not work on Apple iOS devices that have Lockdown Mode enabled.
Aside from that OnVue was great to work with, as always. The proctor was polite and efficient, I got my remote testing setup approved really quickly. The software worked fine, the checkin went well, we went over the rules quickly and I was allowed to start testing within 15 minutes.
I don't know what's up with people on Reddit, who complain about OnVue and proctoring. I have a head cold and I coughed and sneezed and snorted a lot during my exam. I had zero complaints from anyone!
As to the XK1-006 Linux+ beta exam: I'm not as enthused as I was about XK1-005.
I had 115 questions, 4 of which were PBQ. I needed a bit more than two of the three hours I'd been given. A lot of my time went into filling out comments, giving feedback to CompTIA. I just really hope they actually get and read all those comments, so that wasn't wasted time.
One thought struck me earlier today: I get the feeling that CompTIA are trying to shoehorn Linux+ into DevOps+ or something. They're adding on all kinds of stuff that doesn't belong on a junior Linux sysadmin exam and instead should be on an exam for more experienced people with a more diverse job role.
I think that, if CompTIA don't change the objectives to go more on-focus back to Linux, I'll suggest we switch to LFCS (or even LPIC) with my students.
kilala.nl tags: work, studies,
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2024-11-07 13:12:00
Next year the Linux+ certification exams from CompTIA are due for their new version. 003 was the first one I ever did and we're now moving to 006!
As is tradition, I've made a comparison of the exam objectives:
Nov 8th'24 disclaimer: these comparisons were made using information available at the time. This information is subject to change, as CompTIA can and will tweak exam objectives. Always grab the latest objectives doc.
Disclaimer 2: My comparison does not go into details! It takes the high-level objectives and matches them. There will be a lot of small changes, most notably in commands that are, or are not, covered. Always study using the full objectives document!
The comparison also includes comparisons to LPI Linux Essentials, to LPIC1 and to RHCSA for good measure. All of this is very rough and not detail oriented; it just gives a broad overview of the differences.
The changes I've noticed, going from 005 to 006:
If anything I feel that this exam is trying to do too much.
When 005 introduced basic conceptual understanding of Kubernetes, Ansible and so on, next to in-depth container operations, I was happy. Just a glossing-over of the concepts, so students would understand what we use Linux for.
But now, the fact that those things have been given objectives of their own with extensive lists of terminology? I feel it's too much.
The addition of AI also just feels like CompTIA have a 2023-2025 mission to update every single exam to include AI/LLM.
So, either the curriculum for 006 trieds to do too much, or CompTIA say these are exam objectives while in reality just glossing over these topics anyway.
EDIT:
For those looking for learning resources, as always you're going to have to work with the current version's materials and then fill in the blanks. As per my comparison, the blanks are pretty considerable, so prepare to learn a lot.
In my class we use the Sybex book, which is decent and comes with practice questions and exams. But use whicever you like! McGraw-Hill and Pearson also have good books.
There are commercial video courses (though I've heard bad reviews of Dion's) and Shawn Powers has a free series on YouTube.
I share all my labs and practice exams here -> https://github.com/Unixerius/XK0-005/
kilala.nl tags: work, studies,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Tess Sluijter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.