Most of the work I do is on systems who’s primary interface is BASH. BASH is the shell that runs on most Linux distributions and Mac OS X when you open a terminal or SSH in. There are a few short cuts I have picked up along the way that are built into BASH but aren’t all that obvious or in the man ( manual ) pages. One very powerful shortcut, ! ( refered to as bang ), is used in BASH to reference the prior command(s) in varius ways and can really speed up your work in the terminal.

!$
The command that this post is named for is used to reference the last argument in the previous command. For example, let’s say you set up a new directory for your client you would need to set the ownership and permissions on it.

mkdir /dir/made/for/client1
chown client1:client1 /dir/made/for/client1
chmod 750 /dir/made/for/client1

This can be shortened by using the !$ shortcut like this.

mkdir /dir/made/for/client1
chown client1:client1 !$
chmod 750 !$

The time savings here are minor but over time can help, by referencing the first command we also reduce the number of typos.

!!
This command references the complete previous command. “Doesn’t the up arrow do that?” you ask? The up arrow pulls the previous command up, allowing you to run it again or modify it. !! allows you to insert the previous command into what you are typing. Take the previous example, if you didn’t have permission to make the directory the first time you tried you could try it again using sudo, like this.

mkdir /dir/made/for/client1 (returns an error about permission denied)
sudo mkdir /dir/made/for/client1 (works)

This can be shortened using the !! shortcut like this.

mkdir /dir/made/for/client1 (returns an error about permission denied)
sudo !! (works)

!number or !-number
BASH, in most configurations, keeps a history of your commands. You can see a list of those commands using the command history.

server01:~ j2$ history
26 command1
27 command2
28 command3
29 command4
30 command5
31 command6
32 command7
33 command8
34 command9
35 history

You can reference any of these commands using the number next to them and the ! shortcut. If I wanted to run command5 again I would do this.

!30

You can also reference commands in reverse by negating them. If I remembered that I ran command5 six commands ago I could do this.

!-6

!:number
By putting a : and a number after the ! you can reference individual arguments in a previous command. Each “word” in a command gets assigned a number, starting with 0. For example, in the command chmod 750 /dir/made/for/client1 chmod = 0, 750 = 1, and /dir/made/for/client1 = 2. So if I had to change the permissions on a few directories it would look like this.

chmod 750 /dir/made/for/client1
chmod 750 /dir/made/for/client2
chmod 750 /dir/made/for/client3

Using the shortcut it would look like this.

chmod 750 /dir/made/for/client1
!:0 !:1 /dir/made/for/client2
!:0 !:1 /dir/made/for/client3

Finally, the last shortcut and this one can be combined to reference specific parts of a command in your history list. Say I just did all those chmod commands above but forgot to chown client1′s dir. Using the combination I could do this.

chown client1:client1 !-3:2

You can now see why ! is one of my favorite tools while working in BASH. If you have any questions or know of another way to use !, please leave a comment.

Zero day exploits, best explained here, will be coming out daily for the month of January, it seems, due to a security research firm in Russia. No matter what you think about their methods, this does highlight a fact that is sometimes forgotten, every running service presents the potential for an exploit. But without those services a computer is just an overpriced electric heater. So how do we protect ourselves against the unknown and unpatched? By being very careful about what our servers are running, only allowing access to the minimum number of resources required to get the job done, and having a plan for when your monitoring reports the service is down.

     Since linux distributions are varied in their installs I won’t go through each but most of the “friendly” distributions start, by default, a variety of services that may not be required but could potentially have exploits. While most of these don’t have a network component, combined with other exploits they could help open the server to attack. For example, Red Hat starts processes to monitor the software raid and logical volume manager even if you aren’t using them. It also starts processes for handling bluetooth devices, HP printers, and command line mouse support, even if you don’t have them. None of these should cause you any concern but if you don’t need them they don’t need to run at all.

     Most Apache HTTP server installs suffer from the same desire for usability, many modules are made available to the server by default. For example, you probably aren’t using LDAP authentication or WebDAV as part of your server but the modules for them are preloaded on most default installs. Identifying the modules that are required for your web site or application to run and then disabling the ones that are not will reduce your apache httpd footprint and therefore reduce your exposure.

     MySQL server doesn’t have the modular nature of our prior two examples but there are some steps that you can take to reduce your exposure. First off, after doing the install and setting the root password, remove the test user and database. These have no known exploits but aren’t needed. Second, ensure that your users are bound to a host instead of a wild card address, this makes sure that connections are only authorized from known hosts. Finally, if you are running mysql on the same host as your webserver and this is the only server that needs to access it, configure it to only listen on localhost ( There is no place like 127.0.0.1 ), this ensures that remote hosts cannot connect to your database even if your firewall fails.

     While I did focus on some of the more simple things that can be done to a LAMP server, this should give you an idea of what kind of changes can be made that won’t effect your service but will reduce your exposure footprint. Remember that before you make any changes you should do a backup and make copies of the files you are editing. We will see what this month brings as far as unpublished exploits and should also take this time to remember that not all exploits are published or patched, or even discovered yet.

This post originally written for my personal blog on June 14th 2009.

As a systems administrator in many mixed Windows and linux environments I have seen and made many of my own attempts at integrating the linux servers into the Windows Active Directory structure with mixed results. Linux registration and authentication inside of a Windows domain is akin to the bigfoot: some have claimed to see one, many have worked long hours to find them, no one can produce consistent results. Until now.

At the suggestion by a coworker I decided to give Likewise a try on my most recent attempt at bringing our linux servers into the windows domain. Skeptically I built a new CentOS 5.3 server and proceeded to follow the instructions for installing Likewise. The seemed too simple and with each step I waited for the fatal issue that would bring the test to it’s demise. Software installed, no issues. As I reviewed the instructions for adding the system to the domain and found that it only required one command and no further configuration of files I thought, “This is so going to fall on it’s face.” Command executed and I’m waiting, then it comes up on the screen: Success. Success? Really? I don’t believe it, I log onto the domain controller and there it is, right where new computers are supposed to go in the domain. I quickly flip over to the manual and look up how to authenticate for ssh, simple DOMAIN\\username@host, and give it the final test. Success. In the span of 15 minutes I was able to install the app, add my computer to the domain and authenticate against the domain. 15 more minutes and I was able to limit who could log in and give them sudo access. This is a huge win for any admin who deals with linux servers in a domain.

I’m still testing the limits of Likewise and I will say that it hasn’t been without it’s speed bumps but I plan on paying for a little support and getting the answers I need. Like may open source products, Likewise is making it’s money on support and by selling upgraded functionality. I applaud this model, allowing the flexibility of open source while still finding a way to pay for all that hard work. I will be continuing to test the limits of Likewise but as of now I am thoroughly impressed and will continue to use it.