How to make read-only 'virtual' exFAT directories for FTP users on Synology NAS running DSM 6

Update, December 2019: installing third-party scripts or package managers which run on boot may overwrite the file /etc/rc.local which I initially recommended using. I've revised this article to recommend a better autostart script directory; feel free to borrow the simple start/stop script I included at the end of this post.

I recently purchased a Synology NAS running DSM 6, and sharing directories via FTP is easy. In Control Panel, make sure the Shared Folder is defined, then using File Station, define access permissions (read, write, execute) for each group or user.

If you want an additional user for FTP access, you make your user (or make a group then add your user to that) then Allow access to the FTP application inside Control Panel -> Users or Groups. The permissions are inherited, UNIX style, to effectively restrict rights over folders and their files.

So far, so simple; this works great for everything on the NAS' internal storage, because by default it uses EXT4 filesystem which supports file & directory permissions and ACLs. On the terminal, a plus symbol at the end of an ls directory listing denotes the file or directory has additional ACLs applied, which can overrule standard UNIX permissions.

However, on any external drives connected to the Synology, for example a large USB3 drive for temporary storage of additional material, those drives may use file systems other than EXT4 so they're accessible by, say, Windows PCs. In this case, given we're probably also dealing with very large files, exFAT is a sensible choice - and the Synology does support exFAT, albeit there's a long story about that. tl;dr - pay $4 and just get the official exFAT Access package from Synology through the Package Manager, it's zero-hassle and has full read/write support. More info on supported external devices here.

One thing exFAT volumes lack when used through the Synology is support for any UNIX file and directory permissions. Normally that's acceptable, but if you're sharing files to other users, either via NFS, SMB or FTP, you may wish to use permissions to prevent accidental deletion - and on an exFAT volume, this means you can't.

But we can do read-only access with exFAT! It just requires some creative thinking...

Click to read the article and find out how

Dear mailserver operators: PLEASE stop using SSLv3!

I look after a few email servers and after implementing much stricter encryption settings at the start of the year, I noticed some emails were never making it to accounts - being rejected at the negotiation stage (where the remote server sending the email agrees an encryption protocol and cipher with the local server).

I was puzzled by this. TLS is hardly new, yet these servers were only ever attempting to use SSLv3 and then failing to 'upgrade' to TLS - not even TLS1.0. Poor show.

This isn't unique either - I periodically run a script which reports the spread of protocols and ciphers of incoming email connections; here's a sample from one server for the last hour...

...The stats don't make for pretty reading:

Fail2ban 0.10 on CentOS6 - yes we can! And my notes on successful manual upgrades

Fail2ban's official compile for CentOS6 has never advanced beyond 0.9.6-1.el6.1. While 0.9.6 works, it's old and has a few major inconveniences:

  1. No IPv6 support 🙁
  2. A tendency for the daemon to die when parsing many logs or a high volume of activity
  3. Quite slow to parse logs when restarting after a config change

So, what can we do? Well, compile from source and upgrade with the supplied python script! It's easier than I anticipated, but there's still a few things you need to watch out for.

Read more

Setting up a secure Postfix server in 2019 - what to consider?

Postfix is great, and widely used, but freshly installed it's like a newborn child. Nowadays there's a lot of work required to get it to an acceptable level to face the wild west of the Internet.

NB: This is a living document and will probably change over time as I revise my own methods for managing my servers.

Running an MTA to an 'acceptable' standard now requires lots of additional config and tuning, but it's satisfying once done. Be prepared to learn lots about DNS, TLS, certificate structure, mail filtering (miltering), regular expression and monitoring - crucial once your system is operational.

Once you've had your fill of the RFCs (https://www.fastmail.com/help/technical/standards.html), there's plenty other stuff to learn. http://www.emailarchivestaskforce.org/documents/guide-to-email-standards/ is worth a read, and are you sure you know how to validate an email address? https://haacked.com/archive/2007/08/21/i-knew-how-to-validate-an-email-address-until-i.aspx/

For newcomers, important areas to cover are:

  • understanding quirks of different email clients, some of the odd scenarios with specific email services
  • familiarising oneself with the certificate process
  • how TLS is employed with email
  • Hands-on experience is crucial!
  • Doing dry runs with a dev system is invaluable - you must be able to make and break things without taking down customers' email 🙂

I administer shared Postfix servers for numerous clients. Some are newest releases of Postfix, and some, due to legacy requirements, are older. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but some configuration options aren't always available.

If I was setting up a new Postfix server today, I'd go through these steps:

Continue reading "Setting up a secure Postfix server in 2019 - what to consider?"
I