Category: FreeBSD

Installing AWS CLI Tools v2 on FreeBSD 12.4

J5Leave a comment

I upgraded my FreeBSD VM from 11 to 12 last weekend. Installing Google Cloud SDK was no problem; just use the FreeBSD package:

pkg install google-cloud-sdk

But for AWS CLI tools, there’s only a package for AWS CLI Tools version 1 . CLI Tools version 2 has been out for 3 years now, so we really don’t want to still be using v1.

Usually there’s a simple work-around: since AWS CLI tools is mostly Python scripts, you can install it via PIP. First, verify the version of Python installed, then install PIP3 for that version:

python -V
Python 3.9.16

pkg install py39-pip

Then install AWS CLI Tools v2 via PIP:

pip install awscliv2

But when we go to complete the install, we get this error:

awscliv2 --install
09:27:26 - awscliv2 - ERROR - FreeBSD amd64 is not supported, use docker version

This is because AWS CLI v2 does rely on a binary, and is only compiled for Linux. We can work around this by enabling Linux emulation.

Activating Linux Emulation in FreeBSD

First, add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf

linux_enable="YES"

Then either run this command, or simply reboot:

service linux start

Also install the CentOS 7 base from packages:

pkg install linux_base-c7

Completing install of AWS CLI Tools v2

Add the following line near the bottom of /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/awscliv2/installers.py to allow it to support FreeBSD:

    if os_platform == "FreeBSD" and arch == "amd64":
        return install_linux_x86_64()

Now we can complete the install successfully:

arnie@freebsd:~ % awscliv2 --install
10:07:13 - awscliv2 - INFO - Installing AWS CLI v2 for Linux
10:07:13 - awscliv2 - INFO - Downloading package from https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip to /tmp/tmpan_dsh2c.zip
10:07:17 - awscliv2 - INFO - Extracting /tmp/tmpan_dsh2c.zip to to /tmp/tmpnwvl45tn
10:07:26 - awscliv2 - INFO - Installing /tmp/tmpnwvl45tn/aws/install to /home/arnie/.awscliv2
10:08:37 - awscliv2 - INFO - Now awsv2 will use this installed version
10:08:37 - awscliv2 - INFO - Running now to check installation: awsv2 --version

Verify the binary and libraries are installed correctly:

~/.awscliv2/v2/current/dist/aws --version
aws-cli/2.11.10 Python/3.11.2 Linux/3.2.0 exe/x86_64.centos.7 prompt/off

You’ll probably want to include this directory in your path. Since I use TCSH, I do this by adding this line to ~/.cshrc:

set path = (/sbin /bin /usr/sbin /usr/bin /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/bin $HOME/bin $HOME/.awscliv2/v2/2.11.10/dist)

You’re now ready to configure aws cli tools v2. Run this command:

aws configure

Or, just manually setup the files ~/.aws/config and ~/.aws/credentials. Then try out a command. 

aws s3 ls

Use the AWS_PROFILE and AWS_REGION environment variable to override the defaults configured in ~/.aws/config

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Using an SMTP Smart Host with Sendmail on FreeBSD 12

J5Leave a comment

If you’ve got an ISP that forces all outbound e-mail to go via their servers, the solution to this is called SMTP smart hosting, where one SMTP server uses another SMTP server as a relay or proxy, essentially acting like a Mail User Agent (client) than a Mail Transfer Agent (server). If running FreeBSD, the default mail server will be sendmail and it’s a little unclear how to set this up.

For me, I just decided to really start from scratch with a custom config file with the SMART_HOST setting. Here’s the file I created, saving it as /etc/mail/custom.mc:

divert(0)
VERSIONID(`$FreeBSD: releng/12.2/etc/sendmail/freebsd.mc 363465 2020-07-24 00:22:33Z gshapiro $')
OSTYPE(freebsd5)
FEATURE(access_db, `hash -o -T<TMPF> /etc/mail/access')
FEATURE(mailertable, hash -o /etc/mail/mailertable)
FEATURE(virtusertable, hash -o /etc/mail/virtusertable)
DOMAIN(generic)
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Name=IPv4, Family=inet')
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Name=IPv6, Family=inet6, Modifiers=O')
MASQUERADE_AS(`freebsd.mydomain.com)
FEATURE(`masquerade_envelope')
define(`SMART_HOST', `smtp.mydomain.com')
MAILER(local)
MAILER(smtp)

Then ran a few commands to build the config file using m4 and restart sendmail:

cd /etc/mail
cp sendmail.cf sendmail.cf.bak
m4 /usr/share/sendmail/cf/m4/cf.m4 custom.mc > sendmail.cf
touch local-host-names
/etc/rc.d/sendmail restart

Since I’m sending the e-mails via Python, I used this test script:

import smtplib

subject = "Test"
sender = "me@freebsd.mydomain.com"
recipient = "me@gmail.com"
smtp_host = "127.0.0.1"

message = f"From: {sender}\nTo: {recipient}\nSubject: {subject}\n\n"

try:
     server = smtplib.SMTP(smtp_host, port=25)
     server.ehlo()
     server.sendmail(sender, recipient, message)
     server.quit()
except Exception as e:
     quit(e)

Installing Terraform on FreeBSD

J5Leave a comment

I was pleased to recently discover that Terraform is in the FreeBSD packages. To install, simply do this:

pkg install terraform

As of February 2022, the latest version is 1.0.11. To run 1.1.6, first remove the package:

pkg remove terraform

Then download the most recent version and copy the binary to /usr/local/bin. Should be good to go:

% terraform version
Terraform v1.1.6
on freebsd_amd64

% terraform init

Initializing the backend...

Initializing provider plugins...
- Finding latest version of hashicorp/aws...
- Installing hashicorp/aws v4.2.0...
- Installed hashicorp/aws v4.2.0 (signed by HashiCorp)

Terraform has been successfully initialized!

Hopefully they’ll update to 1.1 soon. Today I learned about the nullable option for variables, and it’s a very useful option when working with parent/child modules.

Clearing out /var/spool/clientmqueue in FreeBSD

J5Leave a comment

My FreeBSD VM with its 10GB virtual hard disk ran out of space today. The primary culprit was /var/spool/clientmqueue consuming nearly 3GB of space:

# du -d 1 /var/spool/
8	/var/spool/output
4	/var/spool/opielocks
2955904	/var/spool/clientmqueue
4	/var/spool/dma
4	/var/spool/lpd
4	/var/spool/lock
4	/var/spool/mqueue
2955936	/var/spool/

But when trying to just delete the files, I got “argument list too long”:

# rm -f /var/spool/clientmqueue/*
/bin/rm: Argument list too long.

In the Google search I learned something interesting: find has a -delete option. This worked well:

# find /var/spool/clientmqueue -name '*' -delete