GCS Tech, Inc.

12 E. 4^th St.

Spencer, IA 51301

712-262-6974

Date: Nov.22, 2019

1. Buffalo Terastation enable SSH for adding the Check_MK agent

I wanted to add the Check_MK agent to a Buffalo Terastation TS3410R and I found there is no way to enable SSH on the unit. Everything on the web that I find is for older units and the use of ACP Commander will no longer enable SSH, but it does come in handy for this fix. Here is how I enabled SSH and then installed the Check_MK agent.

Standard Warning: Following these instructions may void your warranty with Buffalo and could cause the unit to become unusable. You follow these directions at your own risk. Do not blame me if you cause issues.

Log into the Terastation

In the web interface go to File Sharing

Enable SFTP

Enable rsync and then click the gear icon

Put your admin password in the blank and click to enable rsync over SSH

Click OK to save.

This enables SSH on the unit but we still can’t log in.

I used the ACP Commander from https://gry.ch/Java/styled. I downloaded the EXE for Microsoft Windows as I have an older box that I keep with Java 6.x running on it just for such occasions. The EXE works fine on it.

Open ACP Commander it will find the IP address and port for your Terastation. Put in the admin password and type the following in the Command: box.

sed -i ‘s/rbash/bash/g’ /etc/passwd

Click Go!

This changes the admin user from a restricted bash shell to a regular bash shell.

Now I could SSH into the Terastation as admin

Then I had no sudo privileges so the account was extremely limited on what it could do.

So in ACP Commander I put

usermod -a -G sudo admin

In the Command: box and clicked Go! This adds the admin user to the sudo group.

Now I could log via SSH as admin and run sudo commands.

I rebooted the unit to see if it was going to undo anything I had done so far. When it came up I could still SSH in as admin and run sudo.

I used

sudo passwd root

And changed the root password to something that I knew.

To be able to su up from admin to root we need to edit the /etc/pam.d/su file and comment out the line that reads

auth required pam_wheel.so use_uid

Now we can su to root with the following

/bin/su

Time to fix the $PATH of the user admin

sudo /bin/vi /home/.bash_profile

Change it to look like this

Export PATH=”/home/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/sbin”

Save the file

Now to give admin a true home directory

su to root

/bin/su

Now we run vipw to edit the password file and change the admin line to:

admin:x:707:707::/home/admin:/bin/bash

save the file and issue the following commands

mkdir /home/admin

cp /home/.bash_profile /home/admin/

chown -R admin:admin /home/admin

Log out and back in as admin and we will have a normal user that can use sudo and su to run root commands.

On to Check_MK agent installation

Copy the check_mk_agent.linux file from your Check_MK server it will be under

/opt/omd/sites/<site name>/share/check_mk/agents

to the Terastation. I used scp from the Terastation to the box that had the file. I placed the file in the /usr/local/bin directory. Then

mv /usr/local/bin/check_mk_agent.linux /usr/local/bin/check_mk_agent

chmod 775 /usr/local/bin/check_mk_agent

vi /etc/services

do a /6446 enter to search for 6446 and take you to that line. Add a line directly under it with the following

check_mk 6556/tcp

And save the file.

vi /etc/inetd.conf

And add the line

check_mk stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/bin/check_mk_agent check_mk_agent

and save the file.

/etc/init.d/inetd.sh restart

Now from another box or the Check_MK server you can issue

telnet <Terastation IP address> 6556

and you will get the agent output, and you can add the Terastation to Check_MK. I enabled SNMP on the Terastation through the web interface and ran both the Agent and SNMP queries from Check_MK. You will be able to monitor most aspects of the Terastation, included the RAID health which it what I was originally looking for.

Did the first firmware upgrade today and all of the user information stayed intact. I could log in via SSH and su up to root. I had to redo the complete Check_MK agent installation above but that was it. (04-21-20)