Mailing List Archive

> On 11 Jun 2020, at 9:52 am, George Bingham <georgeb1962@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello All,
>
> I have recently returned to mythtv after a few years! I've successfully setup a new machine as a FE/BE and installed mythweb.
>
> Everything works, but I am thinking that moving some of my video library to the machine would be easier via scp and figured I'd use the mythtv userid so I don't have to mess with ownership and permissions for the files, but I don't know what the mythtv user password is, and figure I could change it, but then I wondered if I'd be breaking things if I did that.
>
> I can't think of anything that uses the mythtv password... but not sure about that which I don't know, and / or can't remember.... Is the mythtv user password used for anything?? Would it be safe for me to change it?? Anyway to find out what it is? How was it set in the first place?
>
> If it won't blow my installation up or if it only cause something that'd be easy to fix, I'd like to go ahead and reset it to something that I can remember. It would make moving things about a bit easier.

George the ubuntu folk have done what IMHO is stupid.
So I put things right

[sandypit] /home/jam [501]% cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 20.04 LTS"
VERSION_ID="20.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=focal
UBUNTU_CODENAME=focal

[sandypit] /home/jam [502]% mysql -umythtv -pmythtv mythconverg
mysql: [Warning] Using a password on the command line interface can be insecure.
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A

Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 903
Server version: 8.0.20-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 (Ubuntu)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2020, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql>

I also do not use user mythtv.

[sandypit] /home/jam [506]% ll /store |grep Jul
-rw-rw-rw- 1 jam users 12592 Jul 7 2019 1001_20190526093200.ts.-1.100x56.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 jam users 5563040884 Jul 13 2019 1007_20190712123000.ts
-rw-rw-rw- 1 jam users 320489 Jul 13 2019 1007_20190712123000.ts.png
-rw-rw-rw- 1 jam users 10995 Jul 7 2019 1009_20190413110100.ts.-1.100x56.png
-rw-rw-rw- 1 jam users 10060 Jul 7 2019 1009_20190614123200.ts.-1.100x56.png
-rw-rw-rw- 1 jam users 11532 Jul 7 2019 1011_20190617130100.ts.-1.100x56.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 jam users 2064763204 Jul 12 2019 1020_20190712030100.ts
…

I cannot imagine any reason for these to cause issues and some months of usage has uncovered none

James
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On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 20:52:12 -0500, you wrote:

>Hello All,
>
>I have recently returned to mythtv after a few years! I've successfully
>setup a new machine as a FE/BE and installed mythweb.
>
>Everything works, but I am thinking that moving some of my video library to
>the machine would be easier via scp and figured I'd use the mythtv userid
>so I don't have to mess with ownership and permissions for the files, but I
>don't know what the mythtv user password is, and figure I could change it,
>but then I wondered if I'd be breaking things if I did that.
>
>I can't think of anything that uses the mythtv password... but not sure
>about that which I don't know, and / or can't remember.... Is the mythtv
>user password used for anything?? Would it be safe for me to change it??
> Anyway to find out what it is? How was it set in the first place?
>
>If it won't blow my installation up or if it only cause something that'd be
>easy to fix, I'd like to go ahead and reset it to something that I can
>remember. It would make moving things about a bit easier.
>
>Thanks for your advice!
>
>
>-- George

Presuming you are talking about an Ubuntu based system, then as
installed the mythtv user does not have a password. It is a fairly
common way of installing users that are used to run software and are
not real logins. Software that runs as mythtv (eg mythbackend) gets
started by systemd which runs as root and can do anything. So systemd
changes the user to be mythtv when it runs mythbackend, and it does
not need a password to do that.

The normal way for you to login as the mythtv user is to do the same
trick - use the authority of root to do anything:

sudo su -l mythtv

But you can just add a password if you want to:

sudo passwd mythtv

The mythtv user does normally have a database password for access to
the mythconverg database. But that is completely separate from a user
password.

By default, the root user in Ubuntu is not given a password either,
and you can add one if you want to:

sudo passwd

There are some security implications of doing that, but I always do it
shortly after I install a new system. I also install SSH and allow
root logins, but I only allow connections to the SSH port from within
the secure part of my home network, by way of the firewall rules in my
router.
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> On 11 Jun 2020, at 11:46 am, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz> wrote:

[snip]
> There are some security implications of doing that, but I always do it
> shortly after I install a new system. I also install SSH and allow
> root logins, but I only allow connections to the SSH port from within
> the secure part of my home network, by way of the firewall rules in my
> router.

Which is another of my pet peeves

Presumably your machine has a private address, say 192.168.x.y
now RFCs prevent a router on the internet fowarding private addresses
so every router from bad-guys to you is broken

Next unless you allow port forwarding bad-guys make it to your router, how do they get from there to your machine?

Assume they hijack some service out. Usually one allows RELATED, ESTABLISHED back so your firewall is of no help.

Firewall rules on the router prevent a rouge winders machine sprouting to the world, but in general have no value (other than making you feel good)

So effectivly your, and my mythtv machine is a castle surrounded by a deep mout
James
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On Thu, 11 Jun 2020 12:13:37 +0800, you wrote:

>
>
>> On 11 Jun 2020, at 11:46 am, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
>[snip]
>> There are some security implications of doing that, but I always do it
>> shortly after I install a new system. I also install SSH and allow
>> root logins, but I only allow connections to the SSH port from within
>> the secure part of my home network, by way of the firewall rules in my
>> router.
>
>Which is another of my pet peeves
>
>Presumably your machine has a private address, say 192.168.x.y
>now RFCs prevent a router on the internet fowarding private addresses
>so every router from bad-guys to you is broken
>
>Next unless you allow port forwarding bad-guys make it to your router, how do they get from there to your machine?
>
>Assume they hijack some service out. Usually one allows RELATED, ESTABLISHED back so your firewall is of no help.
>
>Firewall rules on the router prevent a rouge winders machine sprouting to the world, but in general have no value (other than making you feel good)
>
>So effectivly your, and my mythtv machine is a castle surrounded by a deep mout
>James

The bad guys usually get in other than through your router. For
example, getting you to click on malware in an email. After that,
they are on the inside of a (usually Windows) PC on the inside of your
network. So then if the SSH port is open on your Linux boxes, they
can try to attack that from the Windows PC. There is reason behind
not having root logins enabled and not installing SSH by default.
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George Bingham <georgeb1962@gmail.com> wrote:

> Everything works, but I am thinking that moving some of my video library to the machine would be easier via scp and figured I'd use the mythtv userid so I don't have to mess with ownership and permissions for the files, but I don't know what the mythtv user password is, and figure I could change it, but then I wondered if I'd be breaking things if I did that.
>
> I can't think of anything that uses the mythtv password... but not sure about that which I don't know, and / or can't remember.... Is the mythtv user password used for anything?? Would it be safe for me to change it?? Anyway to find out what it is? How was it set in the first place?

I would recommend looking up how to use keys (via authorized_keys) for passwordless logins - it makes things a lot easier.

Simon

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