Script collection

These are just a few scripts which may seem worth retaining.

Unless where indicated otherwise, everything is under my copyright, licensed under GPLv3.

align_check

A shell script to check partition alignment on a given partitioned block device (such as /dev/sda).

Requires sudo, parted

check_mirrors_headers_at_url

A shell script to determine mirror servers the hostname in a given URL resolves to and print select HTTP response header lines for each.

Requires dig

check_mirrors_speed_at_url

A shell script to determine mirror servers the hostname in a given URL resolves to and test download speeds for the given URL on each mirror.

Requires dig

cve_states

A shell script to report whether a given list of CVE IDs need yet to be handled (for the given Ubuntu release codename) by the Ubuntu security team. Crude and likely broken, don't rely on it.

eol

A shell script to examine the remaining support lifetime of the current Ubuntu ionstallation.

foreign_packages

On Ubuntu and (similarily) Debian systems, some events¹ may lead to a situation where packages are installed but in an untracked state, without an upgrade path. These can be orphaned packages (in the way deborphan defines them) but also package versions which are not from known sources, which (not just) I call 'foreign packages'. Your system may be unaware of this situation, and thus may not inform you about this issue.

As a result, systems may have packages and (moreover) package versions installed which have no upgrade path, lack security support, and therefore pose a security risk.

foreign_packages uses the apt-show-versions utility to try to identify such packages. It is therefore a complementary tool to other utilities such as:

• apt-get autoremove (consider adding --purge)
• deborphan
• ubuntu-support-status --show-unsupported (Ubuntu only)
• debsecan (Debian only)

Installation:

sudo /bin/true

sudo apt update && \
sudo apt install -y apt-show-versions && \
wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tomreyn/scripts/master/foreign_packages
# For security reasons, you should now review the script source code, running:
#   less foreign_packages
# Finally, make it runnable:
chmod +x foreign_packages

Running (will take some time to compute, can be minutes on slow systems):

sudo ./foreign_packages

Deinstallation:

rm ./foreign_packages
sudo apt purge -qq apt-show-versions

---

¹ These events are:

• upon removal of a PPA or third party APT source, packages installed from there are not removed or downgraded to versions Ubuntu supports
• instead of from an APT repository (the recommended way), packages were installed directly from a package file (.deb) using e.g. 'dpkg --install /path/to/package.deb' or 'apt(-get) install /path/to/package.deb'
• packages which were installed from official sources before a release upgrade may have been removed (or renamed) in the newer release and may remain installed in their old state (both Ubuntu and Debia have mechanisms in place which are meant to prevent this from occurring, but they may not always succeed)

grub_menuentry_ids

If you need to boot into a specific kernel image using grub-set-default (to permanently set the menu entry to boot) or grub-reboot (to reboot into a given menu entry instantly), specifying the menu entry to boot can turn out to be difficult due to the use of submenus. This script helps, listing both the friendly names (as provided on the Grub menu) and their corresponding menu IDs, which can be passed to either command.

This is only tested on Ubuntu.

ips_for_fqdn

A shell script to list information on a given fully qualified domain name, such as its authoritative nameservers and IP addresses it resolves to.

rescan_scsi

(Re-)scan the entire SCSI bus to detect device changes. Can be useful to warm-plug storage devices.

ubuntu_archivemirrors_https

A simplistic (no error handling) script to determine Ubuntu archive mirrors supporting HTTPS

ubuntu_cdmirrors_https

A simplistic (no error handling) script to determine Ubuntu CD (ISO/release) mirrors supporting HTTPS

wget_kernel_mainline.sh

A shell script for Ubuntu to download .deb packaged mainline kernel images. This is written (+copyright) by TJ, thanks a lot for sharing! Source: http://iam.tj/projects/ubuntu/wget_kernel_mainline.sh

whoopsie_reports

A shell script for Ubuntu to load reports your system submitted to errors.ubuntu.com in a web browser.

Contact

You can contact me by e-mail: tomreyn at megaglest d0t org