Raspberry Pi 2 USB Adapter Speed Test

This is a speed test of a couple USB adapters on my Raspberry Pi Model B+ V1.2 that I plan on using for an upcoming project.

TLDR here. Results in MB/s.

Drive	Average	Test1	Test2	Test3	Test4
Mini Flash USB	4.35	3.4	4.0	4.6	5.4
Black Micro SD Adapter	7.05	7.2	6.9	7.0	7.1
White Micro SD Adapter	8.28	9.8	9.5	8.1	5.7
On-Board	18.9	18.4	18.7	19.2	19.3

• I used dd for a basic but effective test of writing to the drives.
  dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/mounted/usb/dd-test.img bs=100M count=1 oflag=dsync
• I also realize that 100M is a bit smaller than I should have tested but found very similar results with 1G and 100M was faster :)
• The really crazy part is how much faster the adapters are going to the Micro SD card.  I really thought the regular USB drive would have been faster.
• For a final test, I used the same Micro SD card for the O.S. in the on-board slot.  Not surprisingly it was over twice as fast.
• The purpose of this post is so I can reference it in the future as well as make note of how I might want to group these styles of drives in the future.
• NOTE:  I've experienced SOME sustained write issues with one of the adapters.  It was a long time ago and I was in the middle of swapping stuff around so I don't recall which had the issue.  My guess is that the chip warms up a bit and then doesn't play nice.  Just keep that in mind for deciding how you want to proceed with your setup.

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• Regular USB

This drive is the PNY 256GB Elite-X Fit USB 3.1 Flash Drive - 200MB/s

Here is the item description:

- Elite-X Fit USB 3.1 Gen 1 Flash Drive, backwards compatible with USB 2.0 (USB 3.1 Gen 1 offers identical performance as USB 3.0, but under a new name)

- Amazing performance with read speeds up to 200MB/s, ideal for large files and demanding applications

- Transfer speeds up to 30 times faster than standard PNY USB 2.0 Flash Drives

- A compact, plug-and-stay flash drive that’s ideal for adding more storage to computers, in-car stereos, game consoles, and more

- Micro-sized, long stay, low profile design can remain connected to host devices or maximum convenience. No need to insert and remove it after each use

Compatible with most PC and Mac laptop and desktop computers, in-car stereos, game consoles, printers, TV’s, and more

 

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• Micro SD Cards

This same card is used in both of the adapters below.

SanDisk 256GB Extreme microSDXC UHS-I Memory Card with Adapter - Up to 190MB/s, C10, U3, V30, 4K, 5K, A2, Micro SD Card - SDSQXAV-256G-GN6MA

- Up to 190MB/s powered by SanDisk QuickFlow Technology (Up to 190MB/s read speeds, engineered with proprietary technology to reach speeds beyond UHS-I 104MB/s, requires compatible devices capable of reaching such speeds. Based on internal testing; performance may be lower depending upon host device interface, usage conditions and other factors. 1MB=1,000,000 bytes. SanDisk QuickFlow Technology is only available for 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 400GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities. 1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes and 1TB=1,000,000,000,000 bytes. Actual user storage less.)

Pair with the SanDisk Professional PRO-READER SD and microSD to achieve maximum speeds (sold separately), Compatible with microSDHC, microSDXC, microSDHC UHS-I, and microSDXC UHS-I supporting host devices

- Up to 130MB/s write speeds for fast shooting (Based on internal testing; performance may be lower depending upon host device interface, usage conditions and other factors. 1MB=1,000,000 bytes.)

- 4K and 5K UHD-ready with UHS Speed Class 3 (U3) and Video Speed Class 30 (V30) (Compatible device required. Full HD (1920x1080), 4K UHD (3840 x 2160), and 5K UHD (5120 X 2880) support may vary based upon host device, file attributes and other factors. See HD page on SanDisk site. UHS Speed Class 3 (U3) designates a performance option designed to support real-time video recording with UHS-enabled host devices. Video Speed Class 30 (V30), sustained video capture rate of 30MB/s, designates a performance option designed to support real-time video recording with UHS-enabled host devices. See the SD Association’s official website.)

- Rated A2 for faster loading and in-app performance (A2 performance is 4000 read IOPS, 2000 write IOPS. Results may vary based on host device, app type and other factors)

 

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• Black Adapter

This was advertised as a generic "Memory Card Reader Adapter High Speed USB 2.0 Reader for Micro SD SDHC SDXC Z9Y6".  

Here is the item description:

SuperSpeed USB 2.0 TF Card Reader Adapter

Quantity: 1 piece

USB 2.0 interface.

Fast transfer rates for reliable copy/download/backup.

No additional driver installation is required.

Powered by USB port, no additional power supply required.

Card Compatibility: for Micro SD SDXC/TF card

Compatible with Windows ME, 2000, XP, Vista, WIN 7 and OS with USB interface.

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• White Adapter

This is the Micro SD Card to USB Adapter, TF Card Reader with Mini Size

Here is the item description:

The Micro SD/TF card slot adopts a hidden design and is embedded in the USB plug, which can minimize the volume and protect the memory card at the same time.

Stable Work: The shell is made of aluminum alloy, which has a longer service life. The new chip and circuit design can minimize heat generation and ensure the stability and reliability of data transmission.

Portable: Ultra-light and ultra-small, the lanyard hole design can be easily connected with keychains or electronic devices, preventing loss and portability.

Scope of Application: Applicable to all USB 2.0 standard ports, providing 480Mbps read and write speed, compatible with USB 3.0 ports.

Compatible Devices: Compatible with all mainstream operating system USB port, such as TV, portable audio, notebook, computer, car system, etc.

 

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• Final thoughts

We're working with a USB 2.0 port which has a potential max of 60MB/s.  That's much faster than the speeds I'm seeing.  In real world testing we rarely see the max speed of a connection though.  Even if we took half the potential max of USB 2.0 we're not getting close to potential speeds.  At this point the Raspberry Pi 2 is aging hardware and we cannot expect to have datacenter/server grade performance.  What this does do for me is provide a baseline that I can use to identify issue hardware.  I plan on using a few Pi's for some projects and I'll be able to have a baseline for identifying issue drives in the future.

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Install Zabbix 2.4.6 on a Raspberry Pi 2

First note that the original instructions I followed to get this going were written in 2015 when MySQL 5.5 or 5.7 was the latest. My attempt is in 2024 and MySQL 8 is what I'm working with. I'm putting this as the first thing you read because I am able to get Zabbix installed BUT it's not compatible with MySQL 8. Thus nothing really works after you log into the Zabbix interface. Supposedly the person at https://blog.fawcs.info/2015/09/zabbix-onf-raspberry-pi-2/ was able to get MySQL 5 for ARM processors installed but I'm having a hard time figuring out if ARM was supported back then. Something is weird. Still, I'm documenting my process to get it installed. If you know of how to get MySQL 5 instead of 8 during the install, please let me know.

Now, this is basically a dump of my notes during the install.  Don't expect it to be a line by line walkthrough of exactly what you need to do/change/type/etc.

# ##########################

# This is the basic information of my server

# ##########################

# uname -a

# Linux Pi-Zabbix 5.4.0-1069-raspi #79-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Thu Aug 18 18:18:46 UTC 2022 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

# cat /etc/*elea*

# DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu

# DISTRIB_RELEASE=20.04

# DISTRIB_CODENAME=focal

# DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS"

# NAME="Ubuntu"

# VERSION="20.04.6 LTS (Focal Fossa)"

# ID=ubuntu

# ID_LIKE=debian

# PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS"

# VERSION_ID="20.04"

# VERSION_CODENAME=focal

# UBUNTU_CODENAME=focal

# ##########################

# NOTE; it's possible locations change with versions (very likely!) so /etc/php/7.4/ and similiar references may not be the same as your system in the future!

# ##########################

# Download the installation software from:

# http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/zabbix/ZABBIX%20Latest%20Stable/2.4.6/zabbix-2.4.6.tar.gz

# Transfer the gz file to the Raspberry Pi 2 putting it in the /opt folder.

# Become root or use sudo in front of each of these commands

sudo su

groupadd zabbix

useradd -g zabbix zabbix

passwd zabbix

# Install dependencies

apt-get install make apache2 libapache2-mod-php php-mysql mysql-server mysql-common libiksemel-dev libiksemel-utils libxml2-dev libxml2-utils libxml2 snmp libsnmp-dev libsnmp-perl libssh2-1-dev libssh2-1 libcurl4 libghc-curl-dev libmysql++-dev php-gd php-bcmath php-mbstring php-xml -y

# The mysql-utilities package may be needed but is not available natively (I'll see about coming back to this)

# Verify mysql is running

service mysql status

# Verify you are in the zabbix installation directory (example: /opt/zabbix-2.4.6)

# Run the installation/configure of Zabbix

./configure --enable-server --enable-agent --with-mysql --with-libxml2 --with-net-snmp --with-ssh2 --with-libcurl

# --with-jabber was removed as it created an error during the configure.  It's optional as it's a feature of Zabbix that allows users to send notifications via Jabber.

# Complete the install; note there could be many warnings about "<sys/sysctl.h> header" which are ok to ignore.

# Warning: This could take a very long time.

make install

# Copy init scripts

cp /opt/zabbix-2.4.6/misc/init.d/debian/* /etc/init.d/

# Setup the web pages

mkdir /var/www/zabbix/

cp -r /opt/zabbix-2.4.6/frontends/php/* /var/www/zabbix/

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/zabbix/

# Create the database

# Note; the IDENTIFIED BY in single quotes below is the password.

mysql -uroot -p

create database zabbix character set utf8 collate utf8_bin;

CREATE USER 'zabbix'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'zabbix';

grant all privileges on zabbix.* to zabbix@localhost;

set global log_bin_trust_function_creators = 1;

quit;

# Import the SQL data for the database

# Note; this utilizes the default password from above

# Warning: This could take a very long time.

mysql -uzabbix -pzabbix zabbix < /opt/zabbix-2.4.6/database/mysql/schema.sql

mysql -uzabbix -pzabbix zabbix < /opt/zabbix-2.4.6/database/mysql/images.sql

mysql -uzabbix -pzabbix zabbix < /opt/zabbix-2.4.6/database/mysql/data.sql

# Verify database installation

mysql

show databases;

#+--------------------+

#| Database           |

#+--------------------+

#| information_schema |

#| mysql              |

#| performance_schema |

#| sys                |

#| zabbix             |

#+--------------------+

use zabbix;

show tables;

select * from users;

quit;

# Prepare file system folders

mkdir -p /var/log/zabbix

chown -R zabbix:zabbix /var/log/zabbix/

mkdir -p /var/zabbix/alertscripts

mkdir -p /var/zabbix/externalscripts

chown -R zabbix:zabbix /var/zabbix/

mkdir /var/www/html/zabbix

cd ~/zabbix-2.4.6/frontends/php

cp -a . /var/www/html/zabbix/

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/zabbix

chmod +x /var/www/html/zabbix/conf/

# Adjust the config file to match below lines (change password if different than default)

nano /usr/local/etc/zabbix_server.conf

LogFile=/var/log/zabbix/zabbix_server.log

DBUser=zabbix

DBPassword=zabbix

AlertScriptsPath=/var/zabbix/alertscripts

ExternalScripts=/var/zabbix/externalscripts

# Adjust the php settings

nano /etc/php/7.4/apache2/php.ini

post_max_size = 16M

max_execution_time = 300

max_input_time = 300

date.timezone = 

# Bypass a version check as the newer PHP versions take care of this issue but the UI errors

nano /var/www/html/zabbix/include/classes/setup/CFrontendSetup.php

# #################

# Original Code:

// check for deprecated PHP 5.6.0 option 'always_populate_raw_post_data'

if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '[B]5.6[/B]', '>=')) {

         $result[] = $this->checkPhpAlwaysPopulateRawPostData();

# After making the change:

// check for deprecated PHP 5.6.0 option 'always_populate_raw_post_data'

if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '[B]7.5[/B]', '>=')) {

         $result[] = $this->checkPhpAlwaysPopulateRawPostData();

# ##################

nano /var/www/html/zabbix/include/func.inc.php

# ##################

# Original Code:

function str2mem($val) {

        $val = trim($val);

        $last = strtolower(substr($val, -1));

        switch ($last) {

                case 'g':

                        $val *= 1024;

                        /* falls through */

                case 'm':

                        $val *= 1024;

                        /* falls through */

                case 'k':

                        $val *= 1024;

        }

        return $val;

}

# After making the change:

function str2mem($val) {

        $val = trim($val);

        $last = strtolower(substr($val, -1));

        $val = substr_replace($val, "", -1);

        switch ($last) {

                case 'g':

                        $val *= $val * 1024;

                        /* falls through */

                case 'm':

                        $val *= $val * 1024;

                        /* falls through */

                case 'k':

                        $val *= $val * 1024;

        }

        return $val;

}

# ##################

# ##########################

# Create startup file for the server

# Note; this will get it going on boot but needs improved for functioning with other commands.

# ##########################

nano /etc/systemd/system/zabbix-server.service

[Unit]

Description=zabbix-server

[Service]

Type=forking

ExecStart=/etc/init.d/zabbix-server start

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

# Create startup file for the agent

# Note; this will get it going on boot but needs improved for functioning with other commands.

nano /etc/systemd/system/zabbix-agent.service

[Unit]

Description=zabbix-agent

[Service]

Type=forking

ExecStart=/etc/init.d/zabbix-agent start

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

# Set permissions on the startup files

chmod 644 /etc/systemd/system/zabbix-*

# Temporarily move the control scripts

mv /etc/init.d/zabbix-* /.

# Setup the services

systemctl daemon-reload

systemctl enable zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2

# Move files back to their original location

mv /zabbix-* /etc/init.d/.

systemctl restart zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2

# Open Zabbix UI web page

# The default URL for Zabbix UI when using Apache web server is http://host/zabbix

# The default user/password is Admin/zabbix

# ##########################

# This is where I played around with uninstalling MySQL 8 and trying to get 5.7

# It wouldn't pull 5.7 due to no ARM support

# ##########################

sudo systemctl stop mysql

sudo apt autoremove

sudo apt autoclean

wget https://dev.mysql.com/get/mysql-apt-config_0.8.12-1_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i mysql-apt-config_0.8.12-1_all.deb

In the prompt, choose Ubuntu Bionic and click Ok

The next prompt shows MySQL 8.0 chosen by default. Choose the first option and click OK

In the next prompt, select MySQL 5.7 server and click OK.

The next prompt selects MySQL5.7 by default. Choose the last otpion Ok and click OK

gpg --keyserver repo.mysql.com --recv-keys B7B3B788A8D3785C

gpg --export --armor B7B3B788A8D3785C | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt-get update 

sudo apt-cache policy mysql-server

Security+ Topic - Penetration Testing Authorization

At some point in an IT administrators career they do a little dabbling in penetration testing of systems that they have access to. Sometimes these tests start as a simple check of vulnerabilities on their own system and sometimes it ends up being a test against the companies production servers simply because they are curious. What most of these casual or introductory penetration testers do not take into account, is that some of those test could cause a server to stop responding. If the administrator is working against a lab environment or a couple of servers that are not in production, this is usually not a big deal. A simple reboot and then things are back up and running. Things get a bit messier when that same thing happens against the production environment. The owners of a company do not usually take kindly to when their production servers go offline. Let's talk about using a test lab for a moment. Generally speaking a company will have enough resources for an IT administrator to setup a test lab. Some will have a fully virtualized environment that the administrator can simply spin up a few virtual machines into a separate VLAN to do their testing. On the other end of the spectrum is a tight budget IT department with scrutinized purchases. No matter where you are on the spectrum, there is still room for making sure that your penetration testing is not initially on production systems. The reason for these environments is pre-planning in regards to getting authorization for penetration testing on production systems. If you were to go to your management with an idea of penetration testing your production environment and they asked you what the impact would be, the only realistic answer would be that you do not know. Management wouldn’t take too kindly to not knowing if their servers were to go down and because you were the one to take them offline, you are the one getting fired. Doing testing within a lab environment gives you the pushing power for completing tests in a production environment. Company implementations of their server setup are unique and the tests in your lab environment must match that environment as close as possible. After the tests have been completed in the lab environment with proof of what may or may not happen, then you can go to management with a plan for the production environment. Sometimes you may find that a certain vulnerability test identifies an issue in the lab environment and a simple patch corrects the issue. After applying the patch in the lab and verifying functionality, it can then be pushed to the production environment. Once this is completed a plan can be presented to management for a specific vulnerability test in which you confirm the patch is in place and you would like to confirm that the correction is working properly. A lot of what this boils down to is making sure you have permission. Without permission, when something goes wrong it is you who takes the brunt of management. With an outlined plan for what you would like to do and how it is going to be implemented, management can sign off on the process which frees you from repercussions if something happens. Making sure to have all your documentation in place and a plan for what is happening is key to correct authorization.