DIY - Setting up the KaosCube

1. Hardware

• Components
• Installing the OS

2. Software

• Upgrade the OS
• Setting up the Access Point
• Installing firmware of the wifi dongle
• Create network connection with new wifi dongle
• Installing the KaosCube Interface

3. Setting up functions of the KCInterface manually

• Setting up the Hidden Service

4. Features

• Installing 12d1:1f01 Huawei E353/E3131 LTE Usb Modem

Hardware

Components

• Orange Pi Zero
• MiniUsb2Usb Cable for power-supply
• An Ethernet !Crossover! Cable for ssh access
• An MicroSD 16 GB for the Installation of the OS
• MicroSD2Usb Reader to plug in the Laptop
• Linux Wifi Dongle
• Wifi Antenna
• A laptop, preferably with Linux installed

Installing the OS

Because Ubuntu is half proprietary, and there is a surveillance door for Amazon on the system, the KAOS Cube runs on ARMbian - Debian based.

First step is to partition the MicroSD

lsblk		# list devices see which /dev/sdX is usb

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb	# In my case, the usb is /dev/sdb

Command: d		# Inside fdisk: delete all partions

Command: n		# Inside fdisk: Create new Partion
        # Press enter until you are done
Command: w		# Write the changes

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1 # format the new partition to fat32

Get a buster image from https://www.armbian.com/download/ for the orange pi zero, as sshd is still running by default on the resulting machine

And, more importantly, as of my writing, the xradio does not work with Bullseye and Bookworm. Which means, the small on board wifi does not work.

Now copy binarywise the image to the partition

sudo dd bs=4M if=ArmbianBusterForOrangePiZero.img of=/dev/sdb

Thats it! The free system should be installed. Put the MicroSD into your OrangePi.

Now connect the cables. The Orange Pi will boot by supplying it with power.

Connect your computer with ethernet (crossover, special one) cable to the orange pi zero. The first boot takes a bit longer, up to 2 minutes.

Make sure, that not only the lights of the ethernet port on the orange pi zero have the lights on. But there is another small green light on the side of the micro usb power plug. This one has to be on. Sometimes, especially with the buster image, the startup does not work properly, and you will not see a connection on your Laptop, because the os did not start at all. Just replug the power if that is the case (no light on).

On the Armbian System, SSH on ethernet is enabled. We need to give the Pi an IP Adress now.

# Install a dhcp server, in my case it was Arch and dhcpd
sudo pacman -S dhcpd

Now we have to create a new local network. The easiest way is to go into your graphical network-manager. Select the ethernet connection to your Pi and go on settings.

In my case I went to IPv4 settings. Then I selected "Shared to other computers" Method. After this add a new Address:

Address 10.0.0.1	# The 10.0.0.1 Number is normally used for local 
            # networks.
Netmask 24		# You can also put in 255.255.255.0, which only 
            # says to the dhcp to give a certain range of 
            # adresses starting at 10.0.0.0
Gateway 10.0.0.1	# The Gateway is the adress of your laptop 
            # itself

Now you can run the command sudo arp -a

in your bash, after restarting the connection over ethernet to your Pi.

On your Orange Pi, the small green Light close to the mini usb port should be lighting. If the connection is established, you should see it blinking. If one or both are not the case, try to reinstall the ARMbian image, or zero the first part of the partition, maybe it was not booting

You will see an assigned IP Adress on your ethernet interface, on arch for me it was the standard one enp0s25

The IP was 10.0.0.254, so I could connect through ssh with my Orange Pi now, and start to set up the system.

ssh root@10.0.0.254

If everything worked, type in 1234 as the password and follow the instructions.

If not, check out https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/#how-to-prepare-a-sd-card

For example, you can learn there how to verify the hash of your download, to be sure nobody gave you a virus instead of an OS :)

Software

Upgrade the OS

In the newer versions of armbian, ssh is deactivated by default. To save time, we installed an armbian buster. Generally, it is important to keep your KaosCube up to date. That is why, after getting access to the Cube, the first thing is an upgrade to bullseye (which is debian stable at the time of this writing and has the latest debian-security updates inside)

sudo apt update

sudo apt dist-upgrade -y

Then change the apt configuration file

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

and change all words which are "buster" to "bullseye".

Except of the line regarding debian-security. There, you have to change "buster" to "bullseye-security".

Save (in nano that is strg+o) and exit nano (strg+x)

Then update with the new list and run the upgrade

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

During the upgrade, always choose ok or default :).

Then go to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/armbian.list and change to bullseye there too Then run again the update and upgrade.

Setting up the Access Point

On buster, the access point can be set up persistently with the commands:

nmcli con add type wifi ifname wlan0 mode ap con-name kaoscube ssid KaosCube ipv4.method shared
nmcli con modify kaoscube wifi-sec.key-mgmt wpa-psk
nmcli con modify kaoscube wifi-sec.psk "ThePasswordYouLike"
nmcli con up kaoscube

Installing firmware of the wifi dongle

First thing to do is updating the apt ressources

sudo apt update

Then install git

sudo apt install git

Install dkms

sudo apt install dkms

Install the newest headers

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-current-sunxi build-essential

When installing build-essential, you will be prompted whether to restart or not. Enter no automatic restart and then for cron and ssh enter ok. For the ssh config, I kept the old one. after the install, restart the system with

sudo reboot

Now download the firmware

git clone https://github.com/kelebek333/rtl8188fu

Now go to the folder rtl8188fu. Add, build and install it with dkms

sudo dkms add ./rtl8188fu
sudo dkms build rtl8188fu/1.0
sudo dkms install rtl8188fu/1.0
sudo cp ./rtl8188fu/firmware/rtl8188fufw.bin /lib/firmware/rtlwifi/

After all commands have run successfully, restart the system

sudo reboot

Create network connection with new wifi dongle

First look up with ifconfig for the interfaces, and which one is the one of the dongle

sudo ifconfig

there should be one called wlan0 or wlan1, which is the small one already on the orange pi zero.

In addition, there should be one with the name wlx00... something.

This one you should use with the following command:

nmcli device wifi connect 'FRITZ!Box 6430 Cable TL' password "98475637998946115486" ifname wlan0

Installing the KaosCube Interface

First add a new user, if you are still root:

adduser kaosuser

Then add the user to sudoers:

usermod -aG sudo kaosuser

Now change to user (still being root) and go to home directory

su kaosuser
cd

First clone the interface from git:

git clone https://code.basabuuka.org/alpcentaur/kc-interface.git

After that, install php (working version is 7.4, but newer ones should also work)

sudo apt install php

Also the interface needs the following libraries:

sudo apt install tor

Now go in the directory kc-interface and run

bash startserver.sh

You will have the interface running on localhost:666

To get the interface, connect to the ap kaoscube and enter the IP of its wifi interface with a double point and then 666.

Setting up functions of the KCInterface manually

Setting up the Hidden Service

First install Tor:

sudo apt-get install tor

Edit the torrc file:

sudo nano /etc/tor/torrc

Look for the line ############### This section is just for location-hidden services ###

under this line, enable (uncomment) HiddenServiceDir and HiddenServicePort

in our case,

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80
HiddenServicePort 22 127.0.0.1:22

After restarting tor with

sudo systemctl restart tor

your hidden service is running, and you can get its address under /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/ , or whatever name or path you wrote in the torrc.

Features

Installing 12d1:1f01 Huawei E353/E3131 LTE Usb Modem

First issue

lsusb

to check, if you are trying to install the right LTE usb dongle.

Being connected to the internet with your laptop, and having the shared internet connection being issued from your laptop, the kaoscube has internet too.

Then, install usb_modeswitch with the command

sudo apt install usb-modeswitch usb-modeswitch-data

and then switch to modem mode for the usb stick

sudo usb_modeswitch -v 12d1 -p 1f01 -M '55534243123456780000000000000a11062000000000000100000000000000'

After that, lsusb will show you that the usb modem is now recognized as a modem.

Now you can issue

ip a

and look for the new generated interface of the modem.

take it's IP address, in my case it was 192.168.8.100/24, and replace the last bit with a 1 (192.168.8.1). Put that IP address into the browser of your laptop.