Telegram Servermanager

Description

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This project gives you the possibility to run shell commands on a linux host from a telegram bot.
Functions:

• /run: run shell commands
• /status: check status of a service
• /wake: wake up clients in your network with WakeOnLan
• Choose between whitelist or blacklist for the commands you want to run. You can add commands to the list in the setup.
• Logging: check the bot_activity.log to see, if someone is trying something evil.

Use this bot carefully! Dont expose dangerous commands to it.

Examples

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/run:

/wake (WakeOnLan):

whitelist:

Logging:

Tested with:

• Debian 12 Server
• Python3: python-telegram-bot==21.10, cryptography==44.0.1
• Telegram

Getting Started

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Dependencies

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• Linux server with root shell access
• Python3 installed on the server
• Telegram bot

Installing

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Telegram:

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Get a Telegram bot token:

• You need a telegram bot. To do this, send the command /newbot to BotFather. Safely secure your token.
• Add the used commands to your bot with /setcommands:
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  run - run a command on your server
  wake - wake a client up with WakeOnLan
  status - get status of a service
  

Get your Telegram user_id:

• Send the message /start to userinfobot to get your user id. Safely secure your user_id.

On your linux server:

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• Security notice: Create a new user with low privileges to run the bot (Example: “tgbot”).
  You can run it as root, but i highly recommend to use a low privilege user!
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  sudo adduser tgbot
  

• Install dependencies:
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  # Debian/Ubuntu
  sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3-venv wakeonlan
  

• Clone the repository, create directory for log and change permissions for your low privilege user
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  git clone https://github.com/thetorminal/telegram-servermanager.git
  # give your new user permission to the scripts and login as tgbot
  chown -R tgbot:tgbot telegram-servermanager && su - tgbot
  cd telegram-servermanager
  

• Create a new python3 venv and activate it
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  mkdir venv
  python3 -m venv venv
  source venv/bin/activate
  

• Install the python3 requirements
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  pip install -r requirements.txt
  

• Run setup.py to start the setup. You will get asked for your bot-token and your user_id.
  Choose, if you want to use the blacklist and add more commands to it.
  Select clients, that can get waked up with WakeOnLan and services, which can be status checked.
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  python3 setup.py  
  

• After the setup has finished, you can start the bot with telegram_servermanager.py
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  python3 telegram_servermanager.py  
  

Telegram bot:

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• After starting telegram_servermanager.py your bot should say Welcome! Use /run <command> to execute a shell command on your server.
• Now you can start running commands with /run, use WakeOnLan with /wake and check the status of your configured services with /status!

Logging:

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• You can view your log with tail -f bot_activity.log in the telegram-servermanger directory.

Run the servermanger as a service

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Create the file /etc/systemd/system/tg-servermanager.service with following input. Replace /path/to with your path, where the directory telegram_servermanager is placed.

[Unit]
Description=Telegram Servermanager
After=network.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/path/to/telegram-servermanager/venv/bin/python /path/to/telegram-servermanager/telegram_servermanager.py
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/telegram-servermanager/
Restart=always
User=tgbot
Group=tgbot
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Now you can use the service via systemctl like any other!

systemctl start tg-servermanager.service

Troubleshooting

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If you have any problems, please check:

• if your telegram bot token and user_id is correct
• ensure that the permissions on the scripts are correct
• run the setup.py file again
• check the log-file in your telegram-servermanager directory (bot_activity.log)

To-Do

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• security: get a more secure solution to run sudo commands, maybe with a wrapper script with contolled permissions
• let user add own custom commands for the bot in the setup to the whitelist
• add commands to manage docker containers?

Acknowledgments

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• Github - xgaia/serverbot for inspiration
• Reddit: the r/selfhosted community
• ChatGPT for helping me