Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Securing SSH using keys for authentication

This is a great tutorial on automating secure shell (SSH) sessions. Perfect for scripted remote backups using SCP and so on.

posted by John C @ 8:32 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

A clever way of helping others with UltraVNC and make some money too!

This is a clever way of helping others with UltraVNC and the possibility of making some money too! The problems that normally exist with trying to help friends etc with remote control apps like VNC is the fact that you need to poke holes through firewalls etc. This idea is better in that the hole is poked through the "helpers"firewall and the "helpee" makes the call (outgoing) to the helper machine.

Take a look here

posted by John C @ 10:06 PM 0 comments

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Remote controlling Windows Desktops with VNC

I've played a bit the last few days with VNC at work for remotely controlling some of the kiosks we plan to deploy around the country.  We want to make our kiosks as lightweight and bulletproof by running as few apps as possible since they are going to be installed in remote locations, often away from local expertise. For the most part the kiosks will run standalone, i.e not running on a LAN or any kind of Internet connection, except for when we need access to troubleshoot or update them,  We have used Laplink in the past, which has generally worked well, but we have had a few problems with Laplink locking up which has a presented a few logistical issues when we have needed to perform any work on them.  Each of the kiosks runs WinXP Pro, but XP's Remote Assistance isn't much help since it requires intervention from the remote end to get it running, we need something that is sitting there waiting to be called as soon as the kiosk is plugged in to the network.
 
I have used VNC before some time ago and decided to take another look.  It works brilliantly and is incredibly lightweight at a mere 700k or so for the server component (only 300k for the viewer).  It also has a built in viewer which is accessible via any java-enabled browser, preventing the need for the viewer client to be installed.
 
I have always wanted to be able to control all of my boxes at home from wherever I am.  With Linux this is straightforward using SSH but for Windows it's a slightly different story.  Artur Maj from Security Focus has written an excellent how-to (http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1677) on getting VNC to tunnel using open source software - Stunnel and OpenSSL and creating the encrypted tunnel using digital certificate authentication.  The great thing about this implementation is that it is that it is completely free and pretty robust from a security perspective.
 
Now on to getting Stunnel to work to provide VPN access so I can browse my home network from wherever  - since while it may work fine, I just don't trust the XP VPN stuff...

posted by John C @ 10:04 AM 0 comments

Monday, September 26, 2005

HP Bluetooth Foldable keyboard for Ipaq

I have just acquired a Bluetooth folding keyboard for my Ipaq H5550. Seems to work pretty well except for the odd letters that seem to be duplicated every so often..although having tweaked the key repeat rate on the latest version of the keyboard driver seems to have helped a heap. Should prove quite useful on the plane and save having to grab the laptop out everytime I need to get something typed up. Trouble is, and I don't know if this is purely coincedence, but my wi-fi appears to have stopped working...grr. I am sure a hard reset will fix it, but I don't know whether I can face getting everything set up again. Soft resets don't appear to be making much difference..I'll see what Google turns up...

posted by John C @ 9:54 PM 0 comments

Sunday, September 25, 2005

first post

The first post...hmmm...a difficult one. Anyway, in short, I plan to use this blog to post bits and pieces of tech stuff that I stumble across and find interesting or useful.

The iPod is seeing a lot more use lately since I discovered a few interesting tech podcasts. The longer drive into work each day, now that we have moved out west, makes the drive home pretty tedious with only local radio to tune in to. The podcasts help make the trip fly by. I'm also hoping to start doing some more riding again soon, so it'll also get a lot more use then too, not to mention when I'm in the States next month.

I've been playing around a heap with Fedora Core 4 Linux, both at home and at work. I was fortunate enough to arrange some Red Hat training through the office and so far I've done two of Red Hat's courses. Prior to this training, my experience had been self taught, mostly by trial and error with support and hand-holding from Google and IRC (#linuxhelp and #fedora on Freenode have been invaluable). At the end of the second course I sat the gruelling 3 hours RH202 prac exam, and passed, so I'm now officially a Red Hat Certitifed Technician. I hope to do some further training and go for RHCE next year (Red Hat Certitified Engineer)...

At work, we're looking at using Fedora Core for a file server, for DHCP and to serve up some web stuff. We've already begun trialling it as a Windows alternative for some of our users desktops as well. LTSP (the Linux Terminal Server Project - check out #ltsp on Freenode too) also offers a lot of promise by extending the life of equipment that would ordinarily be facing retirement and disposal if being used in the Windows world. These bits of "junk" make for excellent "dumb" terminals hanging off a fairly modest LTSP server. Once the server is configured, extending the network by adding extra terminals is a synch..

At home, MythTV holds a lot of appeal and I've been playing with that on and off.. Since buying the plasma tv, VHS looks absolutely dreadful so we are looking at better quality ways of recording TV. Obvious choice would be a DVD recorder, but simply adding a decent digital TV tuner card to a PC running some flavour of Linux and MythTV can give a more fully featured system for a lot less money. Fortunately, Jarod Wilson has produced a great guide on how to get everything up and running on Fedora Core, recently updated for FC4 - Myth(TV)ology . I am still having a few hiccups getting Myth setup to use my Fusion Plus HDTV DVB card properly but I don't think I'm too far off. Once I have a properly working system, I'll look at purpose building something that won't look too out of place in a home theatre system...or maybe using a Mac Mini as a possible front end?

Call for Help on the How-To channel (in Australia on channel 118 on Foxtel) has been interesting to watch. The shows hosts have some interesting blogs too (links on the show's site).

A few of the podcasts I've started listening to...
  • Diggnation
  • This Week in Tech (TWIT - hosted by Leo Laporte from Call for Help)
  • HDTV and Home Theatre Podcast
  • Engadget

All feeds are free and available in the iTunes store.

More soon...

posted by John C @ 7:33 PM 0 comments