Note, this assumes that you are already familiar with using dd.

I was wondering if you could do a dd image copy through ssh and a network. The answer is: YES! It is a pain in the posterior to have to physically connect backup media to the computer. No mas!

I had some syntax errors when I first tried it, but thanks to Joe S., we got it working. Here is the goodness that makes it work:


dd if=/dev/zero count=128 | od -c | (ssh [hostname] dd of=testfile)


dd is a utility that converts and copies a file. It it used to backup a partition to an image file. (iso)

I use it to take a snapshot backup of an installed working Linux System for backup purposes. This copies the entire partition (physical copy) though a network connection.

Let’s breakdown the goodness.

/dev/zero writes as many null characters as needed.

count=128 tells how many input blocks should be written. In our case, 128.

You would replace the /dev/zero with the name of the partition to be backed up. /dev/zero is used in this example for testing purposes.

od was not a command that I was familiar with. od takes the file and converts it to octal output. Do not use the od command. This was for the purposes of testing.

The ssh command takes the octal output as supplied by the od command, (note it is getting input from stdin), and directs the output to a file.

Note that this example presumes you have certificate based authentication on the target output host.

The example output looks like:

I will be off for several months due to an impending surgery.

Ouch. Does anyone else have footshooting problems today? So you accidentally clicked on the “Do not show again.” Doh!

We’ve all done that. This is an easy way to reset the notifications and popups, courtesy of the folks at the Linux Mint Forum. This is more of an internal note to myself, because I do this a few times a year, and have to schlep around till I find how to fix it again.

Using your favourite editor, create, reset_netmgr_notify.sh

Here is the easy shell script:


#!/bin/bash
#
# reset notifications for network manager to get all notification popups
#
# W. Guerrini 02/13/2018
# V1.0
#
# from: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=89627
#
#

gsettings set org.gnome.nm-applet disable-connected-notifications false
gsettings set org.gnome.nm-applet disable-disconnected-notifications false
gsettings set org.gnome.nm-applet disable-vpn-notifications false


to run the script


sh reset_netmgr_notify.sh


Easy. And this way I won’t have to schlep for it again.

WoW. This was messier then it needs to be, but this does work. I have tried it with xubuntu and ubuntu mate successfully. As you know, the password area is grayed out.

I use PureVpn as a Virtual Private Network provider. But this works with any provider. This is a ppp (point-to-point) connection, which is different then /dev/tun. Tun rides over the top of a ppp connection.

1. The first step is to edit the configuration file. This will be found in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections

My file looks like this:

[connection]

id=NameofConnection

uuid=YourUuid
type=vpn
autoconnect=false
permissions=
secondaries=

[vpn]

gateway=GatewayName

require-mppe=yes

user=Userid
refuse-chap=yes
refuse-eap=yes
refuse-pap=yes
password-flags=0

service-type=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp

[vpn-secrets]
password=YourPassword

[ipv4]
dns-search=
method=auto

[ipv6]
addr-gen-mode=stable-privacy
dns-search=
method=auto

Let’s try to break down what we changed. All the items I changed are bold like this. So I changed the connection name, gateway name or ip address, and userid.

Next you need to make sure that refuse-chap, refuse-eap, refuse-pap are all set to yes.

Normally the password-flags is set to 2. We need to set it to 0. This is important, so it does NOT reprompt.

Now add the section vpn-secrets with your password. Setting the flag to 0, and adding this section will save the password.

2. If not installed, install openvpn and the network-manager-openvpn.


sudo apt-get install openvpn network-manager-openvpn.

3. Now the tricky part. (see the problem above).

first let’s go the the directory and make a backup copy of org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy.


cd /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/
sudo cp org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy.save # make a backup copy of the file first
sudo -H gedit /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy


As it says in the article change the line the read:

<action id="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.settings.modify.own">
.
.
.
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>

so that it says:

<allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>

4. Finally restart the Network Manager:

For us old guys:


sudo service network-manager restart


or


sudo systemctl restart network-manager


Virtual Private Networks. They are useful, but they can also seem daunting. As I have learned more about VPN’S from my first post, some 2 years ago, I thought we should re-vist and update.

1. What’s the first thing we do? Why install openvpn of course!

REMOTE (HOST) Configuration


sudo apt-get install openvpn


2. Now we need to generate our secret key. This is used to authenticate a remote user trying to gain access. We will use openvpn itself to generate the secret key. NOTE: Debian by default, does NOT provide a path to /usr/sbin

You can fully qualify it: /usr/sbin/openvpn

temporarily add it to the PATH variable: export PATH=$PATH:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin

Or just add:

export PATH=$PATH:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin

to .bashrc

If you add it to .bashrc, you will need to logout and back in again, so it will re-read the file.

Let’s generate that key! (The key below is named homer for the host, it can be anything)


openvpn --genkey --secret homer.key


Simple, huh?

3. Let’s move some files, and create the configuration file for openvpn.

first, let’s move our secret key file:


sudo cp homer.key /etc/openvpn/.


The period at the end, is significant. It says copy the file, right here.

4. Next is the configuration file. Using your favourite editor (nano in my case) create the
/etc/openvpn/openvpn.conf file as follows: Most of the explanations of the parameters come from here.


# Sample openvpn configuration file
# jjs June 6, 2012 V1.0
#
# annotated by Wayno April 26, 2014
#
# remote specifies the address of the server

local 192.168.1.101 5001
#local 192.168.1.101 1194

# dev tun specifies that we are using a tunnel device

dev tun

# ifconfig tells ip address for the interface

ifconfig 192.168.224.253 192.168.224.254

# and the secret key name (in /etc/openvpn)

secret homer.key

# use port 5001 (default) to connect to the vpn. This may require
# you to add this in your router.

port 5001
#port 1194

# if you want data compression

comp-lzo

# ping every 10 seconds, if no ping in 120 seconds, other side dead

keepalive 10 120

# ping timer starts after it receives a connection

ping-timer-rem

# don't recreate a virtual net interface TUN after automatic restart

persist-tun

# Don't read pre-shared static key file again after auto restart

persist-key

# user and group

user nobody
group nogroup

# after initialization, run in the background as a daemon

daemon

# append the /etc/openvpn/openvpn.log

log-append openvpn.log


5. Restart openvpn


sudo service openvpn restart


If you check /etc/openvpn/openvpn.log you will get something like this:

sudo cat openvpn.log
Tue Jun 24 20:00:39 2014 OpenVPN 2.3.2 x86_64-pc-linux-gnu [SSL (OpenSSL)] [LZO] [EPOLL] [PKCS11] [eurephia] [MH] [IPv6] built on Feb 4 2014
Tue Jun 24 20:00:39 2014 TUN/TAP device tun0 opened
Tue Jun 24 20:00:39 2014 do_ifconfig, tt->ipv6=0, tt->did_ifconfig_ipv6_setup=0
Tue Jun 24 20:00:39 2014 /sbin/ip link set dev tun0 up mtu 1500
Tue Jun 24 20:00:39 2014 /sbin/ip addr add dev tun0 local 192.168.224.253 peer 192.168.224.253
Tue Jun 24 20:00:39 2014 GID set to nogroup
Tue Jun 24 20:00:39 2014 UID set to nobody
Tue Jun 24 20:00:39 2014 UDPv4 link local (bound): [AF_INET]192.168.1.101:5001
Tue Jun 24 20:00:39 2014 UDPv4 link remote: [undef]
Tue Jun 24 20:00:44 2014 Peer Connection Initiated with [AF_INET]192.168.1.103:5001
Tue Jun 24 20:00:45 2014 Initialization Sequence Completed

6. Let’s see if it works?


ping -c 5 192.168.224.253


PING 192.168.224.253 (192.168.224.253) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.224.253: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.033 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.224.253: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.041 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.224.253: icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=0.030 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.224.253: icmp_req=4 ttl=64 time=0.041 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.224.253: icmp_req=5 ttl=64 time=0.040 ms

— 192.168.224.253 ping statistics —
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 3999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.030/0.037/0.041/0.004 ms

==================

1. Now the CLIENT configuration /etc/openvpn/client.conf:


#
# openvpn CLIENT configuration
#
# V1.0 by Wayno April 26, 2014

# remote specifies the ip address of the remote (host) openvpn

remote 192.168.1.101

# dev tun specifies that we are using a tunnel device

dev tun

# ifconfig tells ip address for the interface
# NOTE that the ifconfig ip's are BACKWARD from the host

ifconfig 192.168.224.254 192.168.224.253

# The name of the secret key we generated (it could be anyname)

secret homer.key

# use port 5001 (note you may need to open this up in your router
# and make sure it points to the remote (host))

port 5001

# if you want data compression

comp-lzo

# ping every 10 seconds, if no ping in 60 seconds, other side dead

keepalive 10 60

# ping timer starts after it receives a connection

ping-timer-rem

# don't recreate a virtual net interface TUN after automatic restart

persist-tun

# Don't read pre-shared static key file again after auto restart

persist-key

#user and group

user nobody
group nogroup

# after initialization, run in the background as a daemon

daemon

log-append openvpn.log


2. Ensure you copy the secret key over to the /etc/openvpn on the client side. This assumes the key is already in your home folder


sudo cp ~/homer.key .


Note that the period (.) at the end IS significant.

3. And your output should look something like this:

sudo cat openvpn.log
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 OpenVPN 2.2.1 x86_64-linux-gnu [SSL] [LZO2] [EPOLL] [PKCS11] [eurephia] [MH] [PF_INET6] [IPv6 payload 20110424-2 (2.2RC2)] built on Jun 18 2013
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 NOTE: OpenVPN 2.1 requires ‘–script-security 2’ or higher to call user-defined scripts or executables
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 LZO compression initialized
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 TUN/TAP device tun0 opened
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 do_ifconfig, tt->ipv6=0, tt->did_ifconfig_ipv6_setup=0
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 /sbin/ifconfig tun0 192.168.224.254 pointopoint 192.168.224.253 mtu 1500
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 GID set to nogroup
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 UID set to nobody
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 UDPv4 link local (bound): [undef]
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 UDPv4 link remote: [AF_INET]192.168.1.101:5001
Tue Jun 24 20:20:27 2014 Peer Connection Initiated with [AF_INET]192.168.1.101:5001
Tue Jun 24 20:20:28 2014 Initialization Sequence Completed

3. ssh into the vpn

nwayno@Willy:~$ ssh 192.168.224.253
nwayno@192.168.224.253’s password:
Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-29-generic x86_64)

* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/

Last login: Tue Jun 24 20:40:04 2014 from 192.168.224.253
nwayno@Homer:~$

If you search the internet, one of the issues that seems to come up a lot, are connectivity issues with the atheros AR 9485 card.

I am configuring a new laptop, an HP Pavilion G6-2323DX for my Mom. I ran into many issues that caused me to have to do hokey pokey.

This is pure hokey pokey. But it does work.

The operating system I am using is Debian/Wheezy V 7 RC 1 (64 Bit)

If you do a uname -a I get back:

Linux AnnLin 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.41-2 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Let’s just step by step check things.

1. let’s see if Linux see’s the card:


lspci | grep Wireless


You will get back a line like:

02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

That means Linux sees it, but of course it is NOT configured.

2. Let’s see if the driver (ath9k) is loaded. We will use modprobe.


modprobe ath9k


if the device driver is loaded, it will just return a prompt. That’s a “good thing” as Martha would say.

3. Let’s look to make sure the wpa-supplicant programme is installed. The WPA supplicant provides wireless protected access (encryption) for our connection.


dpkg -l | grep supplicant


and you should get back:

ii wpasupplicant 1.0-3+b2
amd64 client support for WPA and WPA2 (IEEE 802.11i)

We’re good!

4. Now let’s modify /etc/network/interfaces


cd /etc/network # go to network interfaces
sudo cp interfaces interfaces.org # make a backup copy
sudo nano interfaces


You will get back something like this:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

#define the network interface for the wireless lan card
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid MyHome
wpa-psk MyPass

wpa-ssid is the name of the wireless network you are trying to connect to. wpa-psk is the password for that network. Yup plain text!

The iface line defines wlan0 so it has access to the internet, and gets it’s ip address dynamically (dhcp).

The card interface is STILL not up!

5. Bring up the interface!


sudo ifdown wlan0; sudo ifup wlan0;


you will get output that looks like:

ifdown: interface wlan0 not configured
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.2
Copyright 2004-2011 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/
Listening on LPF/wlan0/20:16:d8:e5:32:b4
Sending on LPF/wlan0/20:16:d8:e5:32:b4
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPOFFER from 192.168.1.1
DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
bound to 192.168.1.4 — renewal in 37985 seconds.

6. AND NOW THE HOKEY POKEY PART 1!

Install wicd (Wireless Interface Connection Daemon)


sudo apt-get install wicd


once that is installed, REMOVE the gnome network mangler!


sudo apt-get purge network-manager-gnome


7. HOKEY POKEY PART 2!

Reboot the machine. After re-booting bring up the interface.


sudo ifdown wlan0; sudo ifup wlan0;


It should look like this:

8. HOKEY POKEY PART 3!

now go back to /etc/network/interfaces and remove (or comment out with a # in front the wpa-ssid, and wpa-pskid for the wlan card. so just: iface wlan0 inet dhcp and whatever else was there — just not the wpa information.


cd /etc/network # go to network interfaces
sudo nano interfaces


9. Restart the network:


sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart


you will get back something like this:

[….] Running /etc/init.d/networking restart is deprecated because it may not[warnnable some interfaces … (warning).
[….] Reconfiguring network interfaces…Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.2
Copyright 2004-2011 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/wlan0/20:16:d8:e5:32:b4
Sending on LPF/wlan0/20:16:d8:e5:32:b4
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPRELEASE on wlan0 to 192.168.1.1 port 67

this basically makes sure we don’t have any errors in /etc/network/interfaces

10. HOKEY POKEY PART 4

Reboot once again, and this time the interface should come up automatically. Screensaver engagement should not knock the connection offline.

And that’s what it’s all about!

I have to thank 3 people for all their help. Joe, Loni and Frances.

Wayno

On 03/26/2013 10:48 AM, wrote:

Sunday night I upgraded my server again – I had previously upgraded it from ubuntu 8.04 to 10.04, so I figured I’d go ahead and take it to 12.04 so it will be supported until 2017.

It all went smoothly. All I had to do to get the ball rolling was to type: ‘do-release-upgrade’ and the process began. Again, the box stayed up all through the upgrade, continued to serve dns and dhcp, routed nat traffic to the internet, and kept the vpns running.

When the upgrade was complete, I had to go to run level 6 to boot into the new kernel, so the system was down for about a minute while the reboot process ran its course.

When it came up, there was a problem with forwarding traffic to the internet. That was caused by a new /etc/sysctl.conf which didn’t have the ipv4 forwarding enabled. I fixed the file, typed “sysctl -p” to make the new setting take effect, and lan access to the internet was restored.

A bit later I noticed a second problem: wireless devices were not able to access the internet. I found that the dhcp server was not running. I tried starting it manually and it failed. Looking in the log, I could see that apparmor didn’t like the fancy things dhcpd was trying to do. Admittedly it’s a custom configuration, and the new version of dhcpd might require a few changes. At any rate, I just unloaded apparmor to get things up and running. Then dhcpd was able to start, and there were no other problems.

All in all, a smooth upgrade with a rather short outage.

Joe

There is an old Linux trick, that works superbly in Windows as well.

1. It is necessary to run notepad or your Windows editor of choice as the Administrator. Right click on notepad in the start menu, and choose: Run as Administrator.

Once you do that, navigate to the Windows host file. Don’t know where that is? I will tell you!


c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts


2, Once you have that open, click on file, and then save as hosts.org. That makes a copy of the intact original file.

Your file needs to look like:


# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.

# define local host GU 09/26/2012

127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost

# add sites to be blocked GU 09/26/2012

127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 twitter.com
127.0.0.1 youtube.com
127.0.0.1 pandora.com


Notice the the definition for 127.0.0.1 (localhost) was UNCOMMENTED. Very important. Also ::1.

Now you just tell it what sites you want to block, (as seen here, facebook, twitter, youtube, pandora) — whatever you want blocked.

3. Now hit file, and SAVE AS as hosts. Overwrite the file. I rebooted Windows and guess what? No more access to those sites!

4. To check:


ping youtube.com


PING youtube.com (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1): icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.027 ms

You can do the same thing in Linux, by editing /etc/hosts.

Wayno

Virtual Private Networks are a useful tool, to allow us to securely reach an isolated computer or network.

Yet, is requires more tweaking then one would imagine. So here’s a step by step guide on how I did it, with a LOT of help in understanding some of the key concepts, provided by my friend Joe, and protocol explanations from Darren of hak5.

1. What’s the first thing we do? Why install openvpn of course!


sudo apt-get install openvpn


2. Now we need to generate our secret key. This is used to authenticate a remote user trying to gain access. We will use openvpn itself to generate the secret key. NOTE: Debian by default, does NOT provide a path to /usr/sbin

You can fully qualify it: /usr/sbin/openvpn

temporarily add it to the PATH variable: export PATH=$PATH:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin

Or just add:

export PATH=$PATH:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin

to .bashrc

If you add it to .bashrc, you will need to logout and back in again, so it will re-read the file.

Let’s generate that key!


openvpn --genkey --secret vpn.key


Simple, huh?

3. Let’s move some files, and create the configuration file for openvpn.

first, let’s move our secret key file:


sudo cp vpn.key /etc/openvpn/.


The period at the end, is significant. It says copy the file, right here.

4. Next is the configuration file. Using your favourite editor (nano in my case) create the
/etc/openvpn/openvpn.conf file as follows: Most of the explanations of the parameters come from here.


# Sample openvpn configuration file
# jjs June 6, 2012 V1.0
#
# annotated by Wayno
#
# remote specifies the address of the server

remote 172.229.15.5

# dev tun specifies that we are using a tunnel device

dev tun

# ifconfig tells ip address for the interface

ifconfig 192.168.224.253 192.168.224.254

# and the secret key name (in /etc/openvpn)

secret vpn.key

# use port 5001 (default) to connect to the vpn. This may require
# you to add this in your router.

port 5001

# if you want data compression

comp-lzo

# ping every 10 seconds, if no ping in 120 seconds, other side dead

keepalive 10 120

# ping timer starts after it receives a connection

ping-timer-rem

# don't recreate a virtual net interface TUN after automatic restart

persist-tun

# Don't read pre-shared static key file again after auto restart

persist-key

# user and group

user nobody
group nogroup

# after initialization, run in the background as a daemon

daemon

# setup the route after ifconfig

route 192.168.111.0 255.255.255.0

# append the /etc/openvpn/openvpn.log

log-append openvpn.log


5. Restart openvpn


sudo service openvpn restart


If you check /etc/openvpn/openvpn.log you will get something like this:

sudo cat openvpn.log
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 OpenVPN 2.1.3 x86_64-pc-linux-gnu [SSL] [LZO2] [EPOLL] [PKCS11] [MH] [PF_INET6] [eurephia] built on Feb 21 2012
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 NOTE: OpenVPN 2.1 requires ‘–script-security 2’ or higher to call user-defined scripts or executables
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 /usr/sbin/openvpn-vulnkey -q vpn.key
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 WARNING: file ‘vpn.key’ is group or others accessible
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 LZO compression initialized
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 TUN/TAP device tun0 opened
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 /sbin/ifconfig tun0 192.168.224.253 pointopoint 192.168.224.254 mtu 1500
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 GID set to nogroup
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 UID set to nobody
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 UDPv4 link local (bound): [undef]
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 UDPv4 link remote: [AF_INET]72.200.67.229:5001
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 OpenVPN 2.1.3 x86_64-pc-linux-gnu [SSL] [LZO2] [EPOLL] [PKCS11] [MH] [PF_INET6] [eurephia] built on Feb 21 2012
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 NOTE: OpenVPN 2.1 requires ‘–script-security 2’ or higher to call user-defined scripts or executables
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 /usr/sbin/openvpn-vulnkey -q vpn.key
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 WARNING: file ‘vpn.key’ is group or others accessible
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 LZO compression initialized
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 TCP/UDP: Socket bind failed on local address [undef]: Address already in use
Tue Oct 2 01:22:07 2012 Exiting
Tue Oct 2 01:22:10 2012 read UDPv4 [EHOSTUNREACH]: No route to host (code=113)
Tue Oct 2 01:22:20 2012 read UDPv4 [EHOSTUNREACH]: No route to host (code=113)
Tue Oct 2 01:22:20 2012 read UDPv4 [EHOSTUNREACH]: No route to host (code=113)

6. Let’s see if it works?


ping -c 5 192.168.224.253


PING 192.168.224.253 (192.168.224.253) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.224.253: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.033 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.224.253: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.041 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.224.253: icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=0.030 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.224.253: icmp_req=4 ttl=64 time=0.041 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.224.253: icmp_req=5 ttl=64 time=0.040 ms

— 192.168.224.253 ping statistics —
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 3999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.030/0.037/0.041/0.004 ms

Well —

RTFM never fails!

I had brought over my /etc/network/interfaces file from Ubuntu to Debian. When I tried to restart the network:


sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart


I got:

Reconfiguring network interfaces…/etc/network/interfaces:1: too many parameters for iface line
ifdown: couldn’t read interfaces file “/etc/network/interfaces”
/etc/network/interfaces:1: too many parameters for iface line
ifup: couldn’t read interfaces file “/etc/network/interfaces”
failed.

Huh? This worked fine in Ubuntu, but NOT Debian! Debian != Ubuntu.

The second paragraph under description for


man interfaces


says:

Lines starting with `#’ are ignored. Note that end-of-line comments
are NOT supported, comments must be on a line of their own.

Okay so they changed the parser in Ubuntu. Once I got rid of the inline comments, and made sure there was a tab at the end of each line it worked!


cat /etc/network/interfaces



# define static ip for network interfaces
# note that debian does NOT allow inline comments
#
# man interfaces (2nd paragraph under description)
# Lines starting with `#' are ignored. Note that end-of-line comments are
#NOT supported, comments must be on a line of their own.
#
# make sure there is a tab each line
#
# gu 06/02/2012

# define eth0 as static
iface eth0 inet static

# and the static ip address
address 192.168.1.104

# the netmask
netmask 255.255.255.0

# the network
network 192.168.1.0

# broadcast group
broadcast 192.168.1.255

# and the gateway to the internet, is router ip
gateway 192.168.1.1


Who knew? Thanks for the reality check, nsadmin and epsilon on #debian.

This was driving me insane. Now I hope I can continue on to try openvpn.

Wayno

This is actually fairly easy, but there are a couple of tricks!

1. What is the IP address of that printer?

The easy way is to scan for it!

If you have not done so, install the arp-scan programme. Arp (Address Resolution Protocol) This will allow us to scan the network for all devices on the network.


sudo apt-get install arp-scan


2. Run arp-scan to see what’s on your network:


sudo arp-scan --interface=eth0 --localnet


arp-scan MUST be run as root, so that’s why we do the sudo.
We are limiting the search for anything we can reach, via our local ethernet connection.

You will get output that looks like:

$ sudo arp-scan –interface=eth0 –localnet
Interface: eth0, datalink type: EN10MB (Ethernet)
Starting arp-scan 1.6 with 256 hosts (http://www.nta-monitor.com/tools/arp-scan/)
192.168.1.1 00:12:34:56:78:81 (Unknown)
192.168.1.100 00:34:56:78:9a:5d Hewlett Packard
192.168.1.104 00:46:cd:ef:49:b1 (Unknown)
192.168.1.105 00:aa:bd:cb:d7:aa Roku, LLC

4 packets received by filter, 0 packets dropped by kernel
Ending arp-scan 1.6: 256 hosts scanned in 1.421 seconds (180.15 hosts/sec). 4 responded
$

Hmm. There’s something that says Hewlett Packard. Yup that’s my printer at address: 192.168.1.100

5. Go into: System/Administration/Printing and add your printer, if it is NOT already present. And follow the prompts for adding a printer. Almost done, couple of other chores.

6. Now click on Server and then Settings, and your screen should look like:

7. One last step. Enable the printer, and enable it for sharing. Also you may/may not want to set it as the default printer. Single right click on the printer icon, and select/check Enabled/Sharing:

8. Repeat these steps on each computer that you want to add this network printer too.

Wayno