Minus is a file sharing and file storage service similar to Dropbox. I’ve been using Minus for a few weeks now and absolutely love it. One major difference between Minus and Dropbox is that Minus gives you 10GB of storage space from the start. With Dropbox, you only get 2GB.
The Android client for Minus is really clean and easy to navigate. They also have a client for iOS devices such as the Apple iPhone. There’s no client for Windows Phone 7 devices yet, but the site says it will be coming soon. You can see a screenshot of the Android app in the gallery at the end of this post.
Minus also has clients available for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Linux. As some of you may know, I quit using Ubuntu a while ago and switched to Debian. I’ve been emailing back and forth with the Minus developers about getting the Ubuntu client to work on Debian. Read more
When Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala came out, I did an upgrade on one of my machines instead of doing a fresh install. I decided it was time to do a fresh install after Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx came out.
I backed up all of my important files and some configuration files to a second drive, /dev/sdb. My previous Ubuntu install was installed on /dev/sda1 and I used the sdb drive for photos and videos.
When the installation got to the point of configuring partitions, I was a little bummed to see that my first drive, /dev/sda, wasn’t included in the list of drives and partitions. This machine needed a fresh install badly, so I posted on the Ubuntu Forums to see if anyone knew of a fix.
After a few days of no replies, gregmo posted and offered a solution. He suggested running the command below while running the live cd, prior to installing. This removes dmraid from the system running off the live cd.
sudo apt-get remove dmraid
After removing the dmraid package, I fired up the installer and was able to install to /dev/sda1 just fine. For some reason, removing the dmraid package allowed the partition manager to see /dev/sda.
After doing a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala on my router, I realized that I had lost the ability to connect to my employer’s VPN. I use Firestarter for managing my firewall on this particular router.
As I usually do, I googled “firestarter vpn“. Much to my dismay, it appeared that the Firestarter website was no longer alive. Instead of the usual Firestarter page, a page filled with useless links about security and anti-virus loaded. Luckily I was able to access the cached version of the page from Google. Since then, it appears that the Firestarter website has come back to life.
I wanted to make a note of how to allow VPN connections in the event that the Firestarter website becomes inaccessible again, that’s basically the point of this post. The page on the Firestarter site that details VPN connections can be found here. This should apply to pretty much every Linux distribution, not just Ubuntu.
To allow VPN connections with the Microsoft VPN client, simply enter the following lines into /etc/firestarter/user-pre.
# Forward PPTP VPN client traffic
$IPT -A FORWARD -i $IF -o $INIF -p tcp --dport 1723 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A FORWARD -i $IF -o $INIF -p 47 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A FORWARD -i $INIF -o $IF -p 47 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
And to allow VPN connections with the Cisco VPN client, enter the following lines into /etc/firestarter/user-pre.
# Forward Cisco VPN client traffic
$IPT -A FORWARD -i $IF -o $INIF -p udp --dport 500 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A FORWARD -i $IF -o $INIF -p tcp --dport 500 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A FORWARD -i $IF -o $INIF -p 50 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A FORWARD -i $INIF -o $IF -p 50 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
Finally, if you’re running a Microsoft VPN server and want to allow incoming PPTP VPN connections, add the following lines to /etc/firestarter/user-pre.
# Forward PPTP VPN connections to internal server
SERVER=192.168.0.100 # Internal VPN server
$IPT -A FORWARD -i $IF -o $INIF -p tcp --dport 1723 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
$IPT -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $IF -p tcp --dport 1723 -j DNAT --to $SERVER
$IPT -A FORWARD -i $IF -o $INIF -p 47 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
$IPT -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $IF -p 47 -j DNAT --to $SERVER
That should pretty much cover it. If you are using OpenVPN, head over to the Firestarter VPN configuration page for details.
Tech-Evangelist has put together an excellent cheatsheet for MySQL. There’s lots of other MySQL cheatsheets out there, but this one is unique in the fact that it gives examples of usage rather than just snippets of code.
This cheatsheet also includes a summary of commonly used MySQL data types, which will be really helpful to me. I can’t tell you how many times in a week I hit the MySQL website looking for specs on a certain data type.
If you think this cheatsheet would be useful to you, head on over to Tech-Evangelist to download the PDF.
So, I installed Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn beta about 2 months ago. I installed it on my notebook and one of my workstations, both of which had Windows installed previously. I’m not dual booting on those machine, they’re 100% Ubuntu now.
After getting everything setup and running nicely, I realized I had no way of connecting to the Cisco PIX VPN we have at work. This is really important for me to be able to do, my job depends on it. I immediately went to Google and started searching. Turns out a nice fellow named Alexander Griesser has created a patch for the Cisco VPN client. The most recent CIsco VPN client for linux won’t compile with kernels 2.6.19 or newer. There’s really not much of a difference between his instructions and this how-to. However, I’m including more detailed instructions for those who may not be familiar with compiling software on Linux.
Here’s the steps I took to get the Cisco VPN Client to work under Unbutu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). In all reality, this should work with any version of Ubuntu, not just 7.04. I used this same method to get the Cisco VPN Client working on Ubuntu 8.04. Note: A $ at the beginning of a line signifies a command to be run from the terminal.
Open a terminal window and untar the vpnclient with the following command: $ tar xzf vpnclient-linux-4.8.00.0490-k9.tar.gz This will create a new folder called vpnclient in your home directory. Leave the terminal window open, you’ll need it later.
Download the patch (mirror) and save it to the vpnclient folder that was created in step 2.
Go back to your terminal window and move into the vpnclient folder: $ cd vpnclient/
Now patch the Cisco VPN source with this command: $ patch < vpnclient-linux-2.6.22.diff
Next we actually build the Cisco VPN client, issue this command: $ sudo ./vpn_install Just hit enter for everything it asks you, the defaults are all OK. You may see lots of warnings, but those are OK.
The VPN client is installed, now we need to start it: $ sudo /etc/init.d/vpnclient_init start
Place your .pcf configuration files in /etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Profiles/
If your .pcf file is called myVPN.pcf, you’ll connect to the VPN with the following command: $ sudo vpnclient connect myVPN
That’s it! You should now be able to connect to your Cisco VPN with the official Cisco VPN client on Linux. This will probably work on pretty much any linux setup, not just Ubuntu.
UPDATE (8/18/2007): Alexander Griesser released a new patch that works with kernel versions 2.6.22 and greater. The new patch is backwards compatible, so it also works with older kernels as well, such as 2.6.10 and 2.6.21. All the download links above point to the newest release of the patch. I’ll continue to update this how-to as he releases new patches.
UPDATE (10/04/2007): Cisco has finally released a new version of their vpn client for Linux. This new version compiles on all the new 2.6.xx kernels without the need for patching! You can download it from Alexander’s site or you can get it right here. UPDATE (12/29/2007): Alexander Griesser has a new project page for his Cisco VPN client patches. It contains basic usage information and will most likely always have the latest and greatest patch available for download. In addition to that, Alexander has a new patch to make version 4.8.01.0640-k9 of the Cisco VPN Client compile on 64bit systems. Again, you can download the latest Cisco VPN Client for linux from the following link: http://www.longren.org/downloads/vpnclient-linux-x86_64-4.8.01.0640-k9.tar.gz UPDATE (8/11/2011):Marius B commented and mentioned he has a post up on this same subject. It’s worth checking his post out. He basically suggests enabling the option to only use the VPN connection for resources on the network you’re connected to. See his post for more.
