Monthly Archives: November 2011

Scheduling sFTP Transfers with PSFTP

Posted by on November 25, 2011 No comments

Recently I was asked by a client to implement some sort of system that will establish a sFTP connection to a remote server and download the desired data. Initially I was like, yeah easy, get a sFTP FOSS client, configure it with the remote servers’ details, schedule it and done!

Well… Wasn’t I in for a surprise!!! Turns out that there isn’t really any nice, simple GUI software which can be scheduled and off we go. Nope, CLI all the way baby! Of course, there is Filezilla which can establish sFTP connections and other FTP software around, including cuteFTP but for that you have to pay, and you know… I like my FOSS, so I didn’t really want to go down that route.

So I finally settled for PSFTP – Putty sFTP client, after reading up its short but comprehensive manual I got it working the way I wanted it to like so:

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OpenVPN Access Server ESXi 4.1 Installation Guide

Posted by on November 14, 2011 No comments

In the this tutorial we will be going through deploying a OpenVPN Access Server (AS) from scratch in a VMWare ESXi 4.1 environment. This should be perfect for a home VPN server (due to licence limitations of a maximum of 2 users being connected at the same time)!

Good luck and read on!

Step 1

Open VMWare vSphere Client and go to File > Deploy OVF Template

Select "Deploy OVF Template from the File menu

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Updating OpenVPN Access Server

Posted by on November 13, 2011 No comments

Once OpenVPN Access Server has been installed and configured it is time to update it:

1. Go to http://openvpn.net/index.php/access-server/download-openvpn-as.html?osfamily=Ubuntu and download for Ubuntu 9 (at the time of writing, Ubuntu 9 is used as the base OS for OpenVPN AS)

 wget http://swupdate.openvpn.org/as/openvpn-as-1.8.3-Ubuntu9.amd_64.deb

2. The architecture from the OVF template is 64 bit (hence the 64 bit download of the update above) now to install it simply do:

dpkg -i openvpn-as-1.8.3-Ubuntu9.amd_64.deb

And it should update straightway:

openvpnas:~# dpkg -i openvpn-as-1.8.3-Ubuntu9.amd_64.deb
(Reading database ... 14835 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace openvpn-as 1.7.1-Ubuntu9 (using openvpn-as-1.8.3-Ubuntu9.amd_64.deb) ...
Upgrade detected (debian)...
Unpacking replacement openvpn-as ...
Setting up openvpn-as (1.8.3-Ubuntu9) ...
Backing up configuration and DB files to /usr/local/openvpn_as/etc/backup prior to update.
Restarting openvpnas: openvpnas.
openvpnas:~#

Linux Mint Font Rendering

Posted by on November 12, 2011 No comments

Following on from my Terminal font post I decided to further tweak the way text is rendered on Linux Mint, especially the way it looks on a laptop LCD screen. After bleeding eyes and a lot of squinting I think I’ve got it set.

Font settings window

I selected the Ubuntu font with a size 10

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Ubuntu Terminal Font

Posted by on November 12, 2011 No comments

So I have just installed the latest version of Linux Mint (12 RC) and I wasn’t pretty happy with the default font in Terminal on a laptop… And so my search started until I found the good ‘ol xfonts-terminus font font:

Linux Mint 12RC displaying xfonts-terminus font

Simply installed by:

$ sudo apt-get install xfonts-terminus