Networks on Holyarmy.org

Ubuntu USB Ethernet Naming for Alias and VLAN Interfaces

Sat, 24 Dec 2016 18:18:25 +0000

In my ongoing adventures of playing with the Chromebox as a firewall, I eventually found a reason to use stock Ubuntu 16.04 instead of VyOS.

For the most part, devices just work as you’d expect under Ubuntu. Even my USB ethernet network interface (NIC) devices work fine. But I eventually noticed a problem.

By default USB NICs under Ubuntu 16.04 (which uses systemd & udev) are named “enxABCDEF123456” where ABCDEF123456 is the full MAC address of the device.

VyOS on an Asus Chromebox M004U

Thu, 04 Aug 2016 15:38:55 +0000

This is a bit of a follow up from my last post. I’ve still got my Asus Chromebox. I’m not running ESXi any more… but something I do want to try out is VyOS. Why? Well, my original intent when purchasing the Chromebox was to play around with it, but then I really did expect it to replace my home router. I’ve used pfSense for a long time, but I’m curious about VyOS because I know several people using EdgeRouter Lite which uses EdgeOS, a fork of VyOS. So I wanted to play around on existing hardware.

ESXi on an Asus Chromebox M004U

Sat, 23 May 2015 18:51:55 +0000

I recently stumbled across the ASUS CHROMEBOX-M004U. It’s a Chromebox, which is cool in its own right, but I was interested in using it’s dual-core Celeron Haswell CPU, expandable RAM (up to 16GB), and M2 Sata storage for other purposes.

First things first, you’ve got to enable the box to run things other than ChromeOS… Thankfully that’s well documented ( http://kodi.wiki/view/ASUS_Chromebox ), so I won’t go into detail at this time. But I will say, I used the standalone, custom coreboot firmware and chose the headless option, as my current planned use cases are for servers. Apparently you want non-headless if you plan to use the box as a Plex Home Theater or Kodi box. Oh, also, I set it to boot first from USB if available.

VPN on Ubuntu Linux with Juniper Network Connect

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:13:25 +0000

There’s one standard document on HOWTO get Network Connect working on Ubuntu Linux. It’s mad scientist’s doc: http://mad-scientist.us/juniper.html . However, there are a few things not covered. I’ll assume that you’ve followed mad scientist’s excellent guide before going any further.

Issue #1: 64-bit Ubuntu

By default, when you install java on your 64-bit system, you get a 64-bit java. No surprise there, right? Well, Juniper’s tools don’t play nice with 64-bit java. If you attempt to start the junipernc script you’ll promptly see the “VPN has failed!” error message.

Fight Back! (When VPN Clients Mis-Behave)

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:20:19 +0000

I have to use VPNs at work. Specifically, to access my production webservers (etc), I have to use a Cisco VPN client. Sadly, the VPN concentrator overrides my choice of allowing local LAN access. So, when I am on the VPN, I have my DNS options changed so I can’t use any local servers. This is a serious, serious pain. So painful in fact, that many times instead of fight with it, I simply would run a Windows session in VMware (on my Mac) and connect the VPN there. This has drawbacks too, but it’s better than not having local network access.

Beating the Cisco VPN Client Error 51 On Leopard

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:10:01 +0000

I had this error popup today on my Mac OS X Lepopard 10.5.4 machine.

This is not cool as, well, I NEED MY VPN TO WORK!

Thankfully google came to my rescue. The solution is to execute the following in Terminal:

sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

Thanks for the answer, VirtuallyShocking.com.

Investigating OpenID

Tue, 27 May 2008 15:02:43 +0000

Aaron (one of my co-workers), recently posted a link about OpenID. I’ve given OpenID only cursory glances over the last year, but the Coding Horror link in Aaron’s post had a comment to this Google Video where Simon Willison gives a Google Tech Talk on The Implications of OpenID. The video is nearly a year old, but to date, it’s done more to convince me to get on the OpenID bandwagon than anything else.

Advertising Linux Services via Avahi/Bonjour

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:20:42 +0000

Update: most of this information is still correct but an update for combining service definitions into one file and setting an icon is available here: bonjour-avahi-addendum

In my last post I outlined how I followed others’ directions to enable netatalk on Linux and Time Machine backups to a shared AFP folder. Originally, I also described how to put all your shares on netatalk. I suppose if only have Mac clients or you REALLY want to use AFP, you can do so. As I worked with files over AFP shares, I started noticing that the performance seemed to be quite bad. No, I didn’t benchmark, but copying large video files to a shared folder over my gigabit network was substantially slower over AFP (netatalk) than over CIFS/SMB (samba). I use my network shares pretty heavily, so this was a concern. Also, netatalk tries very hard to replicate an HFS filesystem complete with resource fork support. This means that your shared directories end up with lots of extra folders named “.AppleDouble”(and a few others) containing Mac specific info. (Note: even on CIFS you’ll get the “.AppleDB” folders unless you disable a setting in Finder. I can deal with .AppleDB better than .AppleDouble AND .AppleDB) So, because of these two issues I decided to try using CIFS and samba again.

Time Machine backup to Linux via Netatalk

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:26:49 +0000

So, when I got the upgrade from Tiger to Leopard on my MacBook Pro, I was looking for a good backup solution. I’ve used rsync in the past, but when I saw that Apple had a new Time Machine backup tool, I was curious to give it a shot. The catch is you basically needed an external USB or Firewire drive, until they recently came out with the Time Capsule. Anyway, tonight I got the itch to really see if I could make Time Machine work without buying extra hardware. I mean, seriously, I’ve got a good hunk of mirrored disk sitting on my home server; that seems like a good place to do backups.

Some googling found me this link to a blogger who’d done it!

I’ll make my own version of this post, since I had a few differences from the original I where I found the info.

Network Directory Services

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:00:41 +0000

Network directory services are core to Internet functionality. The Domain Name System (DNS) provides a global (and/or local) directory of hosts and services. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) servers can provide some of the same information as DNS (or be used to back DNS), but are more frequently used to create network user databases, store user group information, providing centralized account information and password storage.

I recently completed an upgrade of these two core services on a network I manage. We had been running outdated (but functional) BIND v8 and OpenLDAP v2.0 instances for of DNS and LDAP servers. Also, throw a Windows Server 2003 into the mix, which, as an Active Directory domain controller has to run its own DNS and LDAP (AD is tweaked LDAP) servers.