First, let’s make sure we have the right packages installed.

apt-get install openssh apache2 apache2.2-common php5

Now let’s enable SSL for apache2

sudo a2enmod ssl

Now lets create the server SSL key.

cd /etc/ssl/private
openssl genrsa -des3 -out dns.server.com.key 1024

Ok, now that we have the key, let’s create the CSR to be given to the CA.

openssl req -new -key dns.server.com.key -out dns.server.com.csr

It will prompt you for the passphrase and some other bits of information.  The most important one is site name.  This must match the name of your server.  Something like mail.domain.com or www.domain.com would be appropriate here.

The CSR can now be uploaded to whatever CA you choose.  I use GoDaddy because they are so cheap.

If you do not want to purchase a certificate you can create your own self signed cert with the following command.

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in dns.server.com.csr -signkey dns.server.com.key -out dns.server.com.crt
cp /etc/ssl/private/dns.server.com.crt /etc/ssl/certs

Now that we have the cert created, let’s configure Apache to use it. Add the following 3 lines to your website configuration.  The default one is located in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default.

SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/dns.server.com.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/dns.server.com.key

Save that config file and enable Apache to listen on 443 for HTTPS traffic.  Add the following line to /etc/apache2/ports.conf

Listen 443

Restart your Apache2 process and you should have a fully functional SSL enabled website.

/etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload && /etc/init.d/apache2/restart

vi /etc/network/interfaces - opens /etc/network/interfaces in vi

i - insert
/ - search
G - [Shift] g - go to bottom of page
dd - delete the line
d <- or d -> - d [left or right arrow] delete 1 character in that direction
10G - 10 [Shift] g - move to line 10 (obviously number can be replaced)
10dd - delete 10 lines from cursor and below (again, number can be changed)
:q - quit (no changes may have been made)
:q! - quit (do not save changes)
:wq - write quite (save and quit)
:w - write (save)

Ok, now that you have mastered the basics of vi, please refer all other needs to the link provided above.  Hope you like vi as much as I do.

NOTE:  Ubuntu (and maybe debian) have a few things that the built in vi program have that seem a little strange.  I usually install vim just to be safe.  to do this run sudo apt-get install vim-full.


To put a package on hold use this command.

sudo aptitude hold snort-mysql

To remove the hold use this command.

sudo aptitude unhold snort-mysql

To keep your entire system (I think) from being updated simply use this command.

sudo aptitude hold

And to remove the hold use this command.

sudo aptitude unhold

Very easy isn’t it.  Yep, that’s what I thought. I’ll be able to deploy appliances in the field now without worrying if an update is going to break something before I get a chance to fix the issue.

apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client

That’s it. If you want to play around a little more you can configure Ubuntu’s firewall in just a few simple steps as well. In my example I will enable tcp/80, tcp/443, tcp/22 and udp/53 inbound.

ufw disable
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow udp/53
ufw enable

And then you can validate what you have entered with:

ufw status

The output will be similar to this:

Firewall loaded

To Action From
– —— —-
80:tcp ALLOW Anywhere
443:tcp ALLOW Anywhere
22:tcp ALLOW Anywhere
53:udp ALLOW Anywhere

And that’s really all I do…it’s definately not much but it will be enough to get you started connecting remotely.

Windows vs. Linux (Ubuntu)

Internet Browsing
W – Internet Explorer
U – Firefox

Email Clients
W – Outlook, Outlook Express
U – Thunderbird, Evolution

Chat Clients
W – MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, AIM, mIRC
U- Gaim / Pigdin, xChat, BitchX

Com Port Communications
W – Hyperterminal
U – MiniCom

FTP Client
W – Filezilla FTP Client
U – Filezilla FTP Client

Remote Access Servers
W – Terminal Server, RealVNC, TightVNC, WinVNC
U – FreeNX, RealVNC, TightVNC

P2P Filesharing
W – Limewire, Bearshare, Bittorrent
U – Limewire, Azureus

VoIP Clients
W – Skype, X-Lite
U – Skype, Linphone, Twinkle

Drawing / Photo Editing
W – Paint.net, Photoshop, MSPaint
U – GIMP
3D Annimation / Rendering
W – 3D Studio MAX, Blender
U – Blender, Maya

DVD Players
W – Windows Media Player, PowerDVD
U – MPlayer, Kaffine, VLC

MP3 / Music Players
W – Winamp, iTunes
U – RhymeBox, K3b

Office Productivity
W – Microsoft Office
U – OpenOffice.org

Network / Relation Mapping
W – Microsoft Visio
U – Dia

Accounting / Financial
W – Quicken, Microsoft Money
U – GnuCash

Desktop Publishing
W – Microsoft Publisher, Quark
U – Scribus

PDF Editing
W – Adobe Acrobat Professional
U – PDFEdit, pdftk

Imaging
W – Norton Ghost
U – G4u, dd

Partition Resizing
W – Norton Partition Magic
U – GParted

Backup Software
W – Symantec Backup Exec
U – BackupPC, Amanda

Web Servers
W – Microsoft IIS
U – Apache

File Servers
W – Microsoft File Services
U – Samba

Email Servers
W – Microsoft Exchange
U – Postfix, Sendmail

AntiVirus Software
W – Symantec AV, Mcafee
U – ClamAV, AVG

For more of these “like” software lists, please visit what I believe to be the most complete list on the internet, Table of Equivalents.

Home Computer

I have a Panasonic Toughbook laptop running Ubuntu 7.04 that I really haven’t modified too awful much because I like the look and feel of the OS as it is. Here’s a list of things that I use everyday or every so often to accomplish a task without spending any money.

Operating System – Ubuntu 7.04 – Stable, clean, easy to install, based on GNOME and very well supported by the community. I would say that the forums for Ubuntu are better than most and for some reason, the users of Ubuntu are much nicer than that of Red Hat and others.

Blogging – Blogger.com attached to my Gmail account (I do my own hosting)

Firewall - pfSense – I mentioned this a few post’s ago. I absolutely love this firewall.

Document Management – Google Doc’s and Spreadsheets – This one is really neat, you can upload your Microsoft Office Word and Excel files as well as OpenOffice equivalent documents up to Google, edit them, and even save off as PDF documents if need be.

Music – Pandora.com – This site has been around for a little while now, It allows you to basically make your own radio station, and it dynamically learns what music you want to listen to. A side spawn of this project is Squeezebox which allows you to turn your music library into a radio station with streaming music.

Chat – Gaim – It’s easy to use, installed by default on Ubuntu, and supports multiple accounts. On Linux and Windows you can use Pidgin and for Mac OS X you can use Adium.

VoIP – Twinkle – So far this is the best SIP capable client for Linux I have found. You can installed it through apt-get or Synaptic on Ubuntu or download it here. On Windows and Mac OS X I use X-Lite from CounterPath. I would say X-Lite is the best of the two but the Linux version sucks in my opinion.

PBX – trixbox – I just started using this because I’m trying to get my company or rather the company I work for into a new market so that we can make some more money as a company which personally helps me through profit sharing. Though, if I didn’t get that last bit, I would still peruse doing phone VoIP systems because I think they are interesting. I have it installed on an old PIII 500 with 256Mb of ram and it suits the needs of my wife an I just fine. A larger scale deployment would need a better server though.

Email – Gmail and Evolution – I just started using Evolution about a month ago because Outlook Web Access on Microsoft Exchange 2003 sucks when viewed from Firefox. Damn Microsoft. Kidding. Evolution seemed to be a logical choice for me because well, it was already installed on my computer and quite frankly I needed a way to check my mail. Sounds like a match made in heaven. Gmail, as you all probably know, is free and has cool features like web sharable calendars, documents and photos. You will probably see a trend here for me liking everything Google.

I think that’s enough for now. I’ll make a part 2 to this one pretty soon with quite a few more added programs and services that I use everyday for free. Compute free or die.

To get the wireless hardware working with the OS most people recommend NDISWrappers but the easiest and most supported was is to use Synaptic (the package manager) to install bcm43xx-fwcutter which is nothing more than the firmware that the kernel needs to load during the boot process to make the Wireless NIC usable. After installation just reboot and the viola you have a working Broadcom wireless NIC which supports pretty much any encryption method available.

Well, I figured I would dedicate a post to how much I truely enjoy the OS vs it’s or Linux competitors as well as the big Microsoft. The installation disk is easily available via http://www.ubuntu.com where you can either download it or have 1 or more copies sent to you via snailmail (I get 25 because I’m a consultant). On the install CD (not DVD) there are a few cool features that make the product stand out from the rest like a suite of open source Windows apps that can be installed directly from the CD to include Firefox, Thunderbird, Clam AV, and others. Truly unique. Then when you boot from the CD you actually boot to a live distribution where you can either use the live CD to see if you will actually like the or install it to your hard drive via a very intuitive wizard. The wizard asks you a few non technical questions and guides you through the install. You can dual boot with Windows or another OS or just wipe the drive and start fresh.

On a side note, because of how well setup the live CD is, you can actually read and write to the NTFS, FAT or other drive that you have in your computer as a quick and easy disk recovery tool. Still not impressed. Ok, I really haven’t told you very much but for the novice user these fundamental options make the OS very attractive. After you go through the install, you reboot and come up to a login window and then into the operating system. The only thing that my laptop needed done in addition to the OS install is the installation of the Broadcom WIFI card firmware for my specific hardware which was easily done in Ubuntu’s intuitive package manager, Synaptic. Synaptic is a front end for apt-get that makes installing and updating packages a synch.

I usually judge a product by it’s “Out of the Box” features. As for Ubuntu, the OS installs, Firefox, Evolution Mail, Gaim, OpenOffice, graphics rendering software, a photo viewer, a suite a games, and a terminal services client. So in my opinion, it’s already a step ahead of Microsoft. Accessing shares and other network resources is quite simple just like in XP and has a neat feature that saves the user name and password for a particular network resource in it’s password manager.

I plan to do a few more blog entires regarding the use and utilization of Ubuntu in the home, business and corporate environment on both the client and server end of the spectrum. As the OS is still a Linux derivative, it can run Postfix, Sendmail, Apache, MySQL, Spam assassin, and all of the server centric applications that we rely on everyday. Hope you all at least give the OS a try, I’ll have my first Ubuntu “how-to” on here soon for your enjoyment.