Ubuntu Server 8.04 Post Install Tip #1: Auto Updating

On a headless server that you have at home or for testing I like to make sure that all security updates and trivial updates are done automatically. A good sys admin will shy away from this practice for a good reason, updates can mess things up. In a production environment or where the server setup is very complex I can understand the need to manually run updates. For me, well I’m lazy when it comes to my home machines and generally don’t have too complex of setups. Also, in my experience, I’ve hardly ever seen an apt security or trivial update cause any harm (desktop linux I have seen issues though). That being said, I like to force security and trivial updates to happen daily.

GNS3 on Ubuntu 8.04 – Choosing and Using your IOS

As promised here is the post regarding choosing and using an IOS image that will fit your study needs.

If you followed the first post in this series you are technically now ready to start loading up images and making labs of your own. You will need to get your hands on some IOS images (legally of course).But which IOS should you use?

GNS3 on Ubuntu 8.04 – Install Guide

GNS3 is a frontend for dynagen (which is a scripting language for dynamips). Getting it to work nicely in Ubuntu was a bit of a pain in the arse but I was able to get it to work in a manner I’m happy with. This setup will essentially encapsulate a large portion of the install to one directory in /opt. Some libraries and executables will be installed through apt though, but not many. I previously wrote part of a writeup for this on Ubuntu 7.10, I’d ignore that in favor of this one which is much more up to date and polished.

Headless torrentbox with ipblock

As you may or may not know there are a lot of people who seem to be interested in the torrent activities of others. Some just like to track, others are government agencies, and of course the RIAA. I personally don’t like this intrusion into my habits so I do my best to block their attempts. In this small tutorial I’m going to cover how to install torrentflux with ipblock and fail2ban in a headless mode so you can download and seed torrents a bit more securely.