Hyperterminal for Vista

Another reason why I hate vista..

Cant find hyperterminal. Where the hell has it disappeared ? Later found that Vista doesnt have hyperterminal with it, nor does it have a replacement/similar software which comes bundled, atleast not in my first and second look for such a thing. But good news is that there is a free personal version of the original hyperterminal still available for free download. You can find it here..

Update: There is no personal edition of hyper-terminal for free now.

http://www.hilgraeve.com/htpe/download.html

I made best use of tera term recently and it works fine in Vista.

The "http_proxy" environment variable - Setup proxy setting in a linux machine.

If you need to use proxy server to access http/https from a linux machine in the office LAN, set the environment variable http_proxy. This will allow wget and python's urllib modules and other applications (yum, apt-get etc) to use this environment variable and access http/https using the settings assigned to the variable http_proxy.

The below would be the ideal way of assigning values for http_proxy variable.

$export http_proxy="http://<proxy-server-ip>:<port>"

I have added this to my ~/.bashrc so that I don't have to export this variable every time I reboot my machine !

And then there is the "ftp_proxy" .....

Tweaking airtel ADSL Modem (Beetel 220BX ADSL2+)

I wanted my computer behind the beetel 220BX adsl modem (Provided by Airtel) to be visible for outside world. Basically for hosting a counter strike server and for webserver. I searched all the config details in the webUI given by the 220BX, but I was not able to spot a setting with which I can do a port forwarding or NAT. Then i started searching the net with google. The first search query ("beetel 220BX virtual server configuration") I entered returned me the url "http://blogs.broadbandforum.in/airtel/?p=9" in the first row. I should be more than lucky, the page says how to access the hidden page in the router, the "main.html" which gives a lot more advanced configuration options and I found exactly what I was looking for. So I am happy, the blogger should be happy as he was able to help yet another needful soul.

~Happy Ending~

Linux PPTP VPN client configuration

It is faily easy to install the packages needed and hand configure the pptp client for a linux server. The pptp server is a windows 2003 server running RRAS. How ever from my experience what was more difficult is configuring the firewall to let the pptp traffic go through. Here is what I did to make a connection from Linux PPTP client to the RRAS.

• Installed pptp-linux
  
  
  
  • Optionally you can install pptpconfig which will make life easier with the client configuration part. For that You have to add the below source to your sources.list "deb http://quozl.linux.org.au/pptp/pptpconfig ./"
  
  
  
  


• Collected the server details needed
  
  
  
  • PPTP Server Name - vpn.yourdomain.com
  
  
  • VPN User Name - user1
  
  
  • VPN Password - passw0rd
  
  
  • Connection Name - vpn1
  
  
  
  


• Edited the file /etc/ppp/chap-secrets to add the line "user1 PPTP passw0rd *"


• created a file /etc/ppp/peers/vpn1. Entered the configuration details as below.

pty "pptp vpn.yourdomain.com  - -nolaunchpppd"

name user1

remotename PPTP

require-mppe-128

file /etc/ppp/options.pptp

ipparam vpn1

With this the configuration finished. You can start the tunnel by issueing

• 'sudo pppd call vpn1' or 'pon vpn1'.


• for debug info try 'sudo pon veveo debug dump logfd 2 nodetach'

To stop the pptp tunnel, do a "sudo pkill pppd". You will be able to see the connection status/details in "/var/log/messages"

For me this much was easy. This didnt worked for me straight away. Fair enough, then after a long search I could find that pptp to work through my Juniper Netscreen (ns25) firewall, opening tcp port 1723 is not enough, I should allow the "GRE Protocol" (protocol 47) pass through. I added a custom service for GRE and then everything was working fine.

I am planning to implement a linux SSL vpn server later when I get time. But anyway only after learning the advantages and disadvantages of the SSL VPN.

Little trick in the user account details of Active Directory

registered the dll file acctinfo.dll for extra information for a user. Did the following

 "regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\acctinfo.dll"

This creates a new tab in the user properties called "Additional Account Info"

I find it useful to check when a user has last logged in to the server. Since none of the windows users login to the domain in my office (they dont believe in windows AD stuff nor do I find it worthwhile as there are convinence and double the troubles at the same time.), I use this to findout when some one has logged into the pptp vpn (RRAS) last and I can tell my manager that those who claimed to be working from home are not working and indeed they use the company laptop for entertainment purpose ....

when you wanted to set up a quick cvs server

follow the below link. I got a cvs server up in 5 minutes. Cant get faster than this can you ?

http://home.wanadoo.nl/cwdegier/cvs.html

Python, Bash yesterday's date

I wanted to get yesterday's date in a neat way for my backup scripts (bash). I found out a simple solution for the same pretty easily.

date -d "-1 day" +%d%m will give me the yesterdays date.

date -d "-1 month" +%d%m will give me date one month previous.

Here is what you do in python for the same.

>>> import datetime
>>> today = datetime.date.today()
>>> today
datetime.date(2008, 3, 20)
>>> yesterday = today - datetime.timedelta(1)
>>> yesterday
datetime.date(2008, 3, 19)
>>> monthbefore = today - datetime.timedelta(31)
>>> monthbefore
datetime.date(2008, 2, 18)
>>>