Since Brett recommended openvpn as a way to handle communications with my difficult to access eeePC I have decided to give it a try.
I have installed the Ubuntu openvpn distribution on the eeePC and haven't run out of space which is a good start! :-)
Now I'm a bit lost, presumably I need to install openvpn on my server at home too, that's easy enough, but what next? I can't find any simple 'how to' guides that tell me how to enable communication between the two systems.
My basic need is to have the eeePC out in Belgium start up the connection but then to be able to access that eeePC from the server at home. I've looked at the documentation at openvpn.net but it's a bit overwhelming. Any ideas or reecommendations for 'gentler' ways in would be very welcome.
On Sat, December 11, 2010 20:47, Chris G wrote:
My basic need is to have the eeePC out in Belgium start up the connection but then to be able to access that eeePC from the server at home. I've looked at the documentation at openvpn.net but it's a bit overwhelming. Any ideas or reecommendations for 'gentler' ways in would be very welcome.
My HOWTO should get you going:
On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 09:36:21PM -0000, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
On Sat, December 11, 2010 20:47, Chris G wrote:
My basic need is to have the eeePC out in Belgium start up the connection but then to be able to access that eeePC from the server at home. I've looked at the documentation at openvpn.net but it's a bit overwhelming. Any ideas or reecommendations for 'gentler' ways in would be very welcome.
My HOWTO should get you going:
Thanks, that's just what I need. :-)
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 09:42:16AM +0000, Chris G wrote:
On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 09:36:21PM -0000, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
On Sat, December 11, 2010 20:47, Chris G wrote:
My basic need is to have the eeePC out in Belgium start up the connection but then to be able to access that eeePC from the server at home. I've looked at the documentation at openvpn.net but it's a bit overwhelming. Any ideas or reecommendations for 'gentler' ways in would be very welcome.
My HOWTO should get you going:
Thanks, that's just what I need. :-)
However (!) can I ask a further question or three.....
Having done what it says in the above HowTo what happens next? I.e. what does the VPN actually provide?
When the VPN is up and running and I want to access things on the *client* from the server what do I actually have to do?
On 13/12/10 13:08, Chris G wrote:
When the VPN is up and running and I want to access things on the *client* from the server what do I actually have to do?
Can I ask a perhaps pertinent question? You want the boat to talk to your house, or vice versa. Why? What do you want to access? Email? Transfer files? Weather Station???
You can use a VPN, or you can tunnel over SSH. I think I looked into setting up a VPN once and found it quite complicated compared to ssh, that's why I'm asking! E.g. for my needs I found tunnelling vnc and a email port over ssh sufficient.
Steve
On 13/12/10 21:50, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 13/12/10 13:08, Chris G wrote:
When the VPN is up and running and I want to access things on the *client* from the server what do I actually have to do?
Can I ask a perhaps pertinent question? You want the boat to talk to your house, or vice versa. Why? What do you want to access? Email? Transfer files? Weather Station???
Well I've found the answer to my question on the other two related threads!
IMHO, and it is humble, 'cos I'm a newbie here, wouldn't it have been easier to continue the original email thread and maybe just tweak the subject line as it evolves? Currently there are three threads about what you're trying to achieve; surely, one is simpler?
Or has my mail client failed to display the threads appropriately?
Steve
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 10:07:04PM +0000, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 13/12/10 21:50, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 13/12/10 13:08, Chris G wrote:
When the VPN is up and running and I want to access things on the *client* from the server what do I actually have to do?
Can I ask a perhaps pertinent question? You want the boat to talk to your house, or vice versa. Why? What do you want to access? Email? Transfer files? Weather Station???
Well I've found the answer to my question on the other two related threads!
IMHO, and it is humble, 'cos I'm a newbie here, wouldn't it have been easier to continue the original email thread and maybe just tweak the subject line as it evolves? Currently there are three threads about what you're trying to achieve; surely, one is simpler?
Or has my mail client failed to display the threads appropriately?
I decided a second thread was appropriate though you could argue it should have been a continuation of the first one.
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 09:50:32PM +0000, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 13/12/10 13:08, Chris G wrote:
When the VPN is up and running and I want to access things on the *client* from the server what do I actually have to do?
Can I ask a perhaps pertinent question? You want the boat to talk to your house, or vice versa. Why? What do you want to access? Email? Transfer files? Weather Station???
You can use a VPN, or you can tunnel over SSH. I think I looked into setting up a VPN once and found it quite complicated compared to ssh, that's why I'm asking! E.g. for my needs I found tunnelling vnc and a email port over ssh sufficient.
I want to run some monitoring (e.g. temperature measurement, maybe a web-cam) on the boat. I want to be able to see the results when I'm at home. By default I would expect the boat end to send me the results automatically and/or show them on a web page, but I also want to be able to get (ssh probably) access to the boat system so I can check/configure it remotely.
I have some of the monitoring already running on the boat, I'm running OWFS and there's a cron job that reads the temperatures from the 1-wire bus once an hour. It even E-Mailed them to me for a while after I left but after 24hrs or so it stopped. Sice I can't yet ssh to the system on the boat I can't fix that until I return there.
Basically the 3-G connection on the boat only allows connections to be started from the boat to the outside world. It seems that in addition to my NAT router on the boat there is another similar type of 'thing' operated by the telephone provider (Mobistar) between the WAN side of the router on the boat and the internet. Thus any sort of way of connecting to the boat must be tunneled through a connection that is actually started from the boat. Given that the 3-G connection comes and goes somewhat there must be some automatic means on the boat system for re-establishing the connection if it dies.
.... so, as I said, once I have the openvpn set up working with the eeePC on the boat being a client and the server being on a machine here at home - what can I do with it?
My basic need is to be able to 'see' things on the client from the server, i.e. I want to be able to connect to the web server running on the eeePC and I want to be able to make an ssh connection to the eeePC so I can manage and configure it. How would I do these things when the vpn is working?
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Chris G -
Martin A. Brooks -
steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk