Linux Tips and Tricks

Configuration

Download and install the Cisco vpn Client. im using vpnclient-linux-x86_64-4.8.02.0030-k9 at the time of this article.
(if u need it send me an email). unpack, and install in my installation i opted out of the option for starting as a daemon so i start it manually everytime.

mnk0@tree:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/vpnclient_init start

Using my PROFILE.pcf file

Then we can copy our Cisco VPN Profile over to the profile directory.

mnk0@tree:~$ cp PROFILE.pcf /etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Profiles/

Now we are ready to connect to our connection. Note we dont add the .pcf extension to the profile we’re going to use

mnk0@tree:~$ /etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient connect PROFILE
Initializing the VPN connection.
Contacting the gateway at 4.23.45.21
Contacting the gateway at 4.23.45.21 (balancing)
User Authentication for PROFILE...
The server has requested the following information to complete the user authentication:
Username [mnk0]:
Passcode []:
Authenticating user.
Negotiating security policies.
Securing communication channel.
Your VPN connection is secure.
VPN tunnel information.
Client address: 10.10.10.46
Server address: 4.23.45.21
Encryption: 256-bit AES
Authentication: HMAC-SHA
IP Compression: None
NAT passthrough is active on port UDP 4500
Local LAN Access is disabled


Exiting

When we are ready to exit, just hit CTRL+C on your terminal session, and shutdown the daemon.

mnk0@tree:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/vpnclient_init stop
mnk0@tree:~$ Done

Ok, so this weekend i decided to take the plunge and get myself a nice new box! I decided to go with Intel Core 2 Duo e5200 , and an Asus P5QL-E mother board, so anyways got everything mounted up and just installed Ubuntu Ibex 8.10 .. so now i wanna see what the temperature ratings are, and this is a snap with Ubuntu.

Open up a terminal and type
sudo apt-get install lm-sensors sensord

After installation of those packages we have to setup our sensors with our cpu
sudo sensors-detect

you’ll have to actually type Yes for all the next part, which is just asking about loading modules and drivers, for your cpu

So after all that we’ll have a little bit of editing to do, sensors will come up and tell you that you need to make some changes to /etc/modules, and will give you a snippet to paste into the file

sudo gedit /etc/modules

and then paste the code into the bottom of the file, for example this is what mine said

# Chip drivers
coretemp
#


Reboot and your all set, open up a terminal and type sensors to see your core temps! if you want to be real slick type watch sensors .. so you can watch the updates in the core temps every 2s .

Want to quickly set the route for your machine from the terminal.

Start by opening up a terminal window, and type the following, just make sure you have the ip address of your gateway to do so. In this case the gateway of 10.3.156.1 is being used.

route add default gw 10.3.156.1 eth0

We can see our changes by typing

route -n

Setup

Ever want to access a windows share from your terminal? Well using ‘ mount ‘ and cifs/samba this is a snap.

Make sure you have smbfs/cifs support, on ubuntu linux distributions you can simply type
apt-get install smbfs
Now we need to make a directory on our hard disk where we can mount our windows share.
mkdir /mnt/location

Mounting Windows Share

Now we\’re ready to mount the filesystem on our newly created directory (/mnt/location).

Mount with cifs
mount -t cifs //server-ip-or-name/share /mnt/location -o username=user,password=pass,domain=DOMAIN
Mount with smbfs
mount -t smbfs //server-ip-or-name/share /mnt/location -o username=user,password=pass,domain=DOMAIN

Clean Up

When finished with our windows mount, we should exit the directory, or close any windows that are accessing it, and then unmount the Microsoft Windows NTFS share by using the following series of commands.

cd /; umount /mnt/location