I’m always looking for ways to improve on my LAN, especially when it’s free. A friend suggested DNS caching to speed up browsing. I gave it a shot and was impressed with the results. I’m now saving at least 70ms for every DNS query (after it’s been cached the first time of course.) The installation is pretty simple, and takes only a couple of minutes. I’ve logged what I have done getting it running on an Ubuntu 8.04 machine:

Notes before starting: I didn’t need much for this system setup. The machine has a P4, with 512mb RAM. The NIC was only 100mbit, and the hard drive only 40GB. I chose a box to install this on that isn’t pegged with other processes. I don’t think you need to dedicate a whole box to this project if this is for a small LAN (mine is ~10 machines), but one that isn’t constantly being used for network tasks would be a good idea (not much of an incentive to run DNS locally if it doesn’t speed up the response time.) These are just my recommendations, and it will vary depending on the size of your LAN on what you would like to setup. There are many variables differ based on your setup.

As stated before, for this installation I’m using Ubuntu 8.04. I installed the server edition, but eventually installed the ubuntu-desktop packages, because I like having the GUI when working with experimental servers. Obviously, using the ubuntu-server edition will slim the machine down and be much more efficient.

1. Open Synaptic package manager and search for “dnsmasq”. Install both packages shown by right clicking “Mark for installation”.

2. Navigate to System > Administration > Networking to open the network configuration for the machine.

3. Click on the tab “DNS”. This is the list of name servers for the machine. You can keep the original name servers in the list but press “Add” on the side and add in “127.0.0.1″, and make sure it is at the top of the list. For your secondary name servers you may want to consider moving to opendns versus using your local ISP’s.

4. Once your 127.0.0.1 entry is at the top of the list you may press OK to exit the menu.

5. To start/stop/restart dnsmasq service use the following commands:

/etc/init.d/dnsmasq start
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq stop

You will most likely need to restart the service after installation and the changes you’ve made. This will also let you the service is starting correctly.

6. Now it’s time to make sure it’s working. Type the “dig” command with the website of your choice and pay attention to the query time. The first time the DNS entry will be cached, and so the second time you try the dig command on the same site the response should be significantly lower. The format is $dig WEBSITE

Another way of testing is enabling logs to syslog so that each query will be logged. You can enable logging by removing the # at the line #log-queries in the file /etc/dnsmasq.conf You will need to restart dnsmasq for changes to take effect. Syslog can be viewed from System log viewer, or any text editor. After verifying that everything was working correctly, I added the # back into the config file so that it no longer logged queries.

7. After you’ve tested all is working correctly, make sure you change the primary DNS server on the client machines to the IP address of the server you have been working on. Here are pictures that show the primary name server being changed to the local machine just setup for DNS. The examples are for Ubuntu 8.04 and Windows XP:

So that’s it. Hopefully this speeds things up for you as it did for my LAN. Thanks for reading.

Network Attached Storage has become increasingly popular the last couple of months. Interest has only grown more since apple’s release of Time Capsule which is a NAS device that also has the capabilities to create incremental backups of computers on the network. NAS can be very useful for any home network with a lot of media. It also places less load on other computers on your home network. Being a technician I hear countless times how all the client wants is pictures from the machine and some home videos, etc. All of this media can be moved to a NAS device so that if a system goes down all can still be accessible from another machine quickly. Backups are also essential in that equation, but it can easily be achieved with an external Seagate drive or countless others. What I would like to discuss today is the use of this free NAS software (with TONS of features for sharing media) to get media shared in less than 10 minutes. This may be extremely useful at LAN parties for those trying to share content to one another (perhaps the latest 600mb patch of Battlefield 2!) Also, this method allows the computer to run the NAS software without disturbing the original OS. Just like any other linux live CD, FreeNAS (freeBSD based) has features that lets you boot from a CD or USB drive. If you need more information on NAS devices to see all the possible uses check out the wikipedia entry.
There are many different configuration options for getting it all up and running, but I will go into detail about that which I found to be the fastest. A few things to note before going through these steps:

-you do NOT need to remove all partitions on the machine you intend to setup as a NAS device. You may if you want to, but it doesn’t really matter unless you are performing a full installation or would like more storage space. You can leave everything intact, and there will be NO changes to the OS if you follow steps as I direct. If you stray from the path you could easily end up formatting the drive, but there are warnings before this would happen as well so don’t worry too much.

-you will need to know how to burn ISO’s onto a CD, just like any other linux distro.

-you do NOT need a lot of technical experience to get it up and running if you just follow this guide. Though the more knowledge you have about your computer hardware the better.
-you do NOT need know how to use linux, or BSD, or even know what they are. If you have hardware problems any time throughout this tutorial you could always hop over to the support forum and someone should be able to help you get on the right track.

-for default setup to work without changes you will need to already have an address such as 192.168.*1*.25. The *1* being the key factor there. Some routers by default are setup on different ones such as 192.168.0.1. It depends on the network.
Alright lets jump right into things. I will explain it step by step as all my other tutorials.

1. Download the ISO here and burn it to a CD.

2. Place the CD you just burned into the drive and boot up. You may want to have your keyboard and monitor hooked up to the machine to make sure your CD ROM drive has 1st boot priority. If it does not, simply go into your BIOS and change the boot order (there should be a button to hit such as F1, DEL, or F10).

3. Your CD should start booting the software automatically. Within about

2 minutes (if there are no errors) it should boot up for you and show the splash screen. You can press Enter and configure options (such as machine IP or connection to use such as wired or wireless) but it is up and running at that point. Note: the only thing your computer actually needs plugged in in the back is power and the data connection (which you would need none obviously if it is wireless).

4. On another machine on the same network open up your browser of choice and type “http://192.168.1.250″ into the address bar. This is the default HTTP control panel for FreeNAS.

5. Hit enter and you will be prompted for a username and password. Default username = admin. Default password = freenas.

6. Hit enter and you will now be at the main page. This is a status page and can give you some basic information about the system. Lets navigate to the left hand side and go to Disks > Management.

7. On the lower right side there is a + in a circle for you to add drives for it to recognize. Click to continue to the next screen.

8. You will need to choose your Disk (make sure and do NOT select your CD ROM drive) to setup. Find your hard drive on the list. Also make sure you select the format type of your drive (if the drive has windows installed on it you will choose NTFS. Click “Add” once completed. Repeat this process for any other hard drives installed in the machine if any.

9. Hit apply changes on the Disk Management screen. It should say “the changes have been applied successfully. If it does not you most likely made a mistake when configuring the disk.

10. Go to the Disks > Mount Point menu on the left side of the window.

11. We are now going to create a mount point for the drive. Click the button on the lower right to continue.

12. Choose your configured disk under the “disk” drop down menu and make sure you select Partition type 1. I’m going by the assumption that most users are going through these tasks with an NTFS formatted drive. Go to the drop down and select NTFS. Name and describe the drive as you wish (note that it is limited on the types of characters, it may be that it only allows spaces, numbers, and letters.)

13. Press the “Save” button and click “Apply Changes” on the following screen once you have configured all of your drives. If it says that all changes have been applied successfully the hard part is over and it is configured. Now we are going to verify, and setup a means by which your files are accessible over the network.

14. Go to Status > System on the left hand side. Look at the “Disk space usage” box at the bottom. It should show your configured drive there along with how much space has been filled on the drive. If all is there then the drive is configured properly and is reading correctly under FreeNAS.

15. For the sake of saving time I am going to assume you do not want any security on this box for the time being and will allow anonymous connections for sharing. You may configure them if you wish in the Access > Users and Groups menu. Lets go to the Services > CIFS/SMB menu on the left side.

16. Once in the menu you need to first enable the sharing service to run by clicking the checkbox in the upper right hand with the text “enable”.

17. Click the “Save and Restart” button at the bottom (note: this will just restart the service, not the computer).

18. After changes have been applied, go to the top and click on the “shares” tab.

19. Click the + button

20. Create a share name and comment. You may leave path blank. All other options should be okay by default. Hit the “Save” button and the “Apply Changes” button on the next screen.

21. Now close out of your browser and just open “My Computer”. Replace the text in the address bar to “\\192.168.1.250″ and hit enter. You should see your share listed below as a folder. Open and view, edit, save, delete your files just as if it was a locally connected drive.

Now a few closing notes. There are a lot of options we left blank, a lot of thing we could have changed with this system. Spend some time messing around with it, just be carefull of the “Format” menu. Because this is a live boot all changes you make will NOT be saved once the computer is powered down. You will need to reconfigure all of these settings as we have in this tutorial. After doing it a few times this should only take 5 minutes or less to reconfigure in the future. FreeNAS can also be installed as a full or embedded install. I will not cover this today but may in a future entry. If you are having any difficulties throughout the setup process head over to the support forum for help. Hope this gets you going on creating a NAS device for free.

This is an in-depth tutorial covering the simple act of setting up Remote Desktop in 7.10 and forward the ports on your router so you may access your ubuntu machine from anywhere. I find this handy when in a different city and needing to access a file on my local network. I merely plug my USB thumb drive into the computer, run my portable Ultra VNC Viewer, and connect. I also use it to work in Linux instead of windows (because it is setup to the same screen size as my laptop. I just full screen the VNC connection and work in ubuntu; however I do have to stand connection issues).

So I will go slowly and step by step through this procedure as well. 7.10 makes it EXTREMELY easy to get it up and running, so you should be able to get it up and running in 5 minutes or so.

1. Boot up ubuntu of course and login.

2. As shown in the picture, on the ubuntu menu, go to System > Preferences > Remote Desktop.

3. This will bring you to the Preferences window. Check “Allow other users to view your desktop”

4. Check “Allow other users to control your desktop” if you want the user to be able to actually control the mouse and keyboard once logged in. If you are merely letting people login to view your desktop then you can leave it unchecked.

5. Uncheck “Ask for confirmation”. If you have this checked it will make a confirmation window popup every time a user tries to connect remotely. The local user will need to allow them to connect before they can begin their remote session. If there is no local user to confirm this, and you are on a trip and forgot to uncheck it… you sir are SOL.

6. Check “Require the user to enter this password” and enter in the password in the text box below. The remote user will be prompted to enter this password before they are given access to the remote machine. This is a MUST. Otherwise, anyone who connects to that address will be able to control your machine remotely as they please.

7. Click the close button to close the Preferences window. Your remote connection is now setup for your LAN and you may access that ubuntu machine from any other pc on your network without port forwarding.

For those of you familiar with port forwarding, don’t bother reading the next section because it’s merely a step by step. Basically, forward a port of your choice to port 5900 for the ubuntu machine you are setting Remote Desktop on.

8. Now for some simple router changes. First, we are going to need to gather some information. The gateway and the IP address of the ubuntu machine. This is easy to find out. First, lets open up our network connection by going to System > Administration > Network.

9. Click on the connection type you are using. In my case I am using a wired connection. I would suggest using a wired connection if you are planning to routinely use this machine remotely because it tends to be a lot more reliable than wireless.

10. This will bring up a window with your connection settings. If you are using DCHP then you can’t gather much from this. I recommend switching over to Static IP address (but beware, that this must be enabled in your router, but is usually already enabled by default). I’m not going to go in depth with a lot of router settings, so if you have questions about functions such as router access or static configuration, Google it!

11. Write down the IP Address of your machine, and also the Gateway address. We will need this soon.

12. Open up a web browser and type in http:// and your gateway after. For example http://192.168.1.1 this should bring up the login screen.

13. You should be able to login now. Make sure you have permission to edit your router. If you have another LAN administrator, check with them before logging in and making any changes.

14. This is a part that is different for everyone depending on your router type and model. I am using DD-WRT on a crappy wireless router. All you need to do is go to the section regarding port forwarding.

15. Once you navigate to this section, we have a port to add (to allow the outside connections to this computer on your LAN). The default VNC port is 5900. Your router may have different names for some of this, but it all should be relatively similar. My example is listed in the picture below. So, let me explain what it all means.

Application: A brief description of what you are forwarding so that you can quickly reference it. I just named it ubuntu because I know that port 5900 is VNC so I don’t need to know the application.

Port from: this is the port the machine not on your LAN will try to make a connection from. It is suggested to make it something that is not the normal 5900 because this is a dead giveaway for attackers. I just made this one 8000. (Be careful, some ports are reserved for certain applications, so if you aren’t sure, Google the port before you choose for sure).

Protocol: TCP and UDP. Can’t remember if VNC needs both, so just go ahead and click both.

IP Address: this is where you will enter in the IP address you previously wrote down. This tells the router what machine to make a connection with.

Port to: set this to 5900. This is the port that the remote desktop application will connect on.

Enable: obviously we want to enable this.

16. After making the necessary changes, you will need to save the new settings, and most likely restart the router for it to take effect. It is a good idea to log back in and make sure the settings saved correctly.

17. Alright, so now you have setup Remote Desktop on your machine, and forwarded the port on your router so you may access from the outside. So, how do you connect? Well… this is a complex question. It really depends on your connection, and if you are on a residential where the external IP changes every few hours or days. If it does then you will need to find a solution such as NO-IP that sets a name while it tracks changes in your IP, and changes the name to that. I won’t go in depth with that so ill just post this link if you need more information. http://www.no-ip.com For a temporary test, lets just use www.whatismyip.com

18. Copy paste your external IP (given from the link above) and :port number into your vnc viewer and test. For example 12.35.33.58:8000 will be your connection if “12.35.33.58″ is your external IP. NOTE** you cannot connect to your external IP from a machine in your LAN. You must test from a computer outside of your network for it to work. After all, this is what you set up the port forwarding for.

19. At this point, if you have a successful test, you are setup and good to work remotely on your ubuntu machine. If you cannot connect, you may want to check that your IP has not changed, and go through our configuration process once again. If you have any simple questions you may refer to the ubuntuforums (which has great user support) or try googling some troubleshooting options.

Whew, that was a little more in-depth than I wanted to get with this simple procedure, but I do want to give as much detail and help for new users as possible. Hopefully this helps one or two of you. Please check back for further Ubuntu 7.10 user tutorials in the near future.

Here is the VNC Viewer I use and enjoy. RealVNC is decent as well. http://www.uvnc.com/