The Debian Administrator’s Handbook

Just  in case you have missed the big news : The French reference handbook covering Debian system administration, written by Raphaël Hertzog and Roland Mas, has been translated into English and released as the Debian Administrator’s Handbook.
The book teaches the essentials of Debian system administration while trying to be as accessible as possible.
The translation of the book was accomplished by the authors themselves, with the help of a successful crowdfunding campaign. 

Read it online.  
Get the book (as paperback or as ebook).
Download the sources and contribute.
Install in Sid ( debian unstable ) :  

apt-get install debian-handbook

Openvpn With Hide My Ass

A VPN encrypts your internet traffic and lets you establish a secure connection over the non-secure Internet. This is especially useful when connected to insecure networks such as public WiFi hotspots. Once connected to a VPN server your online identity will be masked behind one of the anonymous IP addresses provided by the VPN service provider, which is a handy tool to virtually reside in another country . Also censorship and internet restrictions imposed by your internet service provider or government are bypassed. After examining some VPN providers, I went with Hide My Ass . HMA provides multiple protocols to use including OpenVPN ,PPTP and L2TP .
See this list of protocols : http://www.ivpn.net/pptp-vs-l2tp-vs-openvpn.php .

Choose openvpn rather than pptp. Openvpn with TCP connects over port 443 and traffic is indistinguishable from normal HTTPS traffic, making it very difficult to block.

In order to get your connection working do the following : ( as root ) :

apt-get install openvpn curl

After going to http://hidemyass.com/vpn I choose an one month subscription, created an account and paid.
All VPN plans include a 30 day money back guarantee making your purchase risk free.
After login on their website, you can download their software : linux.zip .

Move linux.zip into a folder HMA inside your home directory :
mkdir ~/HMA
mv linux.zip ~/HMA
cd ~/HMA
unzip linux.zip
Archive:  linux.zip
  inflating: keys/ca.crt            
  inflating: keys/hmauser.crt       
  inflating: keys/hmauser.key       
  inflating: client.cfg             
  inflating: hma-start              
  inflating: README.txt
Make hma-start executable :
chmod +x hma-start
If you don't use sudo change line 10 in hma-start which reads sudo openvpn client.cfg into su -c "openvpn client.cfg" .
Inside the folder HMA :
./hma-start -l   will give you a list of the available servers.
./hma-start "Country, Name" This command will connect you to the selected server.
e.g. UK, London (LOC1 S1) :
 ./hma-start "UK, London (LOC1 S1)" :
Password : ( enter root's password. )
Thu Dec  8 22:57:22 2011 OpenVPN 2.1.3 x86_64-pc-linux-gnu [SSL] [LZO2] [EPOLL] [PKCS11] [MH] [PF_INET6] [eurephia] built on Oct 22 2010
Enter Auth Username:  ( enter HMA username )
Enter Auth Password:   ( enter HMA password )
......
.....
.....
Thu Dec  8 23:00:51 2011 Initialization Sequence Completed

Now you're connected ! Check your ip before and after connecting by just entering the searchterm ip in google.com .
Stop the connection not by closing the terminal, but with Ctrl+C.
More options see : http://forum.hidemyass.com/index.php?/topic/2503-yet-another-hma-script/ .

If you like to use a GUI :
apt-get install network-manager-gnome network-manager-openvpn-gnome network-manager-pptp-gnome
 .......
.......
.......
Setting up network-manager (0.8.1-6+squeeze1) ...
Reloading system message bus config...done.
Disabling interfaces configured with plain DHCP in /etc/network/interfaces so that NetworkManager can take them over
Auto interfaces found: lo eth0
iface to disable = eth0
Disabling interface: eth0 ... done.
Starting network connection manager: NetworkManager.
Setting up network-manager-gnome (0.8.1-2) ...
Reloading system message bus config...done.
Setting up network-manager-openvpn (0.8.1-1) ...
Reloading system message bus config...done.
Setting up network-manager-openvpn-gnome (0.8.1-1) ...
Setting up network-manager-pptp (0.8.1-1) ...
Reloading system message bus config...done.
Setting up network-manager-pptp-gnome (0.8.1-1) ...
Now reboot !
After login you will have the network-manager applet in your gnome-panel .
We will need the HMA server's .ovpn files :
Go to :  http://hidemyass.com/vpn-config/ and download vpn-config.zip ( at the bottom ) .
Move  vpn-config.zip to your folder HMA inside your home directory and unzip it.
Now click the applet and choose VPN Connections > Configure VPN...
Choose the VPN tab and then Import. Navigate to the HMA folder and choose one of the .ovpn files. ( e.g. Germany.Dusseldorf.ovpn )

Enter your User name and Password and click Apply.
Click the network-manager applet and choose VPN Connections > Germany. Dusseldorf.
A window will pop up :

Enter your HMA password and choose Save password in keyring....
Now you're connected !
Switching servers is very easy and fast and the connection is very stable. Speed was a bit slower than with my own ISP ( UPC, Amsterdam ), depending on the distance of the server.

My own ISP :

Germany.Dusseldorf

Netherlands. Rotterdam

USA.NewYork.NewYork_LOC2S6

Free Sample Of The Debian Administrator's Handbook

Thanks to all the donations the first goal of the fundraising campaign has been reached : the English translation of the French best-seller known as Cahier de l'admin Debian, written by two Debian developers—Raphaël Hertzog and Roland Mas will happen. A sample chapter was just released, it deals with the APT family of tools: apt-get, aptitude, synaptic, update-manager, etc.

Go get it here... http://raphaelhertzog.com/files/2011/11/chapter-apt-rh.pdf

Update Dec 2 : see : http://debian-handbook.info/

Google: What Do You Love?

http://www.wdyl.com/# 
WDYL, short for What Do You Love, is a service from Google which lets you search the web for images, blogs, maps, news, videos and it also shows the popularity of the term you're searching for, and more.

Protecting Data Communication : Encryptyourmessages.co.uk/

Just came across this website I'd like to share with you : http://www.encryptyourmessages.co.uk/


You probably sit behind your PC, connect your machine to the Internet, open your e-mail program, start your instant messenger application, read your messages, reply to them and browse the web... But, have you ever you wondered how much data could be collected on you? This website has the purpose to inform you on the technical and practical aspect of this subject. You will also find tutorials explaining how to protect your personal data transiting on the Internet.


Some additional links worthwhile reading :
(1) http://www.rossde.com/PGP/pgp_encrypt.html
(2) http://www.youdzone.com/signature.html
(3) http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/index.htm
(4) http://www.garykessler.net/library/crypto.html

Dropbox For Linux Now Provides Debian Packages

I've been using nautilus-dropbox ( version 0.6.7-3~bpo60+1) from Backports for awhile, but it seems that the website of Dropbox provides Debian packages as well ! Just go to : https://www.dropbox.com/downloading?os=lnx and download nautilus-dropbox version 0.7.0.

See also :http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=46448

N: Ignoring File *.save In Directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' As It Has An Invalid Filename Extension

Just recently apt-get update started throwing errors which read:

N: Ignoring file 'google-chrome.list.save' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
....
....
....
N: Ignoring file 'google-musicmanager.list.save' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension

Looking inside directory  /etc/apt/sources.list.d/  I saw a number of files which ended with .save, which were not there before since my last apt-get update.
Apparently they are some sort of backup files, because the content of file foo.list.save is the same as file foo.list.

Following fix will work and next time you apt-get update these former notices won't be shown :

su -c "echo 'Dir::Ignore-Files-Silently:: \"(.save)$\";' > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99ignoresave" 

I recently installed software-properties-gtk and update-notifier, and I suspect one of these packages to generate these files with the .save extension.....