[NBLUG/talk] Home Linux Server

[Walter Hansen]

> Hey Guys,
>
> I recently came across an old hp desktop, and I have decided to finally
> solve one of the problems my family has had for awhile: No place to back
> stuff up to.
>
> So I figured I would install Linux on this server, set up a samba share,
> all
> no problem. But here comes the difficult part, and something I could not
> find any answers to.
>
> You see, I am a college student, and the server is behind a Linksys router
> around 250 miles away. So my issue is, what is the best way to set up the
> server so I can ssh / ftp into it. (ftp is so my dad can use it from
> work).
> What do I need to change so I can access this server from the internet? I
> assume I'll need to open some ports on the router and forward them to the
> server and then I need something to deal with the dynamic ip, I've heard
> this is possible, but never really found a good answer or implemented it.
> I
> own a domain I could hook up to it, if someone wants to suggest how to go
> about that.
>
> Finally, Is this legal? I guess this should really be the first question I
> should ask, but where would I find out whether or not I can even put my
> server on the net?
>
> Any help or at least a few tutorials to look at, that would be great. I am
> at the moment using Ubuntu, and google hasn't turned up much newer than an
> article on how to do things with RH8, and the article sucked too :p
>
> Anyway thanks in advance,
> /Nat Welch
> PseudoWeb.net
>
> p.s. sorry for being long winded ;)


Yes, of course it's legal. The dynamic IP is a problem, but there are
hosting companies that will deal with this for you, or so I've heard.

I'd set up OpenSSH and use that for shell and ftp service. FTP itself is a
very unsecured thing in this day and age. I'd recommend a program called
WinSCP to transfer to and from computer. To get to the computer from the
internet you're going to need to forward a port on the router. If you use
OpenSSH it's only one port (22) and fairly easy to set up. Real FTP is
kinda a pain to route ports to, it' needs two or more ports.

You'll need to assign the server a hard address on you're local network,
probably 192.168.0.200 or something like that. You just configure the
server for the address and then configure the router to forward port 22 to
the same address.

At that point you can transfer files or log in from the outside internet
so long as you know the ip address you're currently using. In my
experience they change them once every couple months, but this may vary.
You could even do something like have a little script on the server that
emails you once a day with the current ip address. I'm pretty sure that
could be done by using a traceroute, but I see it's not returning the
internet IP of my router.

Hmmm. Perhaps others might know an easy way to do that. The thing is you
could probably just get the ip address semi manually and then connect
without even messing with dynamic DNS services.

-- 
This would be real cute NSFW tagline, but I'm married and would get killed.