Barebone Ubuntu 14.04 Cloud Desktop

Since I have found some issues with my previous LXQT setup in real-life work I decided to fall back to standard Lubuntu for my cloud desktop. As part of this I also switched to TightVNC which seems a lot easier to configure. Add local user account adduser USERNAME adduser USERNAME sudo Install Lubuntu Desktop sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends lubuntu-desktop tightvncserver TightVNC Configuration sudo vim /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf # # VNC Server configuration # # enabled = True if VNC connections should be allowed # port = TCP/IP port to listen for connections on # [VNCServer] enabled=true port=5900 width=1366 height=768 depth=24 sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm restart Connect to the remote system ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 -i /path/to/your/aws/keyfile.pem YOUR.EC2.IP.ADDRESS   If you are using a Chromebook then this article might help.

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Accessing your cloud desktop from Chromebook

One of the main reasons for setting up a cloud desktop is that I tend to use a lot of different devices some of which are not very powerful. One of my favorite devices of late has been a HP 11 Chromebook. I originally bought it for a new employee and wanted to check myself how this thing stacks up to do day-to-day computing tasks more efficiently than a standard laptop without all the headaches of running Windows (viruses, endless driver installs, bloatware, malware, ...). We already have several people at work working exclusively from Chromebooks and they absolutely love them. Long story short - I ended up keeping the Chromebook for myself as it's an absolutely great secondary device for me. I can carry it with me everywhere (doesn't weigh much more than a tablet, roughly the same size as a tablet & has a keyboard and is so much more useful than a tablet). Initially I was using it more as a secondary device, but lately I have been thinking that I will not even take my main notebook at all for travels. The problem with this is that I do (sometimes - very infrequently) need access to software not available on such a limited device. Accessing your Cloud Desktop via SSH (I know there seem to be people allowing direct VNC access - but that is just asking for trouble) is highly recommended. I also use RSA keys instead of password authentication. Copy SSH Private Key (generated…

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Installing Poptop (pptpd) VPN Server on CentOS 6

For roaming mobile clients PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) is still the quickest way to get VPN connections to tunnel traffic over a secure link. Installation I always prefer installation via a yum repository as this will ensure patches are applied during regular system updates sudo rpm --import http://poptop.sourceforge.net/yum/RPM-GPG-KEY-PPTP sudo rpm -Uvh http://poptop.sourceforge.net/yum/stable/rhel6/pptp-release-current.noarch.rpm sudo yum install ppp pptpd -y Configuration Note: replace $USERNAME and $PASSWORD with actual values IP configuration echo "localip 192.168.0.1" >> /etc/pptpd.conf echo "remoteip 192.168.0.100-199" >> /etc/pptpd.conf DNS configuration echo "ms-dns 8.8.8.8" >> /etc/ppp/options.pptpd echo "ms-dns 4.2.2.1" >> /etc/ppp/options.pptpd Authentication configuration echo "$USERNAME pptpd $PASSWORD *" >> /etc/ppp/chap-secrets Firewall config service iptables start echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf sysctl -p echo "iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE" >> /etc/rc.local iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE service iptables restart service iptables save chkconfig iptables on Start ppptd chkconfig pptpd on service pptpd start

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