Before you start.

Give your network unique addressing, this ensures that there will be no conflicts when you are out and about at the local cafe or hotel hotspot (addressing like 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.1.1 should be avoided because they are comonly used by almost everyone) I have used 10.73.75.0 for my network and all its devices. My physical server (Debian) has a static ip address of 10.73.75.101. I have selected the 10.8.1.0 range for the virtual network that my VPN will create – once again i have selected this range because of its uniqueness.

Now use this detail to write a simple VPN config as below so you can refer to it later.

My OpenVPN Network Settings

Dyn-DNS address: put yours here E.g. myoffice.no-ip.net (i dont have a static IP address so i use DynDNS service)

VPN Port: 1194

Physical Server IP: 10.73.75.101 sub: 255.255.255.0

VPN Virtual network: 10.8.1.0 sub: 255.255.255.0

VPN Server IP: 10.8.1.1

VPN Type: Routed

Copy the easy-rsa directory to another directory to prevent overwrites during package upgrades. I copy mine to /etc/openvpn.

cp /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa/ /home/user/openvpn/conf???? or put them all in a folder called mysslcerts or similar

Change to the new directory and initalise the PKI
cd etc/openvpn/easy-rsa
#. ./vars

# ./clean-all

Next Generate the Master Certificate Authority Certificate and Key

#./build-ca


You will see the following, follow the prompts and answer the questions.

Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key
………………………………………………….++++++
…………………++++++
writing new private key to ‘ca.key’
—–
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter ‘.’, the field will be left blank.
—–
Country Name (2 letter code) [KG]: **
State or Province Name (full name) [NA]:********
Locality Name (eg, city) [BISHKEK]:***

Organization Name (eg, company) [OpenVPN-TEST]:***************
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:********
Common Name (eg, your name or your server’s hostname) []:*********
Email Address [me@myhost.mydomain]:********@gmail.com

Next Generate the Private Key for the Server

#./build-key-server server

You may get error messages here if the information entered is not identical to that of the above step. If sucessful you will recieve a message like

Certificate is to be certified until Aug 19 2017.

Sign the certificate? Y

1 out of 1 certificate requests certified, commit? Y

Generating Certificates and keys for 2 clients. This stage is very much the same as above.

./build-key client1

./build-key cleint2

Using client numbers is a good idea as each Common Name must be unique.

Next Build the Diffie Hellman Prameters for the VPN Server

#./build-dh

Next copy the below files to the clients from /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys to /home/user/.

The files you will need to copy to each client are shown below (e.g. client1)

ca.crt – this is required for all server/clients

client1.crt – The certificate for client1 machine

client1. key – The key for client1 machine

CREATING CONFIG FILES FOR SERVER AND CLIENTS

Edit the example server.conf file found in:

/usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/

and edit it so that the location matches where your ca.crt and other server keys are stored (e.g. /etc/openvpn/) However you may wish to make a directory called /etc/openvpn/certkeys or similar and give it mode of 644

to backup and compress your home directory to /tmp

$ cd /home
$ tar cfvj /tmp/backup.tar.bz2 $USER

The first command changes the directory to /home, where all users’ home directories are located. Next, tar takes four options: ‘c’ to create a new archive; ‘f’ to act on a file; ‘v’ to produce detailed (verbose) output; and ‘j’ to produce a bzip2-compressed archive.

Dump – why God himself says you should not use it.

Linux administrators should be aware that dump is not considered a good way to back up a Linux system, and dump doesn’t support the HFS+ filesystem in Mac OS. RedHat officially deprecated dump in RedHat 9, and the following quote from Linux Torvalds sums up the Linux community’s attitude towards dump:
“dump simply won’t work reliably at all even in 2.4.x: the buffer cache and the page cache (where all the actual data is) are not coherent. This is only going to get even worse in 2.5.x, when the directories are moved into the page cache as well. So anybody who depends on dump getting backups right [on a Linux system] is already playing Russian roulette with their backups. It’s not at all guaranteed to get the right resultsyou may end up having stale data in the buffer cache that ends up being “backed up”…. dump may work fine for you a thousand times. But it will fail under the right circumstances. And there is nothing you can do about it.”
You will have to make up your own mind on whether or not dump is right for you, but apparently dump isn’t the best way to back up a Linux system.
dump and restore are available on Mac OS, but they work only with the UFS filesystem. There is no hfsdump for the HFS+ filesystem, and I know of no plans to create such a tool.

Linux based Faxserver (Hylafax) with cross platform client.

How Hylafax Works

Hylafax is comprised of 3 deamons: faxq, hfaxd and faxgetty.

When a facsimile is received, the faxgetty process usually invokes the bin/faxrcvd command

The default notify command is a shell script that sends a mail message to a well known user, the FaxMaster, but one might also, for example, automatically spool the document for printing.

Finally, the hfaxd process supports a event monitoring facility that can be access via the faxwatch(8C) program. This facility permits clients to register interest in various events and receive ‘‘realtime notification’’ when such events occur on the server. Using this facility it is/should-be simple to construct applications that do things like monitor modem status and use

Ancillary command scripts used by the server programs faxq(8), faxsend(8), pagesend(8), and faxgetty(8) are located in the bin subdirectory

Recommended hardware

External Class 1 fax/modem connected via com port 1 (ttyS0)

Installing

apt-get install rmail sendmail hylafax-server

Initial Configuration

1. # faxsetup

Each Hyla FAX server machine must run the faxsetup(8) command prior to starting up Hyla FAX server processes. faxsetup verifys that the Hyla FAX software has been installed correctly and that any parameters that were specified at the time the software was built are appropriate for the system

1. #

Customise Your Message Dictionary (optional).

HylaFAX can now send emails in your native language! It presently supports:

English, Polish, French, Italian, Portugese, Spanish and German

Example: When you receive an email it will say it has come from The HylaFAX receive Agent” you can change this by editing the following line to something like “My Faxserver”

DICTRECEIVEAGENT="The HylaFAX Receive Agent";

# vim /var/spool/hylafax/bin/dictionary

Communicating with Hylafax Server

You can communicate with Hylafax vaia Telnet or FTP Protocols (see a list of command shell commands below).  Most commonly client software will be used, and is avalible for *unix, mac and windows The following packages work well.  Windows:  Mac:  Linux:

Important Files and Directories

Receive folder: /var/spool/hylafax/recvq

Spool Directory: /var/spool/hylafax

/var/spool/hylafax/FIFO

for submitting the job

Redirecting all faxes to an email account

1. Open the faxrcvd script for editing ( /var/spool/hylafax/bin/faxrcvd ).

2. Locate the following sections and change the values

FILETYPE=pdf

SENDTO=your@email.address.here.

See real snip of faxrcvd file below

# Permit various types of attachment types: ps, tif, pdf

# Note that non-ASCII filetypes require an encoder.

# pdf requires tiff2ps and tiff2pdf

#

FILETYPE=pdf

SENDTO=trent.murray@gmail.com

3. Save your changes and restart the Hylafax server deamons with the following command

# /etc/init.d/hylafax restart

Common Commands

faxstat -s : displays the status of the facsimile server and any jobs queued for transmission

faxstat -r : displays the status of the facsimile server and any documents waiting in the receive queue on the server machine      faxstat: shows summary of fax status

faxq is the central queueing agent for Hyla FAX . One (and only one) faxq process is normally running at all times. faxq is responsible for scheduling, preparing, and initiating outbound facsimile jobs (and potentially other types of jobs as well) Not usually invoked by user

# faxstat

HylaFAX scheduler on wutang: Running Modem ttyS0 (95437654): Receiving from ""  # faxstat -r HylaFAX scheduler on wutang: Running Modem ttyS0 (95437654): Receiving from ""  Protect Page  Owner        Sender/TSI  Recvd@ Filename -rwxrwx    1  1000                    Sat05PM fax000000002.tif -rwxrwx    3  1000                      10:40 fax000000004.tif -rwxrwx    3  10                        16:02 fax000000005.tif -rwxrwx    2  10                        17:44 fax000000007.tif -rwxrwx    4  10                        19:28 fax000000008.tif -rwx---    9* 10                        20:33 fax000000009.tif  above we can see 9* which means nine pages received and still going.  The * indicates the fax transmission is still active.

FIFO.<devid>

fifo for communicating with a faxgetty process

/usr/sbin/faxinfo

command that prints information about received facsimile

/usr/sbin/faxquit

command to force server to quit

bin/faxrcvd

faxd command for handling newly received facsimile

bin/mkcover

faxd command for generating continuation cover pages

bin/notify

faxd command for doing user notification

bin/pollrcvd

faxd command for delivering facsimile received by poll

bin/ps2fax

faxd command for converting P OST S CRIPT to TIFF

docq/doc*

documents available for transmission

etc/setup.cache

server setup file created by faxsetup

etc/cid

caller id access control list

etc/config.<devid>

configuration data for <devid>

etc/hosts.hfaxd

hosts that may submit jobs for transmission

etc/tsi

fax machine receive access control list

etc/xferfaxlog

log of facsimile sent and received

info/*

data base of remote fax machine capabilities

client/*

FIFO special files created by client processes

config/*

prototype configuration files used by faxaddmodem

log/*

session logging records

recvq/fax*

received facsimile

sendq/q*

descriptions of jobs queued for transmission

doneq/q*

descriptions of jobs that are done

status/*

server status information

tmp/*

temporary files created when submitting a job

archive/*

database of archived jobs