Aidan Findlater

Summary: To access a specific list of websites through a specific VPN on Mac OS X 10.6, I created /etc/ppp/ip-up, copied in the script below, and chmoded it executable.
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Aidan Findlater Impersonal mac os x, vpn

In the vein of a recent Reddit thread, I present my desktop.

You can see many of my standard tools sitting quietly in the taskbar.

Aidan Findlater Personal mac os x

Enabling SSH forwarding for X11 in general is easy: you simply put X11Forwarding yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, then SSH into the server with the -X or -Y (as appropriate for you).

However, if you want to be able to SSH in as a non-privileged user and su to become root, you’ll need to do a little more. Adding the following to the non-privileged user’s .bashrc works for me:

# Allows su to use X11
if [ ! -n "$XAUTHORITY" ]; then
    export XAUTHORITY=~/.Xauthority
fi

su passes environment variables to the new shell, so this ensures that applications that use the X server know where to look for the SSH forwarding info.

This manual configuration isn’t an issue with all distributions, but was required for my Debian Lenny box.

Aidan Findlater Impersonal linux ssh x11

My standard setup (on Debian stable/Lenny):

aptitude install unattended-upgrades

cat > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";
^D

cat >> /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50periodic
Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "example@example.com";
^D

It’s as easy as that.

Aidan Findlater Impersonal linux

Was cold. Here are the photos.

Aidan Findlater Personal