I first must apologise for not blogging for ages, I have no excuse other than laziness!
I recently created a new server at home and install Ubuntu 9.10 Server on it. As a consequence all the SSH keys I used to access my old server were lost and I needed to add them back again….one at a time from each machine I use to access it.
Although this does not seem a big deal, the method I was using previously was as follows:-
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh <user>@<host>
'dd of=.ssh/authorized_keys oflag=append conv=notrunc'
Although this worked fine, I was catching up on my Linux reading and in Linux Journal #184 (August 2009) another reader Mark K. Zanfardino wrote in withe following more simplified command which works great on Ubuntu:-
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub <user>@<host>
This is not only easier to remember, it also checks that the key being added doesn’t already exist on the server! Brilliant!
I have been meaning to write about NASLite for sometime now but for some reason I have never got around to it. NASLite is a Network Attached Storage (NAS) Operating System that is designed to make it simple to turn a computer into a dedicated file server running SMB/CIFS, NFS, AFP, FTP, HTTP and RSYNC protocols.
This was my very first encounter with a Linux based operating system and what a pleasant one it was. Server Elements have done a fine job in creating a NAS application that simply works. They come in various flavours depending on the hardware and protocols you wish to run on. I personal use NASLite-2 USB which boots from a 8MB USB memory stick!
Although NASLite is not free it is reasonably priced and is a easy way to convert an old computer and lots of hard disks into the NAS storage device of your dreams!
Over the years I have upgraded my hardware and am now the proud owner of a 1.5TB RAID5 NAS server. The hardware is as follows:
- ASUS A7v266-E Motherboard
- 1.4Ghz Athlon Processor
- LSI Megaraid 150-4 SATA RAID Card
- 4 x 500GB HDD
- 768MB RAM
- Netgear GA311 Gigabit Ethernet Card
This is relatively high spec compared to what I have run before, so if you have an old computer in your loft then dust it off and give it a try!