Control more servers at once – via Putty and PuTTYCS

Have you ever thought about how to control more servers at once? For example, you need to update few or more Linux servers. In Linux, you can use great tool called Cluster SSH, which controls a number of xterm windows via a single graphical console window to allow commands to be interactively run on multiple servers over an ssh connection.

When you’re running Windows, and want to do something like this, you can use great little application PuTTYCS.
Just start your PuTTY sessions, and then start PuTTYCS. Here is how it looks like:

Jovica Ilic Blog

 

Now just type command you need, and click Send. For example, I use it to control my CentOS servers. When I want to update all of them, I just type in here: yum update 

Makes life easier.


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Tunneling applications with TSocks for anonymity using TOR

Have you ever thought how great it would be if you could run your hacking tools for information gathering/scanning/exploiting anonymously from terminal?

Here is one of the ways to do this, even your tools are without options for proxy.

 

You will need TSocks, and Tor installed. Nothing more.
In my BackTrack machine, TSocks is already installed. If you don’t have it, install it first.
After you do this, open /etc/tsocks.conf and edit server_port line, to port 9050 (default Tor port):

server_port = 9050

Then, you need to install Tor. Here you have simply explained how to install Tor. Install just Tor, you don’t need Privoxy.
After configuring tsocks, try to check if it’s working good by using the lynx web browser to connect to a website which will show you your current IP address. So when you want to run your tool anonymously, just add tsocks at the beginning. For example, to run lynx:

tsocks lynx whatismyip.net

If everything works fine, you will get some address from Tor network, and not your private:

 

Just to make sure, run the same application without tsocks:

lynx whatismyip.net

Here is how it looks now, with my real IP address:
lynx - jovica ilic

 

So now, when you are sure that tsocks tunelling works fine, you can run all your nasty tools anonymously. Also, you can start f.e. Firefox and surf anonymously this way, just with typing:

tsocks firefox

That’s it! It’s just one of the ways. Have fun ;)

 


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Oracle PeopleSoft – PeopleTools License Code Problems

If you are installing Oracle PeopleTools or any other Oracle PeopleSoft module on Linux/Unix machine, in console, then it’s possible that you will get into problem with entering valid license code.
When you get to part of installation where it asks you for license code, go to Oracle products license codes.

Find code for software you are installing and enter it. You will get an error that license code is not valid, if you just copy/paste code, or you enter it how it’s shown on Oracle page.

The thing is, you need to remove the “-” from code you are entering. After this, license code will be accepted, and installation will continue. This applies only for Linux/Unix systems.

 

Picture source.


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How To Install and Configure freeNX

If you need to setup GUI access on a remote server system(Linux) and connect to it, you can try freeNX.
This is example how to install and configure freeNX in CentOS 5.

Server installation

On the server you want to control with freeNX you need to do next:

Install freenx using yum:

# yum install nx freenx

Copy minimal configuration file:

# cp /etc/nxserver/node.conf.sample /etc/nxserver/node.conf

Enable PASSDB for NX Database User Authentication pass-through:

Uncomment and change the following line in /etc/nxserver/node.conf

ENABLE_PASSDB_AUTHENTICATION="1"

Add a user account to the nxserver database ( the user account must already exist on the system as a standard linux user account):

# nxserver --adduser <username>

Give the user a password:

# nxserver --passwd <username>

Optional: If your SSH server is not at default port (22), you have to configure this also. So, open node.conf, find line #SSHD_PORT=22, uncomment it, set your port, and save changes.

 

 

Client installation

The NoMachine client needs to be downloaded from their site. Download the client that matches the operating system on your local machine.

http://www.nomachine.com/download.php

After installing the NoMachine client open the NX Connection Wizard.

Enter a Session Name, Hostname or IP of the remote server system, SSH Port number of the remote server system (usually 22), and select your connection type, desktop system and the size of the desktop. In this case, for connection to CentOS, in desktop settings, select Unix, Gnome.

 

freenx - Jovica Ilic blog

 

In order for freeNX to function securely we need to copy the ssh key from the remote server system to the local machines NoMachine client software.

On the remote server system copy the client.id_dsa.key contents (including the —BEGIN— and —- END— lines):

# cat /var/lib/nxserver/home/.ssh/client.id_dsa.key

On the local client system open the NX client software and click on “Configure”:

Under the General tab, click “Key”

Delete the contents and paste in the contents from the remote server system/var/lib/nxserver/home/.ssh/client.id_dsa.key

Now connect using the username and password you created when you configured freeNX on the remote server system.

 

Common Error:

The nx service is not available or the nx access was disabled

The issue with the above error is that you copied the wrong ssh key and most likely followed the process from an old tutorial that told you to copy the key from /etc/nxserver or told you to create your own key. The key you should copy is found at /var/lib/nxserver/home/.ssh/client.id_dsa.key


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