I used pptpd. Nietzsche is running Xubuntu Hardy Heron.

Install

sudo apt-get install pptpd

Add Users

sudo vim /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

The format is:

username pptpd password

Edit pptpd.conf

sudo vim /etc/pptpd.conf

Add lines similar to these

localip 192.168.1.72

remoteip 192.168.1.200-253

localip is the IP for the VPN server. remoteip are the IPs that will be given to the VPN clients. I'm using unused IPs.

Edit pptpd-options

sudo vim /etc/ppp/pptpd-options

Uncomment #ms-dns 10.0.0.1. Change 10.0.0.1 to your DNS server or router

Edit sysctl

sudo vim /etc/sysctl.conf

Add the following lines

net.ipv4.conf.default.forwarding=1
net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding=1

Restart

sudo /etc/init.d/pptpd restart

Your server should be up and running.

For some reason, the hostnames of about every computer were being forgotten by my 2wire router. This is bad because I named my computers for a reason! I didn’t want to memorize IP addresses. The IPs weren’t hard to remember. Its just that memorizing an arbitrary number to a computer that does specific things is hard.

I couldn’t ssh into the servers easily, because I’d have to look up the IP each time rather than just typing in the hostname.

It was a simple fix!

You just have to edit dhclient.conf

sudo vim /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf

Insert this line

send host-name "yourhostname";

Restart the DHCP daemon
I used this command for Hardy Heron

sudo /etc/init.d/dhcdbd restart

I used this command for Jaunty Jackalope

sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart

Your computer should now tell your router its hostname!

We’ve got this old tower from like 2000 if not earlier. Back in 2006 during my junior year of high school, my dad bought my sister and I two Gateway laptops. These laptops were supposed to last us throughout our college careers. My sister caused my laptop to be unusable because she broke the screen by yanking on it–she’s a great sister by the way. No really! Karma finally bit her in the ass; her laptop got infected this summer and she had to get a new one.

I’m back home from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I was an IT major. I’m gonna go to UTEP next semester. That means I have a semester off. I’m bored. There’s unused computers lying around. So yea, I’m making a home network.

Originally, I wasn’t going to do anything really productive with them. But, I’ve been working on my sisters infected laptop trying to rescue all her pictures. My family doesn’t really backup their data and I’m the one who has to pay for it. I decided to take the bull by the horns and just make a file server for everyone to back up to.

The Setup

The two laptops and tower will be the servers. I named my computers after philosophers. I’m a liberal arts person at heart forgive me.

Kierkegaard is the tower. Kierkegaard is a web and PXE server. Nietzsche is my old laptop. Nietzsche will be the file server and I’ll hook up my terabyte external hard-drive to it(him?). My sisters laptop will be Camus. I don’t really know what to do with that one yet.

Voltaire is my PSUbuntu. Voltaire will just play the files held by Nietzsche.

I’ve used my personal laptop to SSH into all these guys and install whatever needs to be installed. But, I do have this Dynex TV will lotsa connections in the back. I used it to see what was going on during Nietzsche’s install and I use it with the Voltaire.

Excuse the mess.

This has been a good experience so far. It feels nice to put my skills to good use. Plus, I’ve got a lot more networking and server experience. There’s more to come too. I’ll probably end up installing a DNS server on Camus.

What makes this ghetto?

Oh, I don’t know…

Is it the loose wires? Is it the cheap rack? Is it the fact that I’ve got all these computers in my messy room?

Its all of that. Plus, did you notice the clip on fan? Scroll back up and look more carefully.

Yea! Yea I’ve got a sweet cooling system. Cross Breeze 2.0!! Since I’m in El Paso, TX the air conditioner is almost always on. If I open up the window behind the rack and turn on the fan, I get a sweet cross breeze going.

So, there it is. My nascent ghetto home network.

Oh, and you may have noticed my record player. Voltaire and the Dynex are essentially my entertainment system. You know how most entertainment systems have nice speakers? Well, my record player has pretty nice speakers. =)

Currently, my tower has Xubuntu Hardy Heron installed. One laptop I can’t touch till I find a way to get into and save the files. The other laptop is problematic because it doesn’t have a working screen or CD drive.

I decided to install Xubuntu Hardy Heron onto the problematic laptop with a thumb drive. My personal laptop is running Intrepid Ibex and its got that “Create a USB Startup disk” option. Problem solved? Wrong!

Did you know that some thumb drives just cannot be booted from? Well, I have one of those thumb drives…

I had two options at that point: I could buy another thumb drive or I could install a PXE server onto my tower and install Xubuntu over the net.

I took the free option…

What is a PXE Server?

PXE stands for Preboot eXecution Environment. That means you can create a server that boots anything over the network. I would be able to essentially boot the install disc from over the network!

Since open source software is awesome, I knew I could google ‘hardy heron pxe server’ and find the tutorials I needed! That proved to be true. There were lots of tutorials, but none of them worked for me. I combined several and got it nearly working. I would get timeout errors, but I knew the server was up and running. I later found an obscure article with a comment that solved the problem!

I’m writing this so you won’t have to go through what I did just to install an OS! Here we go!

Stuff you need

• a server pc (this will be your PXE)
• a client pc (this is what you’re installing on)
• a LAN

Install some stuff

sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server tftpd-hpa tftp-hpa inetutils-inetd 

Download some stuff

You have to download netboot.tar.gz

wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy/main/installer-X/current/images/netboot/netboot.tar.gz

Make sure to change the X in installer-X to your appropriate chip architecture which should be either amd64 or i386.

Extraction and folder prep

sudo tar xvzf netboot.tar.gz -C /var/lib/tftpboot/
sudo chown -R nobody:nogroup /var/lib/tftpboot
sudo chmod -R 777 /var/lib/tftpboot

Configure your DHCP server

You have to edit dhcpd.conf

sudo vim /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf

Change the contents of the file to be:

ddns-update-style none;
default-lease-time 8600;
max-lease-time 74000;
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0{
  range 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.100;
  filename "pxelinux.0"
}

This part is a little weird. I’m running this over a LAN so I just used 192.168. Run

sudo ifconfig

to find out your IP address. You may need to change this file to reflect your network’s setup.

Configure TFTP server

Edit tftpd-hpa

sudo vim /etc/default/tftpd-hpa

The contents of the file should be:

#Defaults for tftpd-hpa

RUN_DAEMON="yes"

OPTIONS="-l -s /var/lib/tftpboot"

Configure inetutils-inetd

Edit inetd.conf

sudo vim /etc/inetd.conf

The contents of the file should be:

tftp    dgram   udp4     wait root  /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s /var/lib/tftpboot

The third parameter must be udp4! This is what was messing up my setup before. Apparently, Ubuntu versions starting with Hardy need udp4. Older versions can get away with udp.

Restart DHCP server and TFTP server

sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server restart; sudo /etc/init.d/inetutils-inetd restart

If your servers didn’t fail to start, you can move on to the next step.
Check the syslog to help you pinpoint any problems.

tail /var/log/syslog

Installation time

Make sure your server and client are connected to the LAN. Boot up your client and change the BIOS settings. You should put PXE, Broadcom, or whatever network sounding think to the top.

If everything is working, it should be up like an install disc. Be sure to change the BIOS settings on the client after install.

Still having issues?

• Is port 69 blocked?