Category: Linux

Easily Use Free VPNs From VPN Gate In Linux With These 2 Tools

Below you’ll find 2 tools that make it easy to use free OpenVPN servers from VPN Gate in Linux.In case you’re not familiar with VPN Gate, this is project that offers free VPN servers that are ran by volunteers who use SoftEther. It was designed with the Great Firewall of China in Mind and is sponsored by the University of Tsukuba, Japan.

Source: Easily Use Free VPNs From VPN Gate In Linux With These 2 Tools ~ Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog

Raspberry Pi as a SOCKS proxy and SSH file server Tutorial

A couple redditors showed interest in how I set up my Pi as a SOCKS proxy and recommended I make a separate post as a tutorial, so I’ll do my best to explain everything.

Background

SOCKS stands for Socket Secure, and is essentially just a middle man for a server and client for send information between. The best description I’ve heard of it is “It’s a poor man’s VPN.” It essentially works the same, but each service has to be configured to work with it (i.e. I have Firefox on my Mac working through my SOCKS proxy but not Chrome and Safari). Why would you want a SOCKS proxy over a VPN? From my experience, it runs better on a Pi, and I can also do multiple things over SSH (such as also run a file server). Having to configure each service to run through it can also be a pro or a con, depending on if you want everything to work through it or not.

Basic Overview

There’s really not much to setting everything up; it’s a pretty straightforward process. For those just looking for something short and sweet, here are the basic steps I followed. I’ll go over each more in depth below.

Source: RPi as a SOCKS proxy and SSH file server Tutorial (Reddit/Raspberry Pi)

Your Own Linux..! series on Linux / Unix Shell (Bash) Scripting

Your Own Linux..! recently published a multi-part series on Unix/Linux shell scripting, that would be useful to anyone desiring to write a bash script. The articles are:

Introduction – Linux / Unix Shell (Bash) Scripting

Bash Scripting Variables – Environment and Special Shell Variables

Bash Scripting – Arithmetic, Logical, Relational and Bitwise Operators

Bash Scripting – Arrays with Examples

Bash Scripting Conditionals – if-then-else, if-elif-else, Nested if-else

Bash Scripting – ‘for’ Loop

Bash Scripting – ‘while’ Loop

Bash Scripting – ‘case’ Statement

Bash Scripting – ‘select’ Loop and ‘select-case’ Statement

That’s the complete list as of the publication date of this post (EDIT: Plus a couple of late additions). If you want to check to see if any have been added since then, go here.

Raspberry Pi: Extending the life of the SD card

I realized after posting this that it is a repeat post, but those new to the Raspberry Pi might not have seen the original post, so here it is again:

SD cards are said to have a finite life. If you are planning on running a Raspberry Pi 24x7x365, there are some steps that you can take with GNU/Linux to extend the life of the card: here are some ideas.

Source: Raspberry Pi: Extending the life of the SD card | ZDNet

wattOS Energizes Aging Hardware

wattOS is a stunning example of really great things coming in small packages. wattOS is a lightweight and fast desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS built around the LXDE. It uses the lightweight Openbox window manager as its default user interface. To credit this 8-year-young community of developers with birthing an energy-efficient Linux distribution is an understatement.

Source: wattOS Energizes Aging Hardware | LinuxInsider