User:Mroach

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mroach
Image:Title-permabanned.gif
Name Michael roach
Location New England
Occupation Computars
School Not any more.

Contents

Macs

Mini

I bought a Mac Mini right 'round the time they came out. I bought it in the store so i got the "Ultimate" edition which got me the 1.42/512/80GB/SuperDrive/AirPort/Bluetooth configuration. I then upgraded to 1GB of ram after much beachballing, that helped. After more beachballing, I upgraded the hard drive to a 100 GB 5400 RPM Seagate. Being a PowerPC and inherently underpowered, it still beachballs as if that were its primary function. It has been relegated to being my kitchen computer so I can read the news while I'm waiting for my toast to pop or whatever.

MacBook

I have a black MacBook. 2GHz/2GB/80GB/Superdrive/etc. I rather like it except for how it runs at 70º - 80º C.

My Post-Install

Software

System Preferences and settings

  • Make Terminal pretty
  • Enable SSH
  • Enable Apache
  • Enable FTP
  • Enable Samba
  • Show file extensions (Finder > Preferences > Advanced)
  • Don't show network locations on the Desktop
  • Switch to UK locale and change £ to $ so I get proper date and time formats.
  • Move the Dock to the right and anchor it to the bottom using TinkerTool
  • Enable FileVault

PAC Files

I use PAC on my workstations because my IP addresses are most likely on an SA watch list and I'm sick of getting accounts banned. What the PAC does is tells my browser to use a proxy server depending on circumstances. My PAC is very simple, you can get very fancy with them. Check out the resource below.

Resources

Workstations 

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {

  var isSA = dnsDomainIs(host, "somethingawful.com");

  return (isSA) ? "SOCKS 192.168.10.63:1080" : "DIRECT";
}

Laptop

My PAC file differs for my laptop because obviously I can't use a home machine while on the road, so I just create my own tunnel with PuTTY or SSH in Cygwin. It's pretty safe because I'll never reach SA on a direct connection. 

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {

  var myip   = myIpAddress();
  var isHome = isInNet(myip, "192.168.10.0", "255.255.255.0");
  var isSA   = dnsDomainIs(host, "somethingawful.com");

  var homeProxy = "SOCKS 192.168.10.63:1080";
  var awayProxy = "SOCKS 127.0.0.1:1080";

  return (isSA) ? ((isHome) ? homeProxy : remoteProxy) : "DIRECT";
}

Creating a local SOCKS proxy using SSH

Manual SSH tunneling for SOCKS 
ssh -v -N -p 22 -g -C -c 3des -D 1080 username@domain.com

-N disables interactive shell

-g enables LAN access to your SOCKS proxy

-p 22 is redundant if you're using the standard SSH port

-C turns on compression

-c specifies the crypt method, which in this case is 3des

-D tells ssh to create a SOCKS proxy on the specified port, in this case it's 1080

-v is verbose output. It helps debug your SOCKS client apps if you're having trouble

Putty equivalent 
putty -N -P 22 -C -D 1080 mroach@someserver.domain.com

Notice some unsupported options were removed, and port specification was moved to the end of the hostname. If you want to spare yourself a PuTTY window, use Plink.

Setting up key authentication for SSH

It's really quite simple. First you create a public/private key pair for your client machine if you haven't done so already by using ssh-keygen. Then, I scp the public key to the remote server. Then, ssh to remote machine and add it to authorized_keys. Subsequent connections to that remote server won't require a password. 

ssh-keygen -t rsa
scp ~/.ssh/id.rsa.pub mroach@remote.destination.net:~/.ssh/id.rsa.pub.mymac
ssh mroach@remote.destination.net
cat ~/.ssh/id.rsa.pub.mymac >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
rm ~/.ssh/id.rsa.pub.mymac
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