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Building VPN Connections from any Windows client against IPCop running Zerina is actually very straightforward. Doing that from a Ubuntu client is a little bit tricky since ubuntu’s network manager cannot handle Zerina’s .p12 (pkcs) files.

• Install network-manager-openvpn using synaptic
• I know it’s not linux style – but do a reboot know – just to insure that all services are running. I had no success with the next steps without rebooting. Or I’ve been too lazy searching for the services that needed a restart.
• Download the .p12 file from IPCop or ask someone to do it for you.
• Now you have to extract 3 certificate files out of your .p12 file.
  
openssl pkcs12 -nocerts -in (filename).p12 -out userkey.pem
openssl pkcs12 -nokeys -clcerts -in (filename).p12 -out usercert.pem
openssl pkcs12 -nokeys -cacerts -in (filename).p12 -out userca.pem

  Or download that script and call it with pkcs2certs.sh your-username.p12 and it’ll create the required files for you.
• Now place the files into your vpn configuration and make the settings match your zerina configuration (cipher, compression etc.)

Caps-Lock is (IMO) the most useless and annoying key. Since there doesn’t seem to be a GUI way for disabling just type the following in a terminal:

xmodmap -e “remove lock = Caps_Lock”

In order to make these changes permanent open your ~/.bashrc using

sudo nano ~/.bashrc

and add the line above

The Kerio Mailserver is a great thing when accessed via Outlook from Windows. When it comes to Linux Clients it get’s a little bit tricky but it can be done.

I’ve setup the email client Thunderbird with its addon Lightning for Calender/Tasks

1. Email via IMAP
   Simply specify your Hostname and Username/Password
2. Calendar/Tasks via calDAV
   Add a new network calendar using calDAV with the address

   http://<hostname>/calendars/<domain>/<user>/Calendar

3. Adressbook via LDAP
   Create a new Adressbook with LDAP
   Name: Your name but can be whatever you like
   Adress: your server’s hostname
   Base-DN:  fn=ContactRoot
   Port: 389
   Bind DN: your emailadress
   The only Drawback is that this Addressbook will be read-only

I’m a proud owner of a quite outdated but otherwise extremly reliable Palm Treo 680. For software testing reasons I require a network connection from my Palm to a Ubuntu 8.04 box using bluetooth. Continue reading »

When installing the Dovecot IMAP Server on Ubuntu its certificate is only valid for a short time.
You can create a new certificate by issuing:

openssl genrsa -out server.key 1024
openssl req -new -x509 -key server.key -out server.pem -days 1826
sudo mv server.key /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
sudo mv server.pem /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
sudo /etc/init.d/dovecot restart

Continue reading »