Class server
Check your access
Generate your keys
The config file
A note on GitHub keys
Get your config files
Need software?

Class server

To help you do your labs, we have a created a somewhat beefy server to host your virtual networks. You can reach that server at netsec-01.csse.rose-hulman.edu via ssh on port 22. To login, you can use your Rose-Hulman credentials. It is preferable if you set up password-less access via public/private key authorization.

If at any point in time, you feel that the server is unresponsive or running too slowly, please do let me know asap so we can whip up another one and distribute the load between the two.

If you are off-campus, you will need to be on the campus virtual private network (VPN) to be able to access the server. Please see the EIT documentation for how to set up your VPN access.

Check your access

First, try to login to the server and make sure that you are able to see your home directory. To do so, use the following:

  $ ssh user@netsec-01.csse.rose-hulman.edu

and replace user with your Rose netid. If you get a permission denied issue, please email me as soon as possible; we might need to ask EIT to add you to the class group.

If you can login successfully, check your home directory.

  $ echo $HOME

And you should see your home directory look like /home/user/.

Generate your keys

To avoid having to constantly type your password to login, let’s set you up with a public/private keypair for authentication on the server.

Generate a public/private keypair

If you already have generated a public/private keypair for any other purpose before, then you can skip this section.

If not, then do the following (on your local Linux machine, not on the server!).

  $ ssh-keygen

Choose the default directory, and then select a passphrase to protect your key (you can elect to leave it blank if you’d like).

Check that your key exists by reading the public key:

  $ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

You should see a bunch of nonsense show up on your screen.

Copy keys to server

Now, copy your public key to the class server using:

  $ ssh-copy-id user@netsec-01.csse.rose-hulman.edu

If you have multiple keys on your local machine, you might need to specify one to copy. You can use the -i switch with ssh-copy-id.

Now, try to login to the server again using

  $ ssh user@netsec-01.csse.rose-hulman.edu

You should not be prompted for your password again.

The config file

Typing that long-ass server address every time you want to login to the server is tedious. Let’s do better and make it nice.

In an editor, on your local Linux machine, open the file ~/.ssh/config and add the following:

  Host netsec
    HostName netsec-01.csse.rose-hulman.edu
    User username

and replace username in the last line above with your RHIT netid.

This basically let’s ssh know that netsec is an alias for our class server, at port 22, with your username. To verify that you can do things correctly, try:

  $ ssh netsec

You should now land in the class server, in your home directory, without any trouble.

A note on GitHub keys

You will be doing much of your editing on the class server, so it might be worth it to generate a public/private keypair to use with GitHub for authentication. Please checkout the official GitHub documentation for more information, but here’s a quick summary.

On the class server, while logged in:

Use ssh-keygen to generate a new pair of keys.
Use cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to read your public key.
Copy the public key from the terminal window.
Add the public key to the list of ssh keys on your GitHub profile.

Now you can clone your private repositories and push to them from the class server.

Get your config files

Finally, let’s get your vimrc and tmux.conf files on the server. If you already use your own, feel free to customize your home shell as you see fit. If you’d like to use the minimal ones I provide, follow the steps below.

Getting `vimrc`

Get the vim config file and place it in your home directory on your server home.

  $ wget -O ~/.vimrc https://www.rose-hulman.edu/class/csse/csse332/current/assets/files/vimrc

You should be good to use vim.

Getting `tmux.conf`

Similarly, let’s grab the default tmux config onto the server home directory.

  $ wget -O ~/.tmux.conf https://netsos.csse.rose-hulman.edu/courses/netsec/assets/files/tmux.conf

Even better

To keep all of your configuration files in sync, I highly recommend that you take a look at homeshick. It is very versatile tool that allows you to preload your config file on every new machine within a couple of minutes.

Need software?

You will notice that you do not have privileged execution on the server (i.e., you cannot use sudo), and that is for good reason. If you require software to be installed that you cannot compile locally and append to your path, then please let me know as soon as possible and I will investigate our options. If everyone would benefit from the software, then we’ll probably install it server-wide. If it is only beneficial for you, then I will probably work with you on compiling it locally and updating your PATH variable.

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