Posts Tagged linux

pptp

March 20, 2008 at 12:17 pm · Filed under linux ·Tagged , , ,

I have to interact with a lot of Windows systems, so pptp is the norm.  I’ve often tried to configure IPSEC but to honest, I’ve never made it work!  I read up on it, understood it in theory and then sat down to try again.  But heterogenous systems (Linux, my router, their router, etc.) all seem to present a different set of incomprehensible options with different names.  In the case of the routers, add questionable documentation.

Anyway, I just discovered the networkmanager-pptp plugin.  First, I installed network-manager-pptp and pptp-linux.  You need to make sure that your wired interface is configured to roam, otherwise you will not see the options for VPN configuration.

After that, I configured my VPN but couldn’t work out how to make the option appear to connect to it.  After some Googling, I found the answer:-

sudo /etc/dbus-1/event.d/25NetworkManager restart
sudo /etc/dbus-1/event.d/26NetworkManagerDispatcher restart

I suppose a reboot would have done it but I like to avoid those!

Now, I can just click and connect instantly.  Very neat!

Leave a Comment

MS SQL Server with Linux

March 10, 2008 at 4:29 pm · Filed under linux ·Tagged , , , ,

I was wondering if this is possible, and it seems that it is.  I am using Ubuntu 7.10.

First I installed unixodbc and tdsodbc packages.  Then I mainly followed the instructions here starting at the “Configuration” part.  These were the key, because in my ignorance I tried editing odbc.ini directly and was also looking at /etc/freetds/freetds.conf which I don’t think is actually used when running with ODBC.

I can now use:-

isql <dsnname> <username> <password>

…and get a console to type arbitrary SQL in.  I tried using OpenOffice.org’s oobase, and although it connects and shows me a list of tables, it can’t seem to query any of them due to malformed SQL.  I’m not sure where the problem lies, but I was just experimenting.

Ideally I’d like to find something a bit like SQL Server Management Studio Express as a front-end, because I use that a lot.  I run a work site hosted on ASP.NET with a MSSQL backend, and I often have to run raw SQL to get around the lack of proper admin pages because the lazy developer (i.e. me) hasn’t written them yet.

While browsing package lists, I spotted mention of GNOME Data Access (gda) which has a freetds backend, so I will check that out too.

More links:-

Leave a Comment