Re: Remote admin of intermittently-connected machine?
There was just an article in _SysAdmin_ magazine about almost exactly what
you're asking for. The author used it to e-mail commands through a
firewall, but it would be easily adapted.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J Perrin - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin
Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
clists@perrin.socsci.unc.edu * andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu
On Wed, 29 May 2002, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote:
> Since I set up a Debian/GNU Linux box for a couple of friends, I find
> myself having to administer it remotely. Which is OK, as I did install
> ssh on it.
>
> But the box is only connected to the internet via a pay-as-you-go
> dial-up connection. And: I only want them to be connected to the
> internet when *they* like it (it's their phonebill after all). Which
> probably doesn't always coincide with when I want to log in and do
> things.
>
> So, this weird scheme occured to me: It is possible to do *some* of the
> admin via email? (not TCP/IP over SMTP/POP3...) I'm thinking something
> along the lines of being able to email commands to the box (GNUPG signed
> and encrypted of course), and have it email me back the output (again,
> signed & encrypted). Similar to at(1), but remotely and via email.
>
> This won't work for interactive commands, but *should* work for the
> basics (i.e. "apt-get --download-only --yes install so-and-so" etc.)
>
> Writing something like the above is fraught with caveats and security
> holes, so I'd rather not write the lot from scratch.
>
> Has anybody else been in the same situation? What was your solution?
> Ideas and comments are welcome!
>
> --
> Karl E. Jørgensen
> karl@jorgensen.com
> www.karl.jorgensen.com
> ==== Today's fortune:
> If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
>
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: