| Author: | Francesco Poli |
|---|---|
| Contact: | invernomuto@paranoici.org |
| Version: | 0.24 |
| Copyright: | Expat license |
| Notice: | Copyright (c) 2007-2026 Francesco Poli Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. |
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In another document (HTML, reST) you saw how to configure the desktop environment on our example Debian testing workstation/desktop box. Now that you have a nice desktop, you can install and configure some useful network clients and servers.
The network should have been correctly configured during the installation process. You should just check that the first (IPv4) part of the /etc/hosts configuration file is:
$ head -n 2 /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 $HOSTNAME
where $HOSTNAME is the name that was previously chosen for the machine.
Some clients to access external services (the SSH client has already been installed and configured).
We want the clock of our machine to be as accurate as possible. Install the following minimalistic service:
# aptitude install systemd-timesyncd
or, if it was already present, mark it as manually installed:
# aptitude unmarkauto systemd-timesyncd
Install a good IRC client:
# aptitude install weechat-curses
and install its enhancement scripts:
# aptitude install weechat-scripts
Please note that some scripts require support for a given programming language (some require package weechat-python, or weechat-ruby, or weechat-lua, or...): you should ensure that the appropriate support package is installed (possibly along with needed language specific libraries), if you want to use one script.
If you need to connect to VPNs, you may find the following client useful:
# aptitude install openconnect
If you need to connect to Fortinet VPNs, you may issue the following command (as root):
# openconnect --prot=fortinet -u $VPNUSER $VPNSERVER
where $VPNUSER is the user name for the VPN on the $VPNSERVER server. Or you may want to install a specific client:
# aptitude install openfortivpn
and prepare a configuration file:
# cat > /etc/openfortivpn/$VPNNAME << EOF host = $VPNSERVER port = 443 username = $VPNUSER EOF
and then issue the following command (as root):
# openfortivpn -c /etc/openfortivpn/$VPNNAME
Servers are needed to provide services to other machines (the SSH server has already been installed and configured).
Now you have some useful network tools installed and configured. Next step is configuring the system for e-mail handling. More details in a separate document (HTML, reST).