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In our previous post about customized Linux Distros we got you to a web app for creating customized linux distros based on ubuntu.

Maybe you’re not an ubuntu fan but an OpenSUSE fan..Well we still have another one for you.

Make your way to SuseStudio. It’s my personal favorite.

You get a nice intuitive ajax/jquery powered GUI and interface specifically designed to help you customize your very own openSuse distro.

Although at this moment they are constantly reaching their capacity and the only way you can gain access is by requesting an invitation from them.  As far as I remember it did not take very long (maybe a week or two at most?) to get my invitation.  From then on you can sign in using your google account and others.

Picking Your Purpose

The first part is where you decide what the purpose of your build will be.  Will it be a server?  Will it be a desktop GUI environment?  What are you going to use it for?

These are all the thoughts I had going through my head when I first started customizing my version of OpenSUSE.

You get to pick between Server, GNOME Desktop, KDE Desktop, Just Enough OS or Minimal (for the most part).  Again, this is just a baseline of what your disc will contain.

The rest of the software configuration is up to you later on in the setup of your custom OpenSuse LiveCD or install disc.

You will get to start out on the general configuration tab where you get to choose network settings and have it set as static, DHCP client, and whether or not you want the firewall on by default. as well as default language, keyboard, and time zone.  You will also have a chance to edit the default users.

Root will of course be there by default with a default password of “linux” which should be changed.  You can also add and delete extra users, set their passwords and home directories as well as their groups.

Customize Look

One of the phases that may come next (or later if you don’t care for it much) is to customize the look and feel.

This basically amounts to setting a custom logo and setting a custom wallpaper for it to use by default.

Unfortunately in terms of customization of looks this is pretty much as far as it goes since there is no *desktop theme* customization feature (for now anyways).

Either way the customization is one of the more exciting aspects because you know someone, even if it’s just you, will see it each time it’s booted up.

Appliance Settings

At the appliance tab of the configuration menu you can customize settings as if you were going to run it as a virtual machine.

Select memory size and amounts, add Live installers, VMWare support as well as Xen support.

Startup

Startup configuration is…well, startup configuration.  Although it sounds promising it only allows the configuration of the user modes and whether or not you want it to show a customized EULA.

The EULA part I like as well as choosing which run-level it starts in but I still think it needs some more customization to startup.

The run levels you have to choose from… Single User (1), Multi user / No Network (2), Normal Console (3), and Graphical (5).

The software customization tab is obviously the most useful piece of this entire “distro-generator”.  Add software packages, add programs, add repositories, etc.  It’s all there and it’s all for the adding (or removing).

Software

This of course is the main feature of any distribution authoring/editing/remixing web-app or third party software.

..and alas, the easiest part is building the distro because of course all you have to do now is wait.

You can have it built a few different ways.  ISO format for easy burning, VMDK for virtual machine disk images as a quick loading type (also a good way to test it), a Xen guest or a USB thumb flash drive.

Since there’s a few different ways to have it built it really cuts back on the whole *oh great I have to convert it 4 times* factor.

Building the Image

Also, after it is done being built, you can have susestudio open it in a virtual machine-esque web app for up to an hour.  You can then SSH to it and use the desktop GUI (if required) to check it out and make sure everything is A-OK before you download it.

Plenty of tools out there but OpenSUSE Studio is by far my favorite.

Go sign up for OpenSUSE Studio invites.

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Have you ever wanted to go to Facebook, Myspace or play that game that your addicted to only to find out that it is being blocked by your company or school. What if I told you that you could evade ‘em easily with your own private web proxy and as well be able to securely tunnel your traffic through an SSH session?

How proxies work

In a nutshell, what you’re doing with a proxy is setting up a middle-person between you and the internet. Using the proxy, your browser hands off web page requests to the proxy server, which handles the request and fetches the page for you from the internet. The web site actually thinks the request is coming from the proxy server, not your computer, which is a good way to obscure your originating IP address.
Additionally, the connection between your computer and the proxy happens over SSH, an encrypted protocol. This prevents wifi sniffers from seeing what you’re doing online.

What you’ll need

An SSH server to act as your proxy.
Simple enough really! If you’re using windows I highly recommend freeSSHD (available here). If you’re on a mac check out this page for instructions on how to enable remote logon. Linux users, you should know how to do this.
An SSH client on the computer you’re using.
Mac and linux machines have SSH built right in at the command line. Windows users you can download plink (available here).

How to set up freeSSHd

Double click the freeSSHd installer that you have downloaded to get started.
Click Next -> Click Next (or you can change the default installation directory) -> Click Next (Full Installation) -> Click Next (Start Menu Folder) -> Click Next (Create a desktop icon) -> Click Install (ready to install) -> Wait until installation has been finished -> Click Close
Do you want to run freeSSHd as a system service?” I choose “No” so I can start freeSSHd manually. This is a good security practice because you don’t want to have running applications in the background if you are not using it. Only turn freeSSHd on when the need for remote connections arise!
Click Finish to complete freeSSHd installation. (Duh simple enough even a caveman can do it)
Double click the freeSSHd icon on the desktop to load your SSH server. You can see the freeSSHd icon on your system tray.
Right click on the icon located on the taskbar lower right hand corner and click Settings.
Make sure that the freeSSHd settings page (Server Settings tab) shows that your“SSH server is running”.
Click on the Users tab. You need to create at least one user account that will act as your SSH remote user account.
Click “Add” to create a new user. Fill in the user details, following the example shown below (with your own unique username and password, duh!). Click OK and make sure it appear on the Users tab list
Using the same computer that you install freeSSHd previously, download Putty (available here). Putty is a desktop command line client that you can use to access SSH servers.
Double click the Putty installer to run it. Fill in the details as shown in the diagram below. 127.0.0.1 means that you are testing the SSH access from a local connection.

Press “Yes” on the security alert screen. Insert your SSH username and password that you have created previously.
If you get a Windows command prompt, you have successfully access your SSH server! Congratulations! Woot, Woot!

Start your SSH tunnel

So you’ve got your ssh server setup at your house or workplace. Great! To connect to it we’re going to setup a local proxy server on your client that you’ll be browsing the internet from, which will then “tunnel” web traffic from your local machine to the remote server over SSH. The command to run on your linux / mac client in a terminal window is:
sssh -ND 9999 you@example.comsh
For Windows it’s as simple as browsing to the directory you saved plink to and runningplink.exe
-N -D 9999 you@example.com
Of course, you’re going to replace the you with your username on your SSH server and example.com with your server domain name or IP address. What that command does is accept requests from your local machine on port 9999 and hands that request off to your server at example.com for processing.
When you execute either of those commands, you’ll be prompted for your password. After you authenticate, nothing will happen. The -N tells ssh not to open an interactive prompt, so it will just hang there, waiting. That’s exactly what you want.

Set Firefox to use SOCKS proxy

Once your proxy’s up and running, configure Firefox to use it. From Firefox’s Tools menu, choose Options, and from the Advanced section choose the Network tab. Next to “Configure how Firefox connects to the Internet” hit the “Settings” button and enter the SOCKS information, which is the server name (localhost) and the port you used (in the example above, 9999.)
Save those settings and hit up a web page. When it loads, visit http://www.ipchicken.com to see if it’s using your remote ssh server to tunnel traffic. If you are, you my yell out Woot, Woot! In excitement

Also remember that you’ll need to open your firewall a bit by cracking open port 9999 on your local machine and port 22 on your server for SSH.

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