ssh

Introduction

If you run an important server such as web server you should of course take regular off site backups. Now everyone knows that backups are a total pain to do manually and more often than not get forgotten. However, using linux cron you can automate this task easily and be more confident of your ability to recover should anything go wrong with your server and you need to restore. If you have a decent connection speed at your home or office you can program a QNAP 109 NAS (network attached storage) to take care of this important task for you.

Using the plug-in modular nature of PAM we can get a linux server to use RADIUS to authenticate users connecting via SSH. This guide tells you how to setup a Centos 5.2 server as your Radius "client" and Juniper Steel-Belted as your radius server authentication "server". We are going to use the pam_radius_module from free radius to provide the mechanism of authenticating ssh logins against a radius box.

For this example my environment consists of

A centos 5.2 radius client called "cyclone"
A Steel-Belted Radius server is called "turbo"
A username of dave