dots and loops

I’ve been using putty/SSH to access my home box for years now.

One thing I’ve never bothered with though, is getting windows networking working. This is something I had always thought would be more trouble than it was worth, but in fact it turns out to be far easier than I anticipated.

All of this information can be found by googling, and I took some of it from an article I found in the de.li.cious top 20 (a great resource for geeks). It assumes you more or less already know about SSH and port forwarding.

We are going to set up a loopback network adapter in XP, and add a local port forwarding on this adapter’s address pointing at our home Windows (or Linux samba) box.

Add Loopback Adapter

1. Go to Add Hardware
2. Click Yes, I already connected the hardware
3. Add a new hardware device (bottom of menu)
4. Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)
5. Select Network Adapters
6. Microsoft Loopback Adapter

By the way, it is possible to add more than one adapter.

Set Up Adapter

Now, it is important to turn off NetBIOS on this interface and Windows file sharing. Do this from the properties tab for the network interface. The NetBIOS settings is sort of hidden. First highlight the TCP/IP stack, hit properties, advanced, and then hit the WINS tab. As a check, use netstat -a to make sure nothing is listening on port 139.

Set Up Putty

The only thing left to do is set up a local forwarding in putty. You can specify the interface to use in putty by using an IP address in the source port field. Normally you just put a port number in this field, but you can use something like 10.0.0.1:139 if you want. Now point the destination at the computer with your windows shares (also port 139).

You should be able to set up a network drive now if you like, or connect to your home share in Windows Explorer. You would connect using \\10.0.0.1\myshare, or whatever address you used for the loopback interface.

http://souptonuts.sourceforge.net/sshtips.htm

Edit: I don’t bother with this anymore. I’ve found Akismet’s anti-spam plugin to be so effective that it’s no longer a hassle to just approve comments manually.

I use a simple comment validation hack on my site as a first defense against spam. The system uses what’s known as a Turing number, named after the mathematician Alan Turing. If you have ever signed up for an e-mail account at yahoo or gone to e-gold’s website, you know what I’m talking about. Here’s how I did it. continue reading

I was sitting hunched and spindly at my computer tonight pondering font clash, tracking and kerning, when something suddenly occurred to me… I am seriously deranged when it comes to fonts.

Simply put, I spend entirely too much time thinking about fonts. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve changed the title font on this site, and the body font. About the only thing I’ve been happy with is the beautiful but strong, perfectly smooth and solid curves of the Verdana Bold font that is used in my banner. Now there’s a font for you. You can take all those fancy serifs and stick them right where the sun don’t shine. continue reading

All comments welcome.

Dots and Loops started off as a personal online scrapbook. The name comes from one of my favorite albums by Stereolab. Sometime in the summer of 2005 I think I found my voice, and it was around that same time I met my current partner. I like to think the sparkling wit and irreverence demonstrated on my blog may have had something to do with that, and she assures me that is true. So, my blog has helped me find true love. No mean feat. continue reading

The shameful history of the Arial font, and it’s sordid connections with MS, is recounted with great acumen by Mark Simonson. You’ll always use the pious and revered Helvitica after reading this. For font junkies only.