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Linux: PrivateInternetAccess Using OpenVPN and Squid Proxy – Part 1

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series PrivateInternetAccess Using Squid Proxy and OpenVPN

PrivateInternetAccess Using OpenVPN and Squid Proxy – Introduction

This series of articles describes how to set up a VPN connection to PrivateInternetAccess using OpenVPN and squid proxy to share the VPN connection and overcome the 5 device limit on the PIA account.

We will be using:

  • Debian Wheezy netinstall ISO
    • webmin – to configure our server
    • OpenVPN – to create our VPN connection
    • squid proxy – to route specific traffic or applications through the VPN

Our network diagram for this example is as follows:

The client is sitting on the 172.16.16.0 network and accessing the proxy in the DMZ 192.168.101.0 subnet. Outgoing traffic will then be routed out through the VPN interface (tun0) encrypted and anonymised.

This series is organised as follows:

  1.  Installing Debian using the netinstall method and making sure we have the correct software installed
  2. Configuring squid proxy
  3. Installing and configuring OpenVPN to connect to the PrivateInternetAccess VPN
  4.  Final words

Enjoy and comments welcome!

 

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WordPress: Unable To Create Directory Error

This article describes how to securely fix the wordpress “Unable To Create Directory Error”

This is a general permissions error and may be uncovered in a variety of situations; the most common of these is when trying to upload images:

“Unable to create directory /wp-content/uploads//. Is its parent directory writable by the server?”

There are many various articles about this error and horrifically, a lot of them advise fixes which are glaring security holes and can / will lead to compromise of the web server.

They look something like this: “Change permission of directories to 757 or 777” – doing this allows anyone on the internet to upload write files to your directory!!!

Here is the secure solution:

  1. Check to see which user & group the apache web server runs under. This information is held in the /etc/apache2/envvars file and you can view it as follows:

    Apache RUN Vars

  2. Create the directory in question if necessary – note: it may already exist:

    Create uploads Directory

  3. Change the group ownership of the directory to the group apache runs under – in this case  you can see that the group is “www-data”:

    Change group permissions

  4. Assign write permission to the group for that directory:

    Change Group Permissions

Job done!

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WordPress: Dashboard Icons Not Displaying Correctly

This article describes how to fix the issue of the admin bar and dashboard icons not displaying correctly.

This can be down to may different things and will affect many sites, not just wordpress.

The first thing to do is to check the afflicted site in all of your browsers.

  1. Are you using Firefox?
  2. Does the site display correctly in Internet Explorer?
  3. Do you use the NoScript plugin?

If the answer to all the above is “yes” then read on – salvation is at hand!

In my attempts to stop Firefox gobbling up 25% and more of my CPU on a regular basis, I looked at blocking some unwanted things like flash etc. and I performed some tweaking of the NoScript Firefox plugin settings, specifically under the “embeddings” tab. In my quest to claw back my CPU cycles I applied the restrictions to whitelisted sites as well as the untrusted sites – in my mind it shouldn’t have been an issue but it certainly was!

 

Noscript Plugin Settings

Make sure that this box is unticked – this solved the problem in my case. Other resources dealing with firefox are listed here and may help you with your issue if the above does not; as with everything IT-related, your mileage may vary – good luck!

Websites look wrong or appear differently – Mozilla

Page displays as gibberish – Mozilla

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