Double NAT port forwarding with a Fortigate

If you are unfortunate enough to have to deal with double NAT on your gateway then you might know the troubles surrounding portforwarding or VIPs. Here is a quick how to guide for setting up a port forward on a Forgate where double NAT is inplace. Case Study – Plex port forward Plex is a great tool for managing your personal media collection and it gets even better when you enable a port forward to let you access this collection from anywhere in the world. Whilst Plex ahve made a number of changes to allow you to reach your contect via a relay server, the best way to access your content from outside your LAN is by using a port forward. ...

February 23, 2019 · 1 min · Tom

Debian 9 - Running a python script at boot

There are a number of ways that you can run a python or bash script at system start but I am about to show you possibly the easiest way, using crontab. First you need to make that your script is executable and can run unattended. Then you need to login as the user your wish to execute the script as and edit the crontab file: crontab -e If this is your first time editing the crontab file, you might be asked which editor you wish to use – I chose nano. Once in the crontab file add a new line at the bottom of the file; it should look something like this ...

February 21, 2019 · 1 min · Tom

Debian 9 - How to upgrade python 3.5 to python 3.7

I recently spent 30 minutes figuring out how to upgrade to python 3.7 and subsequently pip version on a fresh install of Debian 9. I ran into a number of issues doing this so I though that I would put this quick post together to make this a little bit less complicated for anyone else trying to this. This post relates specifically to python version 3.7.3. Although the generic commands should also apply to earlier versions, but your milage may vary. ...

February 19, 2019 · 2 min · Tom

Creating a local DNS server with Pi Hole

This is a local DNS server for local DNS requests. This post is going to explain the why and how I created a local DNS server in my home network environment. I used the PiHole project to make a network wide advert blocking a reality. https://pi-hole.net/ I have previously created a DNS server using Bind, running on CentOS 7. Thankfully digital ocean came to my rescue with some of the config in this home lab project, so be sure to check out their guide if you are looking for slightly higher level DNS setup: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-bind-as-a-private-network-dns-server-on-centos-7 ...

February 16, 2019 · 2 min · Tom

Modifying Windows shortcuts is Powershell

I once faced a rather tedious task that involved recursively modifying a number of shortcut paths stored across a convoluted folder structure. There was approximately 100 shortcuts which needed part of their path modifying. The answer: Create a****PowerShell script. The following code utilises regex to check for the existence of a string and modify with the define replacement. It is easily possible to use Read-Host to make this a little bit more interactive, but the purposes of my use-case it was just as simple to modify these variables before running the script. ...

February 13, 2019 · 2 min · Tom