How to: Save SSH Password in Remmina the easy way

Busy admins love to ssh a remote host without entering a password. If you like and love Remmina Remote Desktop client you would definitely know that it also supports a very nice ssh interface along with other goodies. Even there is an ssh save password option which is off course grayed out, not implemented yet because of security reasons.

The good news is that there is a very easy way now in ubuntu (tested in 12.04 and 12.10) do password-less logins to any server via Remmina or any other console for that matter. This is a guided tutorial to set up the ssh ids graphically using the gnome keyring. That is how you do it:

Setting up gnome keyring for saving ssh keys

1. Go to dash type 'passwords' and click password and keys.

 

2. We need to create a new key for ssh logins, so select 'Secure Shell Key'

3. Type in any name for your ssh key.

4. Type in a new pass-phrase for the key, this can be anything string or even empty which is not recommended of course.

Saving the credentials for your desired ssh server 

5. Now that the ssh key-ring is setup, we can save the credentials for our desired ssh servers. Just right click the newly created key ring 

 6. Enter the hostname or ip for the desired ssh server, user id.

7. Now it asks for the ssh password the server.

That does it, now you can ssh the server using console without entering the password. Now you can save as many credentials as you like by repeating steps 5 to 7. 

Testing

Using console ssh the server. It should connect without asking to enter the password. 

ssh sahmed@10.50.0.13

Now you can also ssh using remmina without password.

Fix: HP ProBook 4540 Freezing with Ubuntu 12.04

It is quite frustrating when you are in the middle of something and your laptop just freezes. I used to experience it a lot with my brand new HP ProBook 4540s running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS precise with all the latest updates and patches. I used to get the “Sorry, Ubuntu 12.04 has experienced an internal error.” sort of errors all the time. Searched high and low on the internet as well as HP forums but with no luck.

The day when i upgraded to the Ubuntu 12.10 quantal, the problem has just vanished as if it was never there :) So if your Sandy Bridge based system (or any other sort of latest hardware) and you are experiencing frequent errors and freezes its suggested to updgrade to ubuntu 12.10 quantal. Seems like its has better support for new hardware, thanks to the new kernel.

Tip: Fast Quake Style Terminal Emulator in Ubuntu

If you do a lot of terminal related work, running applications and doing multiple ssh logins and you dont like waiting for a couple of seconds after clicking the gnome-terminal. More importantly if you had been a Quake player in your childhood, you are going to love guake. Guake is a fast quake style terminal which comes up and goes off in the background with F12.
In ubuntu you can install it simply by

sudo aptitude install guake

Fix: sssd not authenticating in ubuntu 12.10

The version of sssd (1.9.1) shipped with default Ubuntu 12.10 is broken. It fails while communicating with ldap server over StartTLS. In order to make it work it has to be updated to the latest stable version 1.9.4 (at the time of writing) either from the source https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/ or an easier approach would be to download from ppa:

 sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list 

add the following ppa to the sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/sssd/updates/ubuntu quantal main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/sssd/updates/ubuntu quantal main

and then do an update and install

sudo aptitude update 

sudo aptitude install sssd