A while back several people on this list recommended Webfaction for web hosting. We signed up and have been using it
for awhile now. I thought I would pass along some information for other people in the US who may be interested in web
hosting.
1. Our primary purpose is to update the Webfaction web site with our VFP9 SP2 programs so our clients can download
anytime without using our company servers. It works well for that purpose.
2. Here are some things that we have to deal with that are not major problems, but we would like to find a workaround.
a). They recommended that we use rsync for updating their Linux servers from our Windows development workstations. This
works fine but we are not able to do this without manually typing in the password. If you Google this problem you will
get a million hits (or more) so it is obviously a very common problem. None of the solutions work for us and most other
people. This means we cannot automate the updating.
FileZilla works for updating from Windows to their Linux servers but we can't figure a way to automate it. Wefaction
support will give you several answers but none of them work. Surely there must be a simple way to send the password with
rsync. An obvious answer is to just use ftp. That is ok and that is what we are now doing, however, if there are only a
few small changes in the udpate, fpt will still copy every file and that takes a very long time. rsync is smart enough
to know how to only transmit the changes and so it works quickly even for thousands of files.
b) Webfaction processes our credit cards in GB (great britain?) so our bank charges a fee. I understand that their
servers and support people are in the US so why process our payment in GB?
If anyone else has a solution for this I would appreciate knowing your experiences.
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On Jun 13, 2010, at 11:44 AM, <kamcginnis@gmail.com> <kamcginnis@gmail.com> wrote:
> a). They recommended that we use rsync for updating their Linux servers from our Windows development workstations. This
> works fine but we are not able to do this without manually typing in the password. If you Google this problem you will
> get a million hits (or more) so it is obviously a very common problem. None of the solutions work for us and most other
> people. This means we cannot automate the updating.
You need to set up public/private keys on the machines. If they are present, rsync will use them to authenticate and will not need a password. Google for "ssh-keygen" and I'm sure you'll find tons of information about how to do this.
-- Ed Leafe
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Author: <kamcginnis@gmail.com>
Posted: 2010-06-13 19:38:41 Link
I know and I did that, however it did not work. The files must be in the correct place because it stopped asking for the
user name. There is something secret about passing the password in the ssh shell. What I need is one of those programs
like you can get to automatically enter the password when you log outlook into an exchange server. I am sure it is
something obvious, but I have not found it yet.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ed Leafe" <ed@leafe.com>
To: "ProFox Email List" <profox@leafe.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:56 AM
Subject: Re: [NF] Webfaction web hosting notes
On Jun 13, 2010, at 11:44 AM, <kamcginnis@gmail.com> <kamcginnis@gmail.com> wrote:
> a). They recommended that we use rsync for updating their Linux servers from our Windows development workstations.
This
> works fine but we are not able to do this without manually typing in the password. If you Google this problem you will
> get a million hits (or more) so it is obviously a very common problem. None of the solutions work for us and most
other
> people. This means we cannot automate the updating.
You need to set up public/private keys on the machines. If they are present, rsync will use them to authenticate and
will not need a password. Google for "ssh-keygen" and I'm sure you'll find tons of information about how to do this.
-- Ed Leafe
[excessive quoting removed by server]
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On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Ed Leafe <ed@leafe.com> wrote:
> On Jun 13, 2010, at 11:44 AM, <kamcginnis@gmail.com> <kamcginnis@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You need to set up public/private keys on the machines. If they are present, rsync will use them to authenticate and will not need a password. Google for "ssh-keygen" and I'm sure you'll find tons of information about how to do this.
>
I think this is only true if you are running rsync over ssh, which I
would consider a best practice. I do something similar to this in
uploading data from some of my clients to our in-house Linux systems.
I think Kam has Windows in-house, so if he wants to use ssh, he's
going to need to set up ssh on the Windows end. I recommend the PuTTY
package of files to do this (PuTTY, Plink, Pagent and others).
Essentially, you launch Pagent manually and supply a key on your
Windows server so it can cache the ssh keys in memory.
--
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
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On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 7:38 PM, <kamcginnis@gmail.com> wrote:
> user name. There is something secret about passing the password in the ssh shell.
Let's think about this. Shouldn't it be secret? :)
In the ideal situation, you have a public key on the target, a private
key on the source, and you load the private key up securely into
memory using an ssh-agent program. Since you're using Windows as your
source (right?), take a look at the suite of software that includes
PuTTY and Pageant.
Docs are here: http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.60/htmldoc/
Files are here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
> What I need is one of those programs
> like you can get to automatically enter the password when you log outlook into an exchange server. I am sure it is
> something obvious, but I have not found it yet.
I haven't had to do the exact combination of things you are trying:
rsync over ssh from Windows to Linux, so I'll offer what help I can,
but you'll need to tell us what you're using for software and what
you're doing and what you're seeing. It's hard to see you're screen
from here ;)
I've found little obvious about ssh. I had to read the whole Snail
book (O'Reilly) to start to get it.
--
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
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Author: <kamcginnis@gmail.com>
Posted: 2010-06-14 11:49:36 Link
Ted,
I used puttygen to create the private and public keys.
I have the private key here (on Windows XP): C:\cygwin\.ssh\known_hosts
I HAVE the public key here (on the Webfaction server): /home/webfactionlogin/.ssh/authorized_keys
The attributes on the Linux server .ssh is 664
here is the batch file that I run (it asks for the password):
@ECHO ON
path=%path%;\cwRsync\bin;\cwRsync;\cwRsync\.ssh
rem next 2 lines are in the specs but do nothing
set RSYNC_USERNAME=webfactionlogin
set RSYNC_PASSWORD=SecretPassword
rsync -av "/cygdrive/c/LocalWindowsFolder/" "webfactionlogin@webxxx.webfaction.com:~/webapps/DestinationFolder"
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Roche" <tedroche@gmail.com>
To: <profox@leafe.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 5:20 PM
Subject: Re: [NF] Webfaction web hosting notes
On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Ed Leafe <ed@leafe.com> wrote:
> On Jun 13, 2010, at 11:44 AM, <kamcginnis@gmail.com> <kamcginnis@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You need to set up public/private keys on the machines. If they are present, rsync will use them to authenticate and
will not need a password. Google for "ssh-keygen" and I'm sure you'll find tons of information about how to do this.
>
I think this is only true if you are running rsync over ssh, which I
would consider a best practice. I do something similar to this in
uploading data from some of my clients to our in-house Linux systems.
I think Kam has Windows in-house, so if he wants to use ssh, he's
going to need to set up ssh on the Windows end. I recommend the PuTTY
package of files to do this (PuTTY, Plink, Pagent and others).
Essentially, you launch Pagent manually and supply a key on your
Windows server so it can cache the ssh keys in memory.
--
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
[excessive quoting removed by server]
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On Jun 14, 2010, at 11:49 AM, <kamcginnis@gmail.com> <kamcginnis@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have the private key here (on Windows XP): C:\cygwin\.ssh\known_hosts
That's not the key; it's usually something like 'id_rsa' or 'id_tsa', depending on the encryption type used. 'known_hosts' is the list of servers that you have previously connected to.
> I HAVE the public key here (on the Webfaction server): /home/webfactionlogin/.ssh/authorized_keys
> The attributes on the Linux server .ssh is 664
Typically the .ssh directory should be 700 and the .ssh/authorized_keys should be 600/
-- Ed Leafe
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On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 11:49 AM, <kamcginnis@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The attributes on the Linux server .ssh is 664
That looks a lot too permissive. You usually want your .ssh directory
to be 700 - and files within that directory 0600
> rsync -av "/cygdrive/c/LocalWindowsFolder/" "webfactionlogin@webxxx.webfaction.com:~/webapps/DestinationFolder"
OK, that's telling rsync to archive files, but it doesn't know to use
ssh. On Linux, I'd add the command option:
--rsh='ssh'
after the -av to tell it to use ssh as the remote shell.
I've still not got sufficient information: are you using the
executable ssh or Plink to try to make your connection? I'm afraid you
might be crossing the beams here: I see you mentioning cygwin (an
awesome POSIX emulator for the WinDOS platform, btw) and Putty. These
are two different ways to implement functionality on Windows: cygwin
creates a POSIX-like environment (and it looks like that's what you're
trying to run the rsync command in) while PuTTY is a re-implementation
of ssh on Windows. PuTTY doesn't do all the things ssh does in the way
that ssh does them. For example, it stores its keys differently.
Either PuTTY or cygwin plus ssh will work, but you shouldn't be mixing
the two.
Assuming you're using PuTTY and rsync (there are some promising Google
hits on those keywords), let's take rsync out of the picture for a
moment, and confirm you can connect from your Windows machine to your
hosted machine using PuTTY. If not, focus on debugging that
connectivity first, then we can introduce rsync into the mix.
--
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
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Author: <kamcginnis@gmail.com>
Posted: 2010-06-15 15:43:44 Link
I have tried both.
For example, plink works just fine (from Windows) to copy a file from one location on the Linux server to another
location on the same Linux server:
Here is a batch file that works:
--------------------
@echo on
path=\putty;%path%
plink webxxx.webfaction.com -l webfactionlogin -pw 123456789abc -ssh -v -L 3001:localhost:3001 -m CopyCommands.txt
--------------------
Here is what is in CopyCommands.txt
--------------------
cp /home/webfactionlogin/webapps/app_one/file1.exe /home/webfactionlogin/webapps/app_two/.
cp /home/webfactionlogin/webapps/app_one/file2.exe /home/webfactionlogin/webapps/app_two/.
cp /home/webfactionlogin/webapps/app_one/file3.exe /home/webfactionlogin/webapps/app_two/.
--------------------
I am certain that rsync is working correctly because after I put in the password it copies files correctly. The problem
is how to automate passing the password. I got a return email from Webfaction support confirming that I have the correct
location for the public key on their server but they don't know about where to put things on the windows workstation.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Roche" <tedroche@gmail.com>
To: <profox@leafe.com>
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 10:46 AM
Subject: Re: [NF] Webfaction web hosting notes
On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 11:49 AM, <kamcginnis@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The attributes on the Linux server .ssh is 664
That looks a lot too permissive. You usually want your .ssh directory
to be 700 - and files within that directory 0600
> rsync -av "/cygdrive/c/LocalWindowsFolder/" "webfactionlogin@webxxx.webfaction.com:~/webapps/DestinationFolder"
OK, that's telling rsync to archive files, but it doesn't know to use
ssh. On Linux, I'd add the command option:
--rsh='ssh'
after the -av to tell it to use ssh as the remote shell.
I've still not got sufficient information: are you using the
executable ssh or Plink to try to make your connection? I'm afraid you
might be crossing the beams here: I see you mentioning cygwin (an
awesome POSIX emulator for the WinDOS platform, btw) and Putty. These
are two different ways to implement functionality on Windows: cygwin
creates a POSIX-like environment (and it looks like that's what you're
trying to run the rsync command in) while PuTTY is a re-implementation
of ssh on Windows. PuTTY doesn't do all the things ssh does in the way
that ssh does them. For example, it stores its keys differently.
Either PuTTY or cygwin plus ssh will work, but you shouldn't be mixing
the two.
Assuming you're using PuTTY and rsync (there are some promising Google
hits on those keywords), let's take rsync out of the picture for a
moment, and confirm you can connect from your Windows machine to your
hosted machine using PuTTY. If not, focus on debugging that
connectivity first, then we can introduce rsync into the mix.
--
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
[excessive quoting removed by server]
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On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 3:43 PM, <kamcginnis@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have tried both.
>
If you have both PuTTY and CygWin's ssh available, I would use the
CygWin, since you'll be running in a consistent POSIX environment for
both the ssh and rsync. Start a CygWin command shell and try to ssh
from the Windows server to the webfaction box:
ssh -vvv username@http://webxxx.webfaction.com/
If that lets you in without asking for a password, then you can use
the --rsh='ssh' commandline option I suggested before. If not, you may
need to add the proper private key (with the proper permissions) to
your .ssh directory on the Windows machine. The -vvv makes verbose
output that should suggest what you need to troubleshoot.
When you have ssh working correctly, you can add an entry (or create
the file) .ssh/config to give yourself a simple shortcut for the
command line, with an entry something like:
Host MyWebFactionHost
Hostname http://webxxx.webfaction.com/
User webfactionlogin
Port 22
IdentityFile /home/kam/.ssh/id_rsa
and then the rsync command is simplified to
rsync -avz --rsy='ssh' mylocalhost:localfilespec MyWebFactionHost:
Rsync will automatically invoke ssh which in turn will recognize the
configuration options for that host.
--
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
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