Gnome Session Over SSH

This is a cool one, far better than just a vnc connection. Even better than an X11vnc connection. Head over to another tty, lets say tty2: (cntrl)(alt)f2. Login, and start another X session:

xinit -- :1

A minimal X session will start. Now login via ssh to your server. For example I login with this:

ssh -X -C 192.168.0.1

Where -X forwards the X session, -C uses compression, and 192.168.0.1 is an example IP address of a server. If your sever is hosting a website using a domain, you can point the ssh connection at the domain. Also I recommend using rsa keys for the ssh connection, as it prevents brute force password attacks. For more information check here:

http://www.bgevolution.com/blog/ssh-brute-force-protection/

After logged in via ssh start your Gnome desktop with:

gnome-session

Your desktop will start just as if you were sitting in front of your computer. Some things wont work like the notifications panel, because one is already launched on the server desktop. Other gnome panel applets may not launch, but your desktop overall will work.

DOS and Brute Force Prevention Using Fail2ban

Dealing with dos and brute force attacks can be a daunting challenge. You can manually adjust your firewall to block particular ip addresses, but why not automate the process? What if a program can monitor your authentication, and other log files for suspicious activity? In these log files is a tremendous amount of info about failed login attempts, and how many times an ip address connects to your web server. Using this information a program can automatically adjust your firewall to block the offending ip addresses.

Fail2ban does just this. The program automatically monitors the log files of many programs. Most important is apache, and ssh.

http://www.fail2ban.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page