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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Single user on a single (physical, local) host, best security practices:

    Have root user.

    Have a administrative account that has sudo privs

    Have a daily driver with no excessive privs.

    Set PermitRootLogin no in your ssh config to be extra.

    Only use your administrative account to use sudo, only when you need it.

    This is a bit over extra, but is slightly favorable from a security standpoint, opposed to simply using that admin account as your daily driver, like everyone reading this does.

    Don’t lie. We all do it.


    Root is more powerful only in that the system will not check for its permissions to do anything. Your user with sudo still gets its permission checked, you can just bypass that check. It’s not fundamentally different in an end-result sense.

    The reason I suggest the three user approach above is because your daily driver will make the most noise that interests an attacker (provided you’re keeping your applications and services updated and properly config’d) on your machine. And if that user has no real privileges, womp womp, sucks to suck, hackerman. But if the user has sudo, they basically got root.

    This is also why you don’t run as root.

    As for your firewall? Short answer: yes.



  • Okay. Your laptop can’t ping or SSH into the server. First, figure out if the problem is one-way. Can the server ping the laptop, or is it just dead in both directions?

    You mentioned all other devices communicate normally—do they all fail to reach the laptop, or is the issue isolated to the laptop and server pair?

    Physically check the server and confirm both IP addresses to ensure you’re not chasing the wrong info. Once you’ve got the correct IPs, ping the laptop from the server’s side. If the server can’t reach it either, you know this isn’t just a laptop-to-server problem.

    Also, did you set up a firewall on the laptop? That’s worth looking into. And yes, it’s annoying, but try the simple stuff: disconnect and reconnect your laptop’s Wi-Fi, reboot it, even run sudo apt update just to rule out anything weird. Start with these basics before moving on to more complicated troubleshooting.