The Auton Lab Intranet

[Predrag Punosevac]

Robert Edman <redman at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

> Predrag,
> 
> Is there a guide for setting up a VPN to the lab network from our home
> computers? I know Gus just went through this on his desktop - but it would
> make some work easier from home.

The short answer is NO. The longer answer is that only supported
desktops are supposed to have OpenVPN connections to the gateway to the
Auton Lab proper (computing nodes). No laptops or other personal devices
will be given OpenVPN credentials to get to the heart of the lab. You
have the shell access whic his the poor men's VPN. 

I have to be able to track where the attacks are coming from. The
easiest way (think of medieval castles) is forcing people to use the
same gateways. Now, you and people who have supported desktops are
already privileged as you have your private gateway machine.

And I am not stupid:-) You can try to reuse credentials I left on your
desktop for you private machine since you have the root access to you
machine. If I see any attempts for people trying to do that I will
restrict the IP addresses from which OpenVPN connection can be
established as well as close quite a few attack vectors which are now
open as the part of circle of trust. The offender(s) will be billed for
the labour cost :-)


Best,
Predrag


> 
> --Rob
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2020 at 11:48 PM Predrag Punosevac <predragp at andrew.cmu.edu>
> wrote:
> 
> > Dear Autonians,
> >
> > I hope all of you are healthy and doing well. In lieu of the fact that
> > most of us will be telecommuting for a while in order to help fight
> > pandemic I now longer could procrastinate with the Intranet (Internal
> > Wiki).
> >
> > After experimenting with DokuWiki (PHP), ikiwiki(Perl), HUGO (GO
> > static page generator) I just lost it  and ended up just hacking
> > simple HTML+CSS Wikipedia clone look alike. No CMS, no Wiki software,
> > no static page generators nada. Few handwritten files.  At the end of
> > the day I will be the only one who edits this anyway so may as well be
> > simple. I think it looks pleasant.
> >
> > You can see the result at
> >
> > https://www.autonlab.org/autonlab_wiki/
> >
> > After you get prompted for username and password enter
> >
> > username: auton
> > password: Dr.Who
> >
> > We could have per user authentication if Lab elders insist on it but
> > this is fully static HTML+CSS code written by hand and essentially I
> > am just trying to keep this document internal. All of you have seen
> > all these things during mandatory orientation.
> >
> > I have contents placeholder for everything I would like to add to the
> > page in the immediate future. I also have content scattered around
> > various documents on my computer. That will take a day or two to be
> > entered. I will gladly accept plain text files of the things you think
> > will be useful either during on-boarding, off-boarding, or lab tenure.
> >
> > Predrag
> >