Combining VMs (VPN, Proxy, SSH)
I decided to combine my VMs (Virtual Machines) into a single VM because having 3 servers running all the time eats up a bit of my RAM and processing on my Gaming PC.
The 3 that are running 24x7 are:
1) A VM running Debian 9 that has SSH open to the internet but is restricted with a Public Key.
2) The OpenVPN Server running Debian 9
3) The Shadowsock Proxy Server running Ubuntu 16.04.2
I should be able to combine all 3 into a single server, which should help because then I’ll only be running 1 OS instead of 3, so the backgrounds tasks won’t be duplicated. We’ll see if I can squeeze some time into getting them setup before the weekend is over.
The first way I had initially setup OpenVPN stemmed from this Hak5 video on YouTube. It is great for manually setting it up because it helps you understand how it works and how to troubleshoot it.
I wanted to try to automate the setup to save time. I was messing around learning how bash worked and got most of it working, but there were some parts that were not reliably repeatable for some reason. I set it aside a while ago to work on my CCNA. I did however want to try out a script that I found on GitHub to help speed up remaking my OpenVPN Server. Looking through it github.com/angristan/openvpn-install I didn’t see anything malicious or any other servers it would point to, so it appears to be safe. It worked just fine on my Ubuntu 16.04.2 VM.
I was able to finish the setup this weekend. Not too complicated since I already setup a Shadowsocks server, the OpenVPN Script worked, and SSH Public Private key setup is really simple too.
August 2019 Update: My Ubuntu Machine had many complications and couldn’t maintain a reliable network connection. I deleted the Ubuntu Server VM and I’ll eventually remake it on Debian since I didn’t have stability problems in the past with it.