* * * * *
                                        
                    An inadvertent lock-out, Brevard edition
                                        
Bunny and I are taking it easy on the first day of vaction. The weather is
nice—sun is out, temperature is mid-70s, and there's the sound of the
neighbor mowing his rather sizable lawn.

[Nothing like a private porch to spend a late summer afternoon (yes, I know
it's technically autumn right now). You wish you were here.] [1]
 

So I'm sitting on the private porch at The Red House Inn [2] when I attempt
to check my email. I can't.

You see, I use mutt [3] to read my email. It runs directly on my email
server, but to log into my email server, I have to first log into my home
system due to filtering of ssh [4] attempts by the hosting company (which
doesn't really bother me all that much). But I too, have some filtering going
on at home. I programmed my own syslog daemon [5] to block ssh attempts after
five times [6], regardless of time between attempts, or, as it turns out,
regardless of sucessful attempts!

Because I left my iPad at home, I'm having to type my password. And due to
the keyboard I'm using (it's not a Model M keyboard [7] and therefore by
default, this keyboard sucks) I incurred a few failed log in attempts.

Oops.

Well, **that** sucks! I thought. Wait! I know! I can log into work over The
Corporation's VPN (Virtual Private Network) to my workstation there, and from
there I can log into home and fix the situation. The problem became logging
into the VPN.

And now I have two problems.

I called a fellow cow-orker, D, but he did not have the information I needed
to configure the VPN, but as I was working on it, the idea came that all I
really needed was a different Wi-Fi network to log in from.

And then I noticed my iPhone next to me.

It has a “personal hotspot” feature.

“Oh!” I said.

A few minutes later, and I had no problems.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2018/09/28/Porch.jpg
[2] http://www.brevardbedandbreakfast.com/
[3] http://www.mutt.org/
[4] https://www.openssh.com/
[5] https://github.com/spc476/syslogintr
[6] https://github.com/spc476/syslogintr/blob/master/modules/ssh-iptables.lua
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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