In case you were wondering, I just invented the phrase PVPN - Personal Virtual Private Network.

I use Hamachi to connect my work, home and laptop PCs and I’ve found it invaluable over the past few years for a number of reasons. Music over VPN, Remote Desktop/VNC over VPN, and more. So now, I’d like to join my N800 to this growing network to make easy and secure access and file transfer wherever I am connected.

Fortunately the folks at Logmein have compiled a client for the N770, and this also works on OS2008 on the N800 (Let me know on the N810).

This is an alternate take on the wiki article at Logmeinwiki.

Note: For the commands below I will have assumed that you have already installed the openssh server so you can access the N800 via an SSH client with root access. You can also use the built in Xterm and gainroot but it is a pain in the ass typing all of those commands in via the touchpad. If you are using gainroot some of the directories below will change, for example Hamachi will install in /home/user/.hamachi instead of /root/.hamachi. Also I downloaded the client to my memory card in /media/mmc2/ but you can put it anywhere.

Your login should look like this:

BusyBox v1.6.1 (2007-09-27 18:08:59 EEST) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

Nokia-N800-51-3:~#

Make sure wget is installed:

apt-get install wget

Make to get the latest Logmein Client from http://files.hamachi.cc/linux/nokia-770/.

Just follow my process below for installing the Hamachi client and joining your network.

Nokia-N800-51-3:/media/mmc2/tmp# wget http://files.hamachi.cc/linux/nokia-770/hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx-n770.tar.gz
--10:31:47-- http://files.hamachi.cc/linux/nokia-770/hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx-n770.tar.gz
= `hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx-n770.tar.gz'
Resolving files.hamachi.cc... 72.5.76.16
Connecting to files.hamachi.cc|72.5.76.16|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 116,020 (113K) [text/plain]

Authentication information has been created. Hamachi can now be started with
'hamachi start' command and then brought online with 'hamachi login'.
Nokia-N800-51-3:~# hamachi start
Starting Hamachi hamachi-lnx-n770-0.9.9.9-20 .. ok
Nokia-N800-51-3:~#

Hamachi is now running on our little tablet!

But it has not joined our network at this point, so we follow the logmein Hamachi documentation to do so.

Nokia-N800-51-3:~# hamachi set-nick DaveN800
Setting nickname .. ok
Nokia-N800-51-3:~# hamachi login
Logging in ....>....... ok
Nokia-N800-51-3:~# hamachi join YourNetwork
Password:
Joining YourNetwork .. ok
Nokia-N800-51-3:~# hamachi go-online YourNetwork
Going online in YourNetwork .. ok
Nokia-N800-51-3:~#

And now…checking other Hamachi clients, shows our little device is online!

Now we need to tell our tablet to put hamachi online whenever we restart the system and also set the keepalive lower.

To lower the keepalive:

Nokia-N800-51-3:~/.hamachi# echo "KeepAlive 20" >> ~/.hamachi/config

<code>/sbin/tuncfg;/usr/bin/hamachi -c /root/.hamachi start

In order to do this, use VI.

vi /etc/init.d/rcS

• Press capitol ‘G‘ to scroll to bottom of the file
• type ‘i‘ to enter insert mode
• hit up a few times to a blank line before exit 0, or hit enter at the beginning of the line to create a new line.
• Paste the above line into the file
• Press “esc” using the special xterm button, or hit escape if you are using ssh.
• type “:wq!” — this command enters the command, mode, tells it to write the file, then quit and execute

That should be all you need! Power off the N800 and power it back up. After restarting your N800 you should see it connect to your PVPN Hamachi network and be online!

Let me know if you have any problems or comments about the above installation procedure!

I’ve been using the VPN Software Hamachi for several years now and thought I would share my experiences with it.

Previous to being purchased by LogMeIn, Hamachi was a smaller company which designed this great software. It is now offered in 2 versions, the free “Basic” version and the paid “Premium” version. The premium version is currently around 3.25-4.95 a month, depending on how many licenses you need and how much you pre-pay.

The free version gives you basic VPN connectivity and allows you to control smaller networks which is great for your own personal secured network. There are some pretty cool features in the “Premium” version - to see all of them click here.

The idea is that you install Hamachi on each of your PCs which you would like to connect to your VPN. In my case, I have my Home PC, my home File Server, my Work PC and my laptop all connected. The great thing about Hamachi is you are not just limited to Windows machine - my file server is Linux and works great with Hamachi. It officially supports Windows, Linux, and OSX - so you could install it onto your Mac as well.

Once hamachi is installed, follow the directions on how to set up each client. With the first client you set up, you will want to create a new Network that will include all of your personal PCs that you wish to connect. From there, each client you add you will need to add to this network so the can all talk with each other.

After all computers are connected to the network - you have your VPN up and running. It works just like with any VPN - those IP addresses can be accessed just like the PC is on your local area network.

So, what does this mean? You can map a network drive to be a local drive, which is actually being served off of your VPN. You can connect to VNC using this IP address - which is a secure way to do this so all of your traffic is encrypted over the internet. You don’t have to worry (as much) about sending information over the internet in plain text. I even have my media server connected so that I have my entire music library available through the program of my choice (MediaMonkey).

So if you haven’t tried it already, give Hamachi a try!