update error on Ubuntu Server 12.04

Recently I came across an annoying error on my headless Ubuntu Server. Nothing really had happened as far as I'm concerned in my home LAN, and all of a sudden only this distro could no longer run an OS update. I did upgrade my internet service recently but I'm not sure if that could be related. Anyway, the error I kept getting for days was:

 

"  temporary failure resolving 'us.archive.ubuntu.com'  "

Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com precise Release.gpg

Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/precise/Release.gpg

Temporary failure resolving 'us.archive.ubuntu.com'

Anyway, after a bit of googling, I came across a helpful comment by fossfreedom from the UK, which can be found here. The solution was simple for me:

1. Test to see if the problem is your DNS setting or an ISP issue. To do this type on the console: ping -n 8.8.8.8
2. If produces replies you can stop it with Ctrl + C. This indicates that it is not an ISP problem so there is no point in calling them.
3. Therefore, for me it was a DNS problem, which I have been having a lot of lately (likely due to my VPN usage). So I checked /etc/resolv.conf to see if I could find my DNS servers there. That's when I knew what my problem was. The file was empty, so I added the google DNS server.
4. This was done through: echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" | sudo tee /etc/resolv.conf > /dev/null
5. After that, I just had to run the update via: sudo apt-get update

Using an SSH Client on Ubuntu 13.04

Since now I have an Ubuntu Server setup at home, I feel the need to use a client from my Ubuntu 13.04 VM. In order to do that I followed this great concise guide I found from ubuntulinuxhelp.com (from garymacritchie)

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The SSH Client

The SSH Client is the piece of software that you have on the computer you are sitting in front of and typing on. It sends messages to the SSH server which is on the remote computer (such as the webserver). We’ll assume that there is already a valid SSH server up and running that you are trying to connect to.

In Ubuntu, there is a SSH client installed as standard and it is called Open SSH.

To use it, you simply open a terminal and proceed any command with “ssh”.

For example, if you would like to log in to your remote server, just use the command…

ssh username@mysite.myserver.org

However, as this is a blog that likes to keep things simple (and annoy a lot of the die-hard Linux geeks), I’m going to suggest a different tool… PuTTY.

PuTTY is a client program for SSH (among other things) and gives a neat little interface for making SSH connections. It is also in my opinion one of the best pieces of software ever written. It has been around for ever and can also be used on Windows without installation (just runs as a .exe). Learn this little guy and you will never look for another SSH client.

Install PuTTY by typing the following into a terminal…

sudo apt-get install putty

You will then find the PuTTY program among your other internet applications.

(When you start it up, you will be able to enter the ip address or name of the remote computer you wish to contact and click connect. You will then be asked for password etc. If you are going to be using SSH regular, you can save that connection as a profile which makes things easier).