Recently had a customer contact me for help: He couldn’t access his ASDM on his ASA 5505 when connected to his remote-access VPN, but he was pretty sure he’d configured it correctly by permitting http access from the ip range assigned to VPN clients. But alas, no joy.
He had neglected to take one crucial step–by default remote-access VPN clients won’t be allowed to connect to SSH or ASDM even if their assigned IP address is in an “allowed” network. Fortunately, like everything goofy you’ll find under the hood of your Cisco device, there is an easy fix.
Continue reading Accessing SSH, ASDM Over ASA Remote-Access VPN
Recently I used a tool called nLite to trim down a Windows XP installation and stream in drivers for all of the hardware in a particular customer’s inventory. nLite is a tool that lets you customize which parts of Windows are included in the install so you can deploy just the parts you need. Example: Your customers don’t need the Windows XP tour which is (STILL!) inexplicably the default in Windows XP nearly nine-years after initial release. If it was irritating in 2002, you can bet its infuriating now. I’m sure there’s probably a technical justification better than that, but that’s the one I’m going with for this particular moment. It also does give you the practical benefit of adding extra drivers to the default Windows XP install–no more “Unknown Devices” after installation if you play your cards right, and also permits the creation of an answer file to allow unattended install of Windows XP. If this sounds cool to you, but you’re on Vista, take heart–they’ve started work on vLite, which as you might have guessed supports trimming down Vista installs.
Continue reading XP/Vista “Left-Hand Mouse” Before Login