Linux Live with SSH and that's it!
 

I'm going away soon for a bit of world travelling. I'm very concious of the fact I'm going to be taking a lot of photos around with me and don't want to run the risk of not backing them up periodically. I looked into a few websites like flikr, photobucket etc but they were either too costly or didn't meet my requirements so I thought about just using SSH to transfer the photos to the safety of my dads PC. He doesn't run linux and has no idea about SSH.

I'm looking for two suggestions...

1) A Live CD that my dad can drop into his PC and switch on and it will boot up the kernel, an active network connection, an SSH server and that's about it... nothing else is needed.

2) Similar, but for my end... an SSH client instead of a server. This is not essential as i will carry my pendrive with putty on so i should be ok but just like to hear your thoughts.

Thanks guys.

Get a domain for like 8 bucks and a cheap hosting plan, probably $12/month for a month to month plan and most of them come with a one click Gallery install.

..or use Picasa web albums with "the google". http://picasa.google.com/linux/

Thanks for the suggestion but that's really not what I'm looking for. I already have Picasa but I'd have to pay for extra storage and I can only upload 5 files at a time with them which would be painfully slow when i might have hundreds to do at once. I can't install desktop Picasa on every public computer i sit at.

The web hosting route is just too expensive too.

What about SystemRescueCD?

If you Dad's running XP (which I presume is the case), you can do a minimal install of Cygwin on that, and then setup your Dad's machine as an SSH server. I have done this at work so that I can access my data from home, it works as though it were a Linux box.

Setting SSH up as a Windows service is pretty straight forward. This is the guide I used: http://ncyoung.com/entry/389. If your Dad has enabled the Windows firewall, then add sshd.exe to the list of permitted programs. Likewise, make sure you forward port 22 on your router. I tend to choose a non-standard port in /etc/sshd_config for SSH because I have had brute force attacks on port 22 before. If you do that, forward the appropriate port on your router.

As for a LiveCD with ssh on it, I should think just about any LiveCD you choose would have ssh installed. If I remember correctly, Slax has openSSH installed.

WTF? You work at home? Don't you have better things to do?
(joke)

you can always use a service like dyndns.org and a script to check your ISPs IP and change it on dyndns.org for your hostname(they even offer a free hostname to use). Its free and pretty easy to set up. I've been running a server for years off my home PC and it works fine. If you need specific help setting it up let me know. With this you can open up port 22(ssh) and then all you would need on your end is a PC capable with an SSH client. If you could find an internet cafe that runs linux you could just use that.



If you went the live CD route you would have to add the ip_update script to the CD so that it loaded at boot and checked the IP/etc...

Look at it this way: perhaps I don't spend *all* my day working, and need to get things off my work PC when at home... ;)

This is exactly my plan! I use dyndns now but that's because my PC is always on running httpd/ssh. However, when I'm travelling i wont be leaving my PC on i need to use my dad's who runs Windows. The OpenSSH server available for Windows is dated and insecure and i wouldn't want his PC to be running it all the time anyway. I just want to phone him from an internet cafe and say "dad, put that disc in and turn on" and thats it. The cd boots an ssh server, i ssh in and transfer my stuff and then he takes the disc out and boots windows and carrys on as normal.

--edit--

Forgot about good ol' cygwin. I'll have a look at that option later :)

Why don't you want to leave your linux machine on while you are gone? It would be a whole lot easier....

And you'd get some kick-ass uptime.