Some Notes on the Machines

For Debian-based and RPM:

http://t-e.cc/install-btsync-on-ubuntu-14-04-from-official-repo/

This one’s new and comes recommended, I have not tested it yet:

https://www.pcloud.com/cloud-storage-pricing-plans.html

After scouting a rather large number of potential sources, this one is working extremely well; download the .repo file for your OS and put it with the rest, and you’re in with yum or dnf!

https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/decathorpe/syncthing/

A great command in Linux is:

dd bs=4M if=file.iso of=/dev/sd<letter> status=progress && sync

where <letter> is the letter for your flash drive. Do be careful finding it, because your hard drive(s) and CD/DVD drive(s) are also among these; you can get the list with ls /dev/sd*, and also all mounted drives can be listed with mount.

Also, it does have to be run as root, so sudo as a prefix may be very helpful.

Here’s a bash script! Works very nicely. Once run on one side and specifying a destination, one does not need a password to open that SSH link in the future.

#!/bin/bash
echo "setup-autossh by Jonathan E. Brickman, jeb@ponderworthy.com"
if [ $# = 0 ]; then
	read -p "Please enter the SSH destination in the format user@host : " sshdest
elif [ $# = 1 ]; then
	sshdest=$1
else
	echo "Usage: setup-autossh [user@destination]"
	exit 1
fi
if [ ! -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa ]; then
	echo "Creating RSA key for authorization..."
	ssh-keygen -t rsa -N "" -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa
fi
echo "Copying authorized RSA key to $sshdest ..."
remotecmd="cat > authorized_keys ; mkdir -p .ssh ; cat authorized_keys >> .ssh/authorized_keys ; rm authorized_keys"
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh $sshdest $remotecmd

There are now multiple alternatives to the bundled Windows update system. First of all, the original, AutoPatcher, appears to be in the midst of a well-deserved renaissance:

http://www.autopatcher.net/

And we also have WSUSOffline:

http://www.wsusoffline.net/

And there are quite a few more too, not tested by this writer as of yet!

FreeFileSync is a great piece of work, it synchronizes files and folders between local drives, over SSH, and to mobile devices via MTP over USB.

For detecting devices on your LAN:

http://www.advanced-ip-scanner.com/

For Windows 10: http://win10se.cwcodes.net/

For Windows 8: http://w8pese.cwcodes.net/

For Windows 7: http://reboot.pro/topic/12427-win7pe-se-release/

Courtesy of the amazing Jared Dexter:

http://www.synergy-project.org/