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Setting Up a Virtual Private Network with Hamachi

Play games or share files just like on a regular LAN.

Oct 19, 2006 08:08 GMT  ·  By
  

Having only an internal LAN IP has been a long known problem as not everyone can forward their needed ports on the network router. Because your computer doesn't have a unique Internet IP, you can't enjoy for instance, gaming with a friend in the same situation. Hamachi enables you and your friends to setup a virtual network where you can enjoy direct connectivity with no port limits. When the network setup is complete, every network client will be assigned an internal IP, accessible from any PC in that network.

Installation

Download:

# wget http://files.hamachi.cc/linux/hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx.tar.gz

Uncompress:

# tar xfz hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx.tar.gz

Install:

# cd hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx # make install

Logging In

Run the tuncfg daemon:

# tuncfg

Initializing Hamachi which will generate the RSA keypair and create a config file:

# hamachi-init Initializing Hamachi configuration (/root/.hamachi). Please wait ..

generating 2048-bit RSA keypair .. ok making /root/.hamachi directory .. ok saving /root/.hamachi/client.pub .. ok saving /root/.hamachi/client.pri .. ok saving /root/.hamachi/state .. ok

Start Hamachi:

# hamachi start Starting Hamachi hamachi-lnx-0.9.9.9-20 .. ok

Set your nickname:

# hamachi set-nick your.nick.here Setting nickname .. ok

Login to Hamachi network:

# hamachi login Logging in ....>....... ok

You are now logged into the Hamachi network. As you can see, a new virtual interface, ham0, has been created and was assigned a unique virtual IP. Now, it's time to either create or join a network.

Create a network:

# hamachi create your.network.name your.network.passwd Creating your.network.name .. ok

Make your network visible to others:

# hamachi go-online your.network.name Going online in your.network.name .. ok

To join an already created network:

# hamachi join some.network.name network.passwd Joining some.network.name .. ok

Make yourself visible on the network: # hamachi go-online some.network.name Going online in some.network.name .. ok

In order to see who is online on a network, either type:

# hamachi list

or use gHamachi, a front-end to console hamachi. It's written GTK and it's available for both versions 1.2 or 2:

GTK 1.2 (58k) gHamachi_gtk1.2.tar.gz GTK 2 (53k) gHamachi_gtk2.tar.gz

To run, simply unzip and execute the binary file. You will need to have hamachi set up and started.

Good luck!