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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 July 13

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July 13

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MS Word

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How do I print on hard copy, the wavy red, green and blue lines that usually is/are displayed when grammatical errors occur? 123.108.246.165 (talk) 15:19, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

They are to help on-screen review and don't appear on hard copy, you are not forced to agree that they are errors. Use Alt-PrtSc and then in MSPAINT ctrl-V to make a printable document of exactly what is on your screen. DroneB (talk) 18:05, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) There's no built-in way to do this. This old discussion (regarding Word 2003; also see [1]) gives an idea of how to find spelling errors in a document and put an actual wavy, red line under them using a Visual Basic for Applications macro. I was able to run the macro on Word 2016, though it would take some modification to also do green and blue underlines. clpo13(talk) 18:09, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Limiting who can connect to a remotely-accessible home server

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I have a home server that I am configuring for remote access. The public IP of the server is assigned by my cable company, so I'm using the dynamic DNS updating service provided by NoIP to give the server a public-facing domain name. This works, but the problem is that anyone can type in that name and access the services with proper authentication: for example, if my server is running RStudio on port 8787, anyone can type <servername>:8787 and get the RStudio login. When I've worked remotely in IT, if I wasn't logged in through the company's VPN (usually Cisco AnyConnect), I'd get an error when I tried their internal sites ("this site can't be reached"). I'd like to replicate that functionality on my home server, but I'm not sure how, or if it is even feasible. OldTimeNESter (talk) 22:04, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That IT company had a server located in their internal network inaccessible from the outside. To get access to the server you needed to connect to their internal network using a VPN server provided by them. Here you use a different configuration. Yes, theoretically you can set-up a VPN server for you home network and limit access to your server only to the local hosts. Thus you will need to connect to the VPN first before you can access the server. Ruslik_Zero 06:17, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the quick response. How difficult is it to setup my own VPN server? Is there open-source software available for that? Also, will the VPN server need to be a different server than the one I currently have (either a physically different machine, or a different VM running inside the home server)? OldTimeNESter (talk) 20:27, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly one of your best options would be to run a remotely available SSH server, and then tunnel any connections you need through SSH. Or you might want something like OpenVPN (which is no easier to set up). Usually a router would allow you to specify which services are available remotely - you want to limit your remote exposure to one properly secure service if you can. It can be a pain setting up secure connections properly, but it's worth it. -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:12, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]