How to watch the BBC outside of the UK (Updated version)

This is an update to an older post. The main difference is the UK exit nodes have been updated to ones that are currently working and are faster. This is a step by step instructions done on Ubuntu so any Debian flavor system shall work as well.

Step 1:

If you don't know which codename of Ubuntu that you are using type:
lsb_release -c

Then add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org distribution main

Replace the word distribution with the codename (i.e. lucid,maverick)

Then add the gpg key used to sign the packages by running the following commands as root at your command prompt:

gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv 886DDD89
gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add -

Now refresh your sources and install Tor by running the following commands at your command prompt:

apt-get update
apt-get install tor tor-geoipdb

Step 2:

Polipo gets installed with the command above at the time of this writing. Polipo is a caching web proxy that does http pipelining well, so it's well-suited for Tor's latencies.


After polipo is installed you will need to change the script to work with tor.

Backup the original polipo config

cp /etc/polipo/config /etc/polipo/config.backup

Then edit the config file

nano /etc/polipo/config

Delete the script that is in there and replace with This

Step 3:

For this to work with tor you need an exit that has an UK ip address. To do this:

nano /etc/tor/torrc

And add the following at the top and save.

ExitNodes $B3C940F41C692FEBE7838D608BFF6114F936C3C6, $83F62F50DB1E5E4B6A6B58D9F970E40F26689911, $38B6A42E84BC86A0D217D3CF30EFFEC2678DBA17
StrictExitNodes 1

Finally Step:

Install the Tor Button for Firefox and restart.

FYI You have to restart Polipo and Tor by doing ie. /etc/init.d/polipo restart or service polipo restart To allow flash to play you need to go into Firefox's preference -> security settings and uncheck disable plugins during Tor's usage.

Thanks to the Tor Project and John Lewis for the UK exit node information.

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How to watch the BBC outside of the UK (Old see updated version)

I despise restrictions on content. I believe that information shouldn't be restricted to location. I will walk you step by step so you can achieve the same, the instructions will be done on an Ubuntu system.

Step 1:

If you don't know which codename of Ubuntu that you are using type:
lsb_release -c

Then add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org distribution main

Replace the word distribution with the codename (i.e. lucid,maverick)

Then add the gpg key used to sign the packages by running the following commands as root at your command prompt:

gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv 886DDD89
gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add -

Now refresh your sources and install Tor by running the following commands at your command prompt:

apt-get update
apt-get install tor tor-geoipdb

Step 2:

The next step is to set up web browsing. Start by installing Polipo. Polipo is a caching web proxy that does http pipelining well, so it's well-suited for Tor's latencies.

apt-get install polipo

After polipo is installed you will need to change the script to work with tor.

nano /etc/polipo/config

Delete the script that is in there and replace with This

Step 3:

For this to work with tor you need an exit that has an UK ip address. To do this:

nano /etc/tor/torrc

And add the following at the bottom and save.

ExitNodes PDQVPNUK1, PDQVPNUK2, st0nerhenge
StrictExitNodes 1

Finally Step:

Install the Tor Button for Firefox and restart.

Thanks to the tor project and where ever I found the UK exit node information.

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How To Restore Grub2 In Debian Based Systems

Sometimes we get curious or need curtain features and install other systems on our computers. The problem that we run into is that it will trash the way we boot them. It is ever easy to get Grub2 to back to the state it was.

You will need a LIVE cd if you are going to recover Grub2. I will be using an Ubuntu disk for this step by step tutorial. Open up terminal and continue by entering :

$sudo fdisk -l

This will show your partition table.Here is my table to understand it better :

/dev/sda1 29 8369 66999082+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 * 8370 13995 45190845 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 13996 14593 4803435 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 13996 14593 4803403+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Now i will mount Linux (sda1 here), Yours could be different it depends on where your boot partition for Linux was.)

$sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
$sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
$sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc


Now chroot into the enviroment we made :

sudo chroot /mnt

After chrooting, you will not have to use sudo anymore as you will be root(you can tell by #).

You may want to edit /etc/default/grub file to fit your system (timeout options etc) just upadte grub if you do.

#nano -w /etc/default/grub

Now install/recover Grub2 via :

#grub-install /dev/sda

You can use reconfirm by using:

#grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

Now you can exit the chroot, umount the system and reboot your box :

#exit
$sudo umount /mnt/dev
$sudo umount /mnt/proc
$sudo umount /mnt
$sudo reboot

That is it and you are back in business.

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