> The Nottingham LUG website says that you meet at the Dunkirk community
> centre. Is this still the case?
Can you make the meet at the Limelight Bar, Wed 7:30pm? A couple of us use
SuSE and we could share experiences.
> I'd like some help in configuring my modem, a web browser, email client
and
> a firewall.
> (currently I'm using "Zonealarm" as a windows fire wall and that alerts me
> to enough attempted port hacks each time I'm on line to convince me that I
> want some equivalent Linux firewall set up before I start surfing using
> Linux.)
If you have a dynamic IP address rather than a static one, I shouldn't worry
too much, Personal Firewalls have been hyped up for commercial reasons, and
I suspect many of the Win ones, like to give an alarm at the drop of a hat,
to reinforce your purchasing decision.
Most of the activity is scans for particular services etc. so you can avoid
trouble by not offering external services, like web pages, ftp, telnet and
so on. When running servers in Telehouse 100Mb/s and others with 1Mb/s
connection, did see a number of attempts at times, with more or less
success, but a machine on the end of a modem, is not a very attractive
beasty.
That said, there's some good sites on 'hardening' your system, like
www.securityfocus.com and securityportal.com which explain sensible
precautions to take. Mostly they talk about denying uneccessary services,
so if you don't need to serve ftp don't, disable telnet etc. The files
hosts files in /etc/ allow, deny can be used to deny access from outside.
Firewalls become more important where you are protecting networks, and need
to control traffic. Even then they are in addition to not instead of normal
security practices.
> Unfortunately my PC has a winmodem and I have no spare cash for an
external
> modem
> but I have downloaded some Linmodem drivers so if anyone on this list has
> ever successfully configured a winmodem using Linmodem drivers I'd be
> especially interested in your advice :-)
Have you thought about an ISA modem? Dynalink did some last year and claim
Linux support, they don't use your CPU at all to do the signal processing,
all hardware and are around £30 or less, I think.
There's some instructions on PCI modems in the SuSE manual, but then you
have to be very careful, that they're not Win only.
Rob
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