On Thursday 11 August 2005 07:26, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
C. Richard Matson wrote:
advice to be aware of the security implications of working as root. The solution to me is: 1. Keep it to a minimum. 2. Use a firewall.
I thought SuSE ships with a built-in firewall. Do I need to activate it?
Unless you have explicitly disabled it, it is active by default on any recent installation. There is a personal version that just blocks all inbound connections, and a more flexible one that allows you to open specific ports to external machines.
2. Have a set of installation disks handy when you try something new. (That also applies to root in text mode:-)) That way if you delete/crash an application or the entire OS, your personal files will be safe and you can install what you lost.
Right, since the app being started up even via text mode can still overwrite the boot sector or some such other thing.
Just to be clear, you could only overwrite the boot sector as root, not as your regular user. This is irrespective of using a gui or text mode. However, newbies are far more likely to do something dangerous with the command line than a structured GUI, as you are less likely to understand all the available options and their interactions. -- Steve Boddy