On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 13:56, Sigfred Håversen wrote:
On Wednesday 04 June 2003 19:41, Richard wrote: <snipping post>
On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 04:41, Ian David Laws wrote: <snipping post>
Beeing a newbie is not the same as being dumb. On the other hand, there is always the possibility to a dumb thing. So I try to plan accordingly, and the first point is not to trust myself that much ;-) Shit happens and mistakes are done. I'm not that much of a newbie, I just do dumshit things somethimes. LIke killing my firewall while my cable modem is still connected. Or not writing down when I make major changes so I can go back.
If you have the possibility, just dedicate one machine as an expendable server, and protect the other machines (if any) with their own firewall. It may quite an old machine, since it does not need to run anything fancy like X.
I have picked up an old laptop cheap which I want to setup as my router/firewall. It's to slow for normal use with KDE but at 150Meg should do quite well as a router. It is small and can be placed out of the way and has an UPS built-in. I just need to find the time to make the switch. I have 5 machines hanging onto my main one, but do I always play on the sub??? Of course not, that takes brains. Just like RTFMing before making changes. Any fool can read and screw things up, it takes a real Tim Allen type man to really screw things up without reading instructions.
And yeah, don't trust does techies at the help desk that much. Not because their "nasty" or "evil", but quite simply that they don't have all that much time to help you in this. Besides, not all of them are that well versed in how to secure a machine with a _particular_ operating system.
In all fairness to the Vonage Tech, he never missed a beat when I told him I was going to use a linux box as my router/firewall. No bad mouthing at all! Then he recognized immediately how I had already screwed up the ATA configuration and directed me to restoring it in a few minutes. Next he gave me all the port information I needed but had no idea how I should open them. All in all dealing with their techs has been a rather pleasant experience. I can certainly recommend the company and their product without reservations. The nice thing about dealing with Linux is the great number of people who are willing to help. Of course there are a few crazies around but the /dev/null file will never get filled cause they are so few. Regards, Richard