[SC.LUG] Internet PARANOIA - Was Modem troub

[Ewan Leith]

I don't remember which distribution you said you used, both Redhat and 
Suse come with sensible firewall configurations which they ask you about 
during the install, I imagine Mandrake does something similar.

The easy way to check if they're working is to connect to http://grc.com 
and follow the shields up link, ignore the hyperbole, but essentially 
all the ports should come back "Stealth" if you are already using a 
firewall. I'd recommend the www.symantec.com security check instead, but 
it doesn't seem to be working with mozilla at the moment.

Ewan

Richard Pineger wrote:
> Hi Ian,
> 
> you were correct but the method was lacking ;-) thanks for your help.
> 
> I'm using Kppp to configure my Internet connection. For some reason, when I
> originally set up my service provider for user 'richard', on the DNS tab,
> 'Automatic' wasn't selected. When I did it for 'root' automatic DNS was
> selected. Hence, root worked, Richard didn't (nothing new there :-).
> 
> Now I happily have both working.
> 
> The next question is: How do I keep my machine secure against attack? Are
> there any basic settings that I should do immediately? I'm ever so paranoid
> using the Internet at the moment given the recent spate of virii. Am I ok
> just to use it. I know that, in some configuration file somewhere I have the
> setting PARANOID but I'm blowed if I can find it again. I think it should be
> changed to ALL. Does that mean anything to you?
> 
> Rich
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Molton
> To: sc@mailman.lug.org.uk
> Sent: 01/09/03 19:07
> Subject: Re: [SC.LUG] New to list: Introduction and Questions: Modem troub
> 
> On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 14:13:03 +0100
> Richard Pineger <richard.pineger@kudos-idd.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I connect OK but can't get any pages off the Internet. I suspect it
>>is because I am not root user.
> 
> 
> my guess is that you havent set up any nameservers.
> 
> can you ping www.<something>.com ?
> 
> if not, can you ping an IP like 194.106.34.179?
> 
> if you cant ping a name but can ping an IP then you need to add some
> lines like (in /etc/resolv.conf)
> 
> nameserver ip.of.your.isps_nameserver
> nameserver 1.2.3.4  (alt dns)
> 
> its possible pppd created the file for you in /etc/ppp/ and if it did,
> something like ln -s /etc/ppp/<name of file> /etc/resolv.conf
> 
>