Re: multilanguage support, and a bad virus experience
On Fri, Feb 13, 2004 at 09:11:52AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 13 Feb 2004, at 1:22pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On the virus front: To make a long story short, I installed XP on my laptop ... in that short time, my windows XP install had become infected with not one, but FIVE different worms... This kind of thing would never happen to me on Linux, because it's a simple matter to shut down all running services before connecting to the Internet for the first time to get updates. Right. And it would never happen to me with Windows XP, either. Why? Because before I connected to the Internet, I would have turned on Windows XP's built-in firewall, which would have completely protected you from all of those worm attacks. I do the same thing on Linux. Indeed. I had heard that such a thing existed, and even looked for it (a little) before proceeding. But I had thought I heard it was part of some service pack, so I gave up (too easily) when I did not find it where I expected to find it. I later did find it buried in advanced networking options. I expected it to be either in the control panel, or as a separate program in Windows Accessories. I intended to install Zone Alarm immediately anyway (which I did, though unfortunately not before my system was hosed), which I trust a lot more than Microsoft. Alternatively, go to http://www.microsoft.com/ and click the Protect my PC link that's displayed right on their home page. When I have the chance, I'll look at this. I'm fairly certain the toll-free line won't work for me here in Korea... ;-) This is, of course, only my opinion, which is based on my own personal experience. As you, by choice, have avoided Microsoft as much as possible, I really don't think you're qualified to speak on how much information is available on Microsoft systems. FWIW, I envy you for that fact that you have the choice of avoiding their stuff. I do not. I granted that in my previous post. Your envy may be a little misplaced though... You have been continuously employed since before MCL fell in 2000, whereas I have been anything but. Not knowing M$ software well has been a liability, which is forcing to rethink my attitude on that particular issue (not that I'm saying I'm going to rush out and become an MCSE any time soon)... [I'm also happy to say that I'm generally quite pleased with my current situation, which has virtually nothing to do with computers, and still affords me a very pleasant life style. But that will have to end some day. Or, will it? ;-)] However isn't it still true that Windows comes with all-but-useless documentation? Some Linux distros, at least Red Hat, come with a series of pretty decent manuals which discuss everything from how to log in, to how to build a custom kernel, to (if I'm not mistaken) at least some basic security measures. Unless I'm mistaken, Windows only comes with a small booklet that isn't useful to anyone other than extreme computer novices (and then, only if they actually read it, which admittedly they're not so likely to). IIRC (at least some releases of) Win95 came with the resource guide on the CD. But I think that stopped with Win98. My point is that it may have become easier to get information about securing Windows systems lately, but you either need to shell out for it at your local book store, or you have to get it on-line. If, like me, you feel that you should not have to pay for this information, that means you'll have to connect your unsecured system up to the net in order to find out how to do it. By the time you've gone through it all, your system will already be deflowered... Of course, you could get the info you need from a different computer (or booted into a different OS). But then you'd have to somehow save all that information somewhere (even if it's your brain) in order to refer to it later. This probably means saving the web pages to a file at best, or voluminous printing in the more likely case. If you're a network admin for some company, this doesn't pose too much of a problem. But if you're Joe Newbie, all of these barriers basically guarantee that it will never happen, even if Joe has the presence of mind to be worried about security in the first place. Obviously there are more factors which I'm leaving out, but I'm getting sick of typing, so I will continue to leave them out. =8^) We both know what they are, and we both know both sides of them. Anyone still listening who doesn't can always research them in the cornucopic heap of archived posts from yesteryear... -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank the spammers. pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Network/Server monitoring.
Hi, one of my new projects at my new job is to set up some network/server monitoring. Right now they're leaning towards What's Up Gold. Mostly because it's fairly easy to setup and I've used it in the past at two previous jobs. I would like to switch to something linux based. I'm installing Nagios right now on my home server to tinker with it and see how it compairs. I was just wondering what people on the list have tried and what they would suggest I take a look at. I need it to not only monitor servers by ping, but also services on the machine, as well as CPU/Memory usage (via SNMP most likely) and routers and switches (also via SNMP). Pretty charts and graphs are a big plus :) ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Network/Server monitoring.
About a year ago I took a quick look at 'nefu', which was pretty good for basic service recognition. it relied almost completely on the network administrators ability to create programs/scripts to determine whether or not a server was running, so it could thus be as robust or generic as you wanted to put the time into. check it out at: http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/nefu/ -tom Hi, one of my new projects at my new job is to set up some network/server monitoring. Right now they're leaning towards What's Up Gold. Mostly because it's fairly easy to setup and I've used it in the past at two previous jobs. I would like to switch to something linux based. I'm installing Nagios right now on my home server to tinker with it and see how it compairs. I was just wondering what people on the list have tried and what they would suggest I take a look at. I need it to not only monitor servers by ping, but also services on the machine, as well as CPU/Memory usage (via SNMP most likely) and routers and switches (also via SNMP). Pretty charts and graphs are a big plus :) ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Network/Server monitoring.
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Travis Roy wrote: I would like to switch to something linux based. I'm installing Nagios right now on my home server to tinker with it and see how it compairs. I was just wondering what people on the list have tried and what they would suggest I take a look at. Nagios is nice... but man it can get complex. I scrapped it because it was just too much of a pain to get it running just right. I need it to not only monitor servers by ping, but also services on the machine, as well as CPU/Memory usage (via SNMP most likely) and routers and switches (also via SNMP). I scrapped it in favor of big brother - very simple, very easy. There's a few nice addons that can be found at deadcat.net. The other thing I did was replace MRTG with Avalon. This is far and away the easiest and nicest program I've found like this yet. And it's free.. http://www.bb4.com http://www.deadcat.net http://freshmeat.net/projects/percival -- Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former -- Albert Einstein. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Network/Server monitoring.
Travis Roy writes: Pretty charts and graphs are a big plus :) I suggest MRTG and RRDtool. Regards, --kevin -- Kevin D. Clark / Cetacean Networks / Portsmouth, N.H. (USA) cetaceannetworks.com!kclark (GnuPG ID: B280F24E) alumni.unh.edu!kdc ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Network/Server monitoring.
Travis Roy writes: Pretty charts and graphs are a big plus :) I suggest MRTG and RRDtool. Regards, --kevin I second this. Also Big Brother. I've been playing with a follow on to Big Brother called Big Sister that adds graphs. Hmm, I think it uses RRDtool to do this. A minor point: RRDtool is a rewrite of the graphing/database of MRTG. It doesn't do the gathering of data like MRTG does so you have to use one of the *many* addons like Cricket. Another thing to think of is a central syslog server. Feed all your syslogs there (they'll have the machine name on them). Then scan 'em. I've used swatch in the past. I set it up in a tail -f type mode and search for events. When they hit I play a sound. If you're always logged in at your desk, have it running in an xterm you'll know when something happens. I used to have a lighting storm for memory errors, dogs barking when root logs in, etc. It's very handy for passive monitoring w/o having to stare at the logs. Plus, if a system crashes, you'll have all the important logs to sift through for events. Of course, you should have heard something from swatch :-) ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Network/Server monitoring.
Kevin D. Clark wrote: Travis Roy writes: Pretty charts and graphs are a big plus :) I suggest MRTG and RRDtool. Regards, --kevin One word... Cacti http://www.raxnet.net/products/cacti/ -J- ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
