Basic OS Security - Redhat 9 firewall Machine; and Thanks Mr.Karasik

[menonrr at jmu.edu]

10/18

Hello,

My special thanks to Mr. Vitaly Karasik for helping me with
the syslogging and logrotate. The articles are good. I have
some issues but I will respond after I finish with those articles.


---------------------------Problem----------------------

I run an IPtables fireall on a default installation of Redhat
9 on my desktop. The machine DO NOT have any other function. 

Since my experience in the Linux world was humble, I chose to
install everything during installation of the OS. {especially
since I felt most of the necessary rpms will be installed that
way}.

I would like to seek your advise on the services that I should
stop for safety of the firewall. I noted some of the functions
that I read from the GUI services tool. The services running are

(1) anacron;  (2) apmd(monitoring battery); (3) atd (runs
command scheduled by 'at'); (4) autofs; (5) cron; 

(6) cups(I stopped it as I have no printer); (7) GPM(mouse
support for text based linux app); (8) hpoj; (9) irqbalance;
(10) isdn (stopped); 

(11) keytable; (12) netfs; (13) nfslock; (14) portmap; (15)
rendow; 

(16) rawdevices; (17) sendmail (I stopped it); (18) sgi_fam;
(19) spamassasin; (20) xinetd

B) 

I dont need the GUI any more. Does running the firewall in
command line mode offer more protection? Now the KDE is
running. {If I go to command line with <shift> + F5 key will
it offer more protection?}


Thanks.
Menon