I'm wondering if there is a need yet for antivirus on linux systems. I've poked around and it seams like the general gist of it is no. It would be nice to have something running in the background just incase I install something harmfull and don't realize I did. I'm also wondering if theres any nice firewalls/honeypots/IDS out there. I did a search on firewalls and turned up three. Firestarter, Shoreline, and APF Firewall. Lastly i'm having problems setting up my dual head gl card setup. I've got a gf6600gt card and i've got two crt monitors. One with a dvi adaptor to vga and the other one on vga. Anything special I need to do to get this setup working on fedora core 4? Any help would be greatly appriciated! -DeathKnight Sniper

The short answer to your first question (Antivirus software on Linux) is no. There are Antivirus programs written for the Linux OS, but they scan for Windows viruses. Rootkits are more likely to be an issue in Linux. You can use rkhunter or chrootkit to check your system periodically. I use rkhunter here, and run it daily in a cron job. So far, no rootkits here :). As for your second question, I do not know anything about Firestarter, or APF. I use a hardware firewall here as my first line of defense, then I use shorewall as my second line (I have a wireless endpoint on my LAN). The third layer in my defense strategy is my file and directory permissions. I use groups to control access to my files, programs, and directories. I try not to have any world readable, writable, or executable files. If you are not a member of the correct group, you can not get access to anything. Finally, any file containing really sensitive information (my customer data files for example) gets encrypted. I do a small side business providing computer support here, and I want to keep my customers information safe. As for your third question, I have never set up a dual head arrangement, so I can not be of help there. I am sorry if this is more than you bargained for :) Ernie [ewilcox@buckeye-express.com] ICQ 41060744 Registered Linux User 247790

Thanks thats a lot of great info to know. It would be nice to figure out the dual head setup still but ya thanks! Sounds like I need to figure out how to configre: apachie-php-mysql-ftp-email-proxy-bind-dns-and find a good crypt system. What do you use for encryption pgp? or the new goverment format the 256 bit version of res is it? Do you know of any good places that will show me how to lock down a fedora core 4 box? I'm not sure where the best all inclusive place to look is. There are tons of places to go but i'm not sure whats accurate and the best. -DeathKnight Sniper

It is DES, but I use GPG here, the Gnu Privacy Guard encryption package since it is one layer of several. Since you have Fedora, I suggest you start at their WEB site. If there are forums or mailing lists, that will be the best source of information. After that try the Linux Documentation Project . HTH, Ernie Registered Linux User 247790 ICQ 41060744