Further adventures in Firewall upgrades

[Jonathan Hutchins]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: zscoundrel [mailto:zscoundrel at kc.rr.com]

> I was wondering about all the extra services that were installed on a 
> firewall box, but I wisely left that to others that are more 
> experienced with firewall configuration - and learned from their posts as
well.

Well, there really all that many extras installed.  It allows ssh
connectivity so I can work on it from home or office, and do some other fun
tricks.  The main reason fetchmail and the DNS are running on it is because
I didn't want to have to set up a whole separate server for those two
services, and I couldn't do what I wanted on the NT server I have.  

Other than that, what's on it is mostly the firewall and some Linux
utilities, since with the firewall I have a full-time Linux server running,
and I can use it for some Linux tools.  Things like rpmfind are for
installing and upgrading packages.

If I ever decide to run enough stuff on it that it affects load or open
ports, I'll build another internal server and move stuff to that.  Plans are
that when it's time to sunset the NT4 server, I'll build a parallel Linux
server and migrate to it.  But I already have five computers, a switch and a
big UPS running under my desk, and it's noisy enough as it is.  Any new
servers are going to have to go live in the basement, and I'll have to
remote the consoles somehow.