From: "Rod Gasson" 

> G'day Rod

G'day,

>  RG> We handle most of our own mail, but a couple of the domains under our
>  RG> control are handled by an offsite provider, mainly because it was
>  RG> under a constant dictionary type attack. :-(
>
> We're trialling a virus/spam/etc filtering service. Our MX points to them,
they
> "cleanse" the mail and then send it on to our mail server.

Just curious - what service is this, and how much do they charge?

>  >> We don't run anything virus related on the Linux machines...
>
>  RG> We don't run virus checker as such, but we do run several different
>  RG> forms of intrusion detection systems (monitoring for backdoors,
rootkits,
>  RG> etc).
>
> The only Linux sever the students have login access to is expendable. The
> teachers are supposed to look after it, but if it gets clobbered, I can
rebuild
> it anew in a couple of hours. It's not any thing important that gets lost,
just
> students' efforts at web design.

I've recently been taking a good look at some of the "live" CD
distributions, and one that has really caught my attention is
"Knoppix" -  I
don't know if you've seen or heard of this or not, but it's a single CD
literally packed with Linux Apps (Gimp, open office, mail, web and various
other servers, not to mention games and other fun stuff), and the really
cool thing is that no hard drive is required - ie, it boots and runs
entirely from CD.  I reckon this type of distribution is ideal for the
student/teacher scenario because with a simple reset you can start each new
class with a totally 'fresh' system.   Persistant (and even transient)
config files, etc can be stored onto floppy so each student can continue
where they left off if required.
There is also a version of knoppix called "STD" (Security Tools) - has most
of the regular knoppix programs, but most of the games and fun stuff have
been removed and replaced with security auditing tools, scanners, and so
forth -  It's a really nice toolkit.

The only downside to these distro's is that since they do run entirely from
CD they tend to be a little sluggish compared to a hard drive installation,
but that is a small tradeoff considering all of the benefits.

Anyway, if you haven't seen or tried these distro's I recommend you do so,
because even if you don't have a need of them for the student/teacher
scenario it sure is a handy CD to have onhand.  :-)

Cheers
Rod










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