From: "Antti Kurenniemi" 

Thanks-o, Adam: you just gave me enough stuff to learn for the next month
or so . Anyhoo, a router with firewall would be the easiest, but
she doesn't want to buy anything (maybe I'll eventually buy it for her).
I'll look for the default firewall, maybe I'll figure that one out easily
enough.


Antti Kurenniemi

"Adam Flinton"  wrote in message
news:41fe2e28$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> Is the lass on dialup or broadband?
>
>
> If Broadband then the best way is to get a modem/router/hub thingy &
> simply direct incoming ports as needed to her machine (assuming she wants
> to run some sort of services e.g. 80 if she wants to run a web site.)
>
> If dialup then there are lots of linux firewall creation tools with nice
> guis but all basically just use the underlying iptables stuff.
>
> Possibly the easiest is to install webmin & ssh server & then choose to
> firewall all incoming except ssh & then if you need to admin, get her to
> dialup, type ifconfig & read you out the ip address she's been given for
> that connection by her ISP.
>
> For my mother....I have part of the "ppp-up" script which
right at the end
> mails her with the ppp address details so she can just send that to me.
>
> Once in via ssh you can port forward webmin etc or indeed start vncserver
> & port forward that (should she need help).
>
> wrt virus scanners....you can....but there are very few linux viruses &
> basically the AV tools are there for running a linux server i.e. where you
> are looking for windows viruses so you can defang them as they (for
> instance) transit the mail system.
>
> Adam

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