Re: [Sheflug] Where do I start?

[Will Newton <nospam [at] misconception.org.uk>]

On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Steve Tickle wrote:

> reason behind us still using this system is that although it's a little 
> inflexible and doesn't do everything the way we want it, it's reasonably 
> easy to configure and I have a working familiarity with it. Ideally, I'd 
> like to replace this with a Linux system but I don't know the first thing 
> about the principles behind firewalls etc nor have I any first hand 
> knowledge of procmail/sendmail etc.

I would reccomend OpenBSD (or any other BSD) over Linux for a
firewall. The firewall tools are far less of a moving target than
ipfwadm/ipchains/whateverelseitsbeencalled on Linux.

> I'm willing to read up on all this but I also need a "victim" system that I 
> can gradually configure and learn on. Would it be practical to set up such 
> a system although it would be on our internal LAN and hence behind our 
> firewall, so that I learn the principles involved and eventually configure 
> a "safe" system that could ultimately replace the Windoze box.

A machine *safer* than Windows? Than shouldn't be too taxing. :)

There are lots of good (and wieghty) books on the subject. Try getting the
O'Reilly texts on procmail and sendmail (a lot of people prefer qmail).
As for firewalls I'm not too sure. The Linux firewall stuff is a bit of a
moving target as I said, so try looking at the HOWTOs. There are some more
generic texts on the subject (Alec Muffet's Care and Feeding text is
online somewhere).

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