Re: [school-discuss] linuxconf

["" <marilyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael,

Thanks for your information too!  You see I never even knew that is was a screwy
thing to reply and erase the subject - so cool - I will remember that.  :)

If you guys who are system administrator folks saw me in action, I am sure you
would be horrified.  I just sort of install a bunch of crap, see if it works,
if not I reformat and install something different.

You see, I do not even know what ¨rsync-over-ssh as r/w transport¨ is . . . but
since you say it is cool, I will read up on it.

Thanks again!  I appreciate your help!

Marilyn


Quoting Michael Shigorin <mike@xxxxxxxxxxx>:

> On Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 06:25:51AM -0700, marilyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > Here is a question for the system administrator folks.  
> 
> Well, some of us might advise you on starting new conversation by
> composing a brand new message, not replying to another thread and
> changing subject: there are message headers that will link them
> together no matter what.
> 
> > Back in the days when I used Red Hat and Mandrake, I used a
> > tool called linuxconf that was just great for my simple needs.
> 
> Nasty "tool", I've removed it off some RH5.1 (or 4.x?) as soon
> as it gave me no choice but to either accept some unreviewable
> changes to sendmail.cf or do something else but not let things be!
> 
> > Apache is installed and running, but I want to setup my
> > webmastering students to access their own directories through
> > ftp and ssh.  Ssh works, but not ftp.
> 
> FTP for webmastering is bad habit albeit very popular in the
> wild.  In fact, it's sort of deadlock: those coming for hosting
> expect FTP even if they'd prefer something better, and those
> providing hosting have to provide FTP even if they'd eagerly
> switch to something better.
> 
> At our free hosting for free software projects, we provide
> rsync-over-ssh as r/w transport and consider any ftp to be
> readonly anonymous access.
> 
> > Also, I want the kids to be able to run programs through ssh.
> > Pine works fine, but it gives an xserver error when I try to
> > run a GUI.
> 
> ssh -X host proggie
> (for newer openssh, ssh -Y to retain complete X11 protocol,
> not just screened/secured parts)
> 
> > Is there some tool like linuxconf for Debian?
> 
> I hope linuxconf is gone for good everywhere.
> 
> Regarding webmin, it's more competent indeed but still a security
> nightmare (better than sendmail as well but having lots of perl
> code, modules and interpreter running with root privileges makes
> any of my security-conscious colleagues cringe).  Unfortunately
> there's no way with it to do privilege separation with it AFAIK.
> 
> Yep, I know no sane remote administration UI that would do that.
> There's work on ALTerator to bring it there but that's really 
> not a trivial task as one might guess ;)
> 
> So over LAN, it's all no real problem usually; but still not 
> a good habit, just like auth r/w FTP.
> 
> -- 
>  ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>   ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/
>  ----       Oct 26--27, Kiev, Ukraine:
> --       http://conference.osdn.org.ua
>