> Which ports are inadvisable for closing? TIA, John N. it depends on what the box does. if it's just a workstation for you then you can probably turn off everything in inetd.conf except ident. ports you might want to look into leaving open, depending on the purpose of the box: ftp ssh ident telnet (don't do it if you can help it, use ssh instead) http https smtp pop3 imap you can find the port numbers for these services by looking them up in /etc/services. adam.