On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 12:21:40PM +0000, Michael Fothergill wrote: > Dear Debian folks, [...] > > Would that have been enough to include and fire up some kind of firewall or > do I need to install that separately? > linux has a built in "firewall" in the kernel. commonly called Netfilter and iptables. Basically, it controls what the kernel does with network traffic. There are various ways to configure it. check out shorewall > If so what firewall would you recommend and what aptitude command will > fetch me it? aptitude install shorewall > > How do I know that the firewall is on and working? man shorewall http://www.shorewall.net > > Also if I want to probe the horizontal and vertical refresh rate of the > monitor I am using more precisely using Linux (e.g. superprobe?), how do I > do it? you might check out xresprobe. I'm not positive it does refresh rates, but might help. also, have you googled the monitor model number and name? there are several websites that have specs for all kinds of monitors. the manufacturers website may also have the information. > > Also I assume that if I go into the config box in Gnome then I should be > able to run the Xwindows config again somehow and then put in the precise > monitor refresh information into Xwindows and then have the monitor work as > effectively as possible. you have already been told several times how to reconfigure X. dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 did this not work for you? > > Suggestions on the best strategy here are appreciated. The video card is > an SiS 630/730 according to Fedora. Putting in SiS as the card > manufacturer type seemed to work well. > then its probably working. > So far I chose the "simple" option and put a generic 15 inch CRT display in > form my monitor. This has actually worked OK but I want to refine it and > give Debian the fair deal when it comes to running my hardware. > > Regards > > Michael Fothergill > > PS I also tried installing Debian on an old PC with a Pentium 100 > chip in it and two small drives of 1.7GB and 2GB. The small drive has Windows 98 > on it. The second drive was a slave drive and I tried to put Debian on it. > > I had to boot from floppies to load the CDROM. It is not connected to the > internet. The partitioning worked OK but when I tried to install the base > system it crashed when trying to load debootstrap. I tried several times > but I coulkd not get past this problem. > it may be that there isn't enough RAM to run the installer. please provide more specs on the machine in question. you may have to use woody installer and upgrade. And don't take this personally, but as a piece of friendly advice. There is a wealth of information available to you that you should be looking into BEFORE you ask questions. the Debian website has lots of documentation. Also there is a ton of information on your machine already: man, info, apropos and plain old /usr/share/doc... and don't forget the all powerful google. you can search just debian mailing list archives by including site:lists.debian.org in your search string. the folks on here are eager to help if it appears you've helped yourself first. please read: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html regards A
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature