A few (alot) Linux questions.

[GoldenFalcon]

So far it's been goin' great. Slackware Linux recognizes my network adapter, which is all it really needs to recognize anyway since I'm using it for server purposes. Partitioning finally came to place (5 swap partitions, 1 root, 1 for /var, 1 for /usr, and 1 BIG one for /home, plus I kept the Dell utility partition in case something goes awry). I created my first kernel and it worked well, just have to modify it a bit more to exclude some unnecessary drivers.

Since most of you are pretty good at this... Feel free to answer all, or some of them.

1. Looking at /etc/inetd.conf, I saw that alot of the services were commented out. Researching on the internet, I soon found out why and immediately ignored the "r" daemons (rlogin, rsh, rexec..) However, those same sites that warned me about enabling the r daemons also warned me about enabling Linux's internal telnetd and ftpd, because of "insecurity". Now, Slackware comes with OpenSSH as the SSH daemon and I know that I could use that to remotely login and SCP/SFTP to transfer files, but most of the time I'm not gonna have the luxury of an SSH client. How dangerous are those two, really? If they really are that bad, are there any suggestions for the two protocols you guys may have?

2. Speaking of the internal telnetd and ftpd, how does one configure them? I looked in the /etc directory and couldn't find anything related to those two.

3. Are individual (non-root) users allowed to run servers of their own, or do I need to give special permissions? Such as running an ircd on a name that ain't root.

4. I haven't exactly installed a UNIX print service yet, but during installation I was given two options: CUPS and LPRng. Is there much difference between these? Do I need one of these installed for Samba to recognize there is a printer attached to the parallel port?

5. I installed LILO in the MBR, so whenever I want to kick it out I'd just insert my old Win95 bootup disk and do fdisk /mbr. Would that damage Linux as well, or just wipe out LILO?

6. Are there any command-line utilities in Linux that can directly write to a CD-RW? It knows there's a drive in /dev/hdd, and already passed the hdd=ide-scsi flag to the kernel so CD-RW support is enabled. Plan on using a CD-RW disc as a sort of rudimentary backup.

And that's it... Thanks a whole lot if ya help. As I said awhile ago, this is my first foray into the world of Linux, so if any of these are really stupid questions...

[Pu-239]

1. When I'm somewhere w/o an SSH client on a winbox, I just google for putty (few hundred KB- SSH client) and winSCP (SFTP client- ~2 megs).

2. They probably aren't installed. Don't use them anyway.

3. Usually no, though often daemons run as a non-root user for security.

4. Use CUPS, since that is what I use. If you use CUPS, you do not need to use Samba to share the printer, since you can use IPP (most people set up samba to do this, since they are already running it).

5. Just wipe out LILO- but why if you are keeping Linux?

6. Yes. cdrecord (hehe I have a real SCSI CD burner). Newer versions of cdrecord and the kernel do not require scsi emulation.