Thanks to everyone who sent suggestions about what my O2 was doing! The
most votes went for an incorrect '/etc/resolv.conf' file. For whatever
reason this had its first line as:
hostresorder bind local
and it should have been:
hostresorder local bind
How it came to be in the wrong order I don't know. Anyhow, putting
'local' before 'bind' apparently prevents it from looking for something
(I've no idea what) over the network. The problem has been seen elsewhere
and the first person back with the suggestion was Mike Engelhardt of
Bruker, Karlsruhe. Thanks again, Mike!
Various other things were also suggested:
- excessively large '/var/adm/SYSLOG' file
- incorrect IP addresses for netmask, router and gateway
- unnecessary processes running or flags set, in particular:
DHCP
gated
yp
timed (I got that one!)
routed
One person also asked what is the minimum collection of flags and
processes that you actually need to have running. I wouldn't mind knowing
what they all were!
There were also the usual worries about security. I have been the victim
of several attempted breakins. Of course you never know how far the
hackers got, or why they bothered for that matter. They generally try to
log on through the usual open accounts left on the machine by SGI, but I
had them closed off already. If they're really smart, they'll know how to
decrypt the passwords, and I don't see any defence against that. What I'd
like to be able to do is to restrict _all_ access of _any_kind_ to only
designated IP addresses, either named as sets or individually, but I've
no idea if that's even possible or not.
Many thanks once again for everyone's kind suggestions and help.
Alan
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Dr A S F Boyd Chemistry Department
NMR Spectroscopist Heriot-Watt University
phone: +44-131-451 3214 Riccarton
fax: +44-131-451 3180 Edinburgh
a.s.f.boyd@hw.ac.uk EH14 4AS
http://dava.che.hw.ac.uk/nmr.html Scotland
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