Andras Simon wrote:
These days you'd be much more likely to have another computer or laptop
with an ethernet connector available than a serial terminal or cable
with the right-sized, right-gender ends. If you don't have a hub, use a
crossover ethernet cable to connect and use ssh. Or get wireless
working and forget about all that nonsense.
If you regularly need to have access to your computer over the
network, then you already have sshd running on it, and you have no
problem to solve.
I generally don't find computers to be very useful without networking
and the ability to access them without touching them.
But I'd hate (read: wouldn't know how to do it
securely, in a finite amount of time) to open up a port and run sshd
just to be able to log in remotely once in a blue moon to kill some
stupid gnome thingy.
Pretty much every linux distribution comes with that capability already
carefully planned and does the right thing if you install it.
The serial approach is relatively simple and you
don't have to worry about future security holes discovered in the
tcp/ip stack, iptables and sshd.
Other people are worrying about that. All you have to do is use good
passwords and keep your system up to date. Much less attention is
probably being paid to the security risks of mgetty or serial ports.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
