[cobalt-users] PortSentry ain't impotent

["Carrie Bartkowiak" <ravencarrie@xxxxxxxx>]

I don't wanna hear anyone else tell me about how PortSentry is
basically useless, nothing more than a heads-up.
I disabled IMAP on my 2nd server. I had been connecting to an IMAP
folder on my 1st server. When the propogation hit today my machine
attempted to connect to that IMAP folder on the 2nd server and bammo -
I was out in the cold.

No web.
No mail.
No SSH2.
No ANYTHING.

So here's a tip for anyone who accidentally gets locked out of their
machine (and who has a static IP like I do):
1. Anonymizer is great for letting you into the GUI.
www.anonymizer.com
     Type in your GUI url and hit enter - hit the link at the bottom
of the page to skip the 10 seconds to read advertising.
2. If you've got two servers like I do, you can shell between them
(this may be old hat to you guys but I just taught myself how to do it
with 'man ssh2' and feel like sharing):
a. ssh2 into machine 1
b. #ssh2  second.machine.name -l admin -p <port>
(whatever port you happen to be running ssh2 on, stick that in where
I've got <port>
c. enter your password
d. you're in. SU to root and go rip yourself out of hosts.deny.
Reboot the server with
#shutdown -r now

Don't know why, but putting myself into hosts.allow didn't help
anything. The next time my email connected I was blocked again. That's
when I got *really* pissy and gave PortSentry a good snipping.

It's nice to be back in my machine again... I REALLY don't like it
when my shell goes away.
;)

CarrieB