Revamped rc.snort on my server

Hi all!

First, I've redone my rc.snort file. I looked at the existing rc files in /etc/rc.d/ and looked at rc.sendmail specifically. It looked very simple compared to the rc.snort I did awhile back. Remember when I mentioned that I did two of them, one for Slackware 9.0 and one for OpenBSD 3.8, with the OpenBSD one working fine but the Slackware one not working 100%? Well, instead of basing the Slackware rc.snort from Slackbuilds' thttpd rc script, I went ahead and did the following:

1. I changed the name of the existing rc.snort to rc.snort.original using the 'mv' command.

2. I executed the following: cp rc.sendmail rc.snort

3. I edited rc.snort with VIM, replacing all mentioning of sendmail with snort, also including the path of snort.

4. I then tested by manually starting, stopping and restarting a running snort process. I found that the script was choking because I forgot to add the '-D' switch to the script. I fixed this and tested successfully.

5. I lastly set a cronjob to run 5 min in the future to test that the cronjob would function using the new script. It worked!

I should've done the above AGES ago. Now I get to wait a few days to see if the cronjob fails because I haven't accounted for something else...that's what happened last time. I think I'm not going to have issues this time, though.

I'll link the revised rc.snort script a bit later.

I've also built two netcat Slackware packages, using Checkinstall. I built one for my 9.0 server and one for my v12.0 workstation. Everytime I build a package, I'll be adding it to my slackpack repository, which will have v9.0 and v12.0 directories. I've added it because I didn't find a slackpack of netcat hosted anywhere else. I've the feeling that people may want the version for 12.0. I don't think many people are using v9.0 anymore.

You are probably wondering why I'm using v9.0. Because that's what my hosting provider offers. I try to keep it up-to-date but I've noticed that Pat isn't upgrading packages that far back anymore. This means I'll have to build my own upgrade packages. This also means I'll have to be very attentive to security (like I'm not already). Additionally, this will soon force me to either upgrade to v12.0 (Linode has several howtos) or jump to another distribution for simplicity-sake. :(

Anyways, I just wanted to post since I've been doing some work with Slack.

Until next time...