Firewall Rules

Ok here is a simple tip. All machines need to have a firewall installed and configured. Chatty windows boxes will try to infect every box on your network and if they can't infect you they end up doing a denial of service. Close all ports inbound and outbound by default. This may sound like paranoia, but if microsoft made this the default then created templates for what the machine is. This would limit the spread of viruses and spyware. I have started using Shorewall more and more on Linux machines. It simplifies Iptables quite a bit. Some of the Admins don't like it and are resistant to change. I will see how it works out.

Oh what a weekend.
I am in the Army Reserve as an Information Systems Manager. I would be a decent job if the pay were better. I might actually consider going back active in the Army for about 25,000 more a year. I don't understand how they expect soldiers to sign up and stay in for such little money. I know the Military retirement is nice but its not worth taking a 30,000 $ a year pay cut for the next 6 years to finish out my enlistment. simple math. take a 30,000 pay cut to make 21,000 more after 10 years. They way I figure it an E-7 needs to make about 100,000$ in order to make it worth while. But they pay barely over 50,000$ Beginning Unix Sysadmins make 65,000$

Tools that should exist but I don't know off any.

I would like a tool that graphs all connectivity on a Linux or Unix box. I would like to be able to graphically tell which machines the machine I am working on is touching. I can do a netstat and find out which machines I am talking to but I would like to graph this. I think this would simplify the creation of firewall rules. currently I have a script that goes though the netstat output and the lsof output and determines which ports are in use or listening and then gives me a list of which hosts I am currently connected to and on which ports. netstat -an |grep EST |grep -v 127.0.0.1 |sort -u gives a good textual start.

Ok, I haven't blogged since the early 00's. I thought it was appropriate to stop when I had a real job. Now I know its not.
I went to a job interview a few days ago, the interviewer asked if he was to search for me in google what would he need to type? Basically how am I tagged what is my meta data. Luckily when searching Jerry Gallagher linux my comments on The Linux Link tech show come up first.