A few EEEssues for Asus
I have recently informed Asus of a couple problems with their EeePC Xandros distribution. It would seem that the Kernel doesn’t have iptables built into it for firewall protection. Which means any running system services are wide open to any connected network.
A permanent fix for iptables will involve recompiling the Kernel from scratch which would be easiest if Asus recompiled it and released it as an apt update. It can be done manually though.
A temporary fix is to disable the “portmap” and “samba” services. This will close the ports but leave you without the ability to share folders from the EeePC. You can still view samba shares on other computers.
To disable these services, open /usr/sbin/services.sh and comment out the following code:
start-stop-daemon –start –quiet –oknodo –exec /sbin/portmap
/usr/sbin/invoke-rc.d samba start
One thing you can learn from the above code is that you can start and stop any service by using the invoke-rc.d script. A good thing to know as well.
I have noticed that the Xandros file manager works but is inadequate for using samba shares. Instead of using the default file manager from Xandros I used Konqueror instead. It is already installed but hidden.
If you wish to create a shortcut to Konqueror it is located at:
/usr/bin/konqueror
Also, I have discovered another issue with the Kernel that will involve recompiling it from scratch. The kernel was compiled to only recognize up to 1GB of RAM. You can change a parameter in the kernel configuration that controls the maximum RAM allowable. If you set it to 4GB then a 2GB module will work in the Xandros OS. If you install another Linux distribution you will not have to recompile the kernel as they are set to allow this much memory by default. Windows XP is already set to allow a maximum of 4GB of RAM.
There is information on recompiling the kernel (HERE) but I found that it is incomplete and doesn’t explain how to set the RAM limits.
There is better information (HERE) and (HERE).
I will add more information on this at a later time once I successfully recompile my Kernel with the iptables module and RAM settings.