After failing to install on two different machines that were running Windows, I realized that one machine had a bad hard-drive, and the other bad memory. So I've collected the good parts into one machine and installed CentOS with SME. This was the fastest install of Linux I have every seen, 15 minutes done, configured, and running, web and email server. It is a very secure config, no GUI -- just a server. One problem: MySQL and Telnet can't be accessed remotely, ports not open, allow/deny files, something. I've searched the internet and hacked around for hours, can't get these services to work remotely. Anyone here have experience with the SME/e-smith admin tools? By default SME doesn't install Telnet on port 23, only ssh on port 22. So I ran a yum install for telnet, manually started it. I get a response from port 23, but connection refused. Mysql does come installed with SME, however local connections only. I can run mysql client on the command line on the SME.CentOS server, queries work fine, but not remotely. I am using Windows Vista as a client workstation, Programmer Studio (Whisper Technology) that requires a generic telnet server, and the freeware version of Toad to connect to the MySQL server. Any help to weaken the security on SME to allow remote telnet and MySQL connections will be very much appreciated! -- Michael Anderson, J3k Solutions Sr.Systems Programmer/Analyst 832.515.3868