I've seen pam_shield recommended several times for protecting against malicious login attempts; but I'm not quite clear if this requires one to be already running some pam-based software? Also, I'm running shorewall, and would prefer a shorewall based protection, but the advice I read on googling for this seemed excessively complicated. -- Timothy Murphy e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland