E-mail access only without Internet

tech

Ok a friend ahs asked me to setup 2 pc;s to share dSL and printers/files but only want outlook e-mail acees on these as he does not want he kids to ahve any internet access, skype, aol

Just e-mail

Whats the best way to set this up?

feylya

Block port 80 going to one machine?

tech

what about blcing skype, msn and the rest ?

DonkeyStyle \o/

Yeah sounds like a job for your router alright.
I'd block everything to/from that machine, then only open the ports you need for email... pop/smtp then whatever else for authentication if you need it (ssl?)
I'd also consider using a limited windows account, might stop them from installing stuff like skype in the first place... and lesson the impact if they do open a dodgy attachment.
It's not something I've played around with yet, sounds like fun though.

My approach instead was to just install ubuntu on the noob machine... they'll never figure out how to install anything (nor hopefully will the web ads claiming to protect from blah blah)

tech

would be a nice pain really
youd need better than your Eircom Netopia or BT Zyxel router for the rules and stuff

Stark

By a router off Komplett. They're not too expensive. The Linksys ones are nice imo.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Yeah I dunno what these routers are capable of config-wise... but the one I got with Smart broadband seems quite well featured.
There are software-only options aswell... I think mcaffee/norton/zonealarm have application passwords so you can setup the rules locally and password protect the configuration.
Though perhaps not the most secure way of going about it... I suppose it depends on who you're trying to stop and how determined they are.

Capt'n Midnight

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

Yeah sounds like a job for your router alright.
...
My approach instead was to just install ubuntu on the noob machine...

you'd probably use thunderbird for the email then.

backup and defrag the windows machine
get a knoppix bootable CD

click on the penguin to get a root terminal ( like a DOS command prompt )
in it type qtparted
( or just K, run , qtparted - but using the terminal you see error messages )

in qtparted right click on your partition and resize it - 10GB if you can spare it

comit changes

when you reboot windows will do a disk check because it was told to
when you are happy windows is still there,
reboot from the ubuntu cd

when it settles down check that stuff works and then click on install
choose the option to use the largest continuous free space

DonkeyStyle \o/

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

you'd probably use thunderbird for the email then.

Yeah I use thunderbird on my windows machine aswell, but the ubuntu guest machine isn't setup with any pop accounts... people just use webmail.
It's fine aswell, nobody cares that it's not windows... once the web is there, it's all good.

Capt'n Midnight

Or you could block DNS and the gateway and only allow a route to the email server.

use ipconfig to get your network settings
use ping mail.eircom.net to get the ip address eg: 159.134.198.135


Gateway
in the network card TCP/IP properties setup the card address something like
Address 192.168.1.55 ( the first three stay the same - 55 or another number - can't use 1 or 2 since the existing PC's may use it and don't use the number the gateway was set to
Mask 255.255.255.0 ( unchanged )
gateway 0.0.0.0 ( so can't see anything )

Finally setup a route to the email server
route add -p 159.134.198.135 mask 255.255.255.255 192.168.1.1
( the 192.168.1.1 was the address of the gateway )
Type in route print to see if all went well


if DNS is turned off in TCP/IP then you can't find the internet
EDIT the \windows\system32\drivers\etc\lmhosts file. ( it's a text file with NO extension - watch out notepad will add a .txt to it if you are not careful. )
add the line
159.134.198.135 mail.eircom.net
to it - now this is the only site that can be found unless you know the number of a site.