In addition to the above steps I have a few additional suggestions:
1) Disable Long Distance dialing in asterisk on you default calling plan – instead setup a ‘code’ type ivr forcing the entry of a pin before making a expensive toll calling.

2) Setup your sip accounts so they only connections from particular IP’s (local by default) – ssh in when travelling to enable your ‘Hotel’ IP.

3) Setup Fail2Ban to monitor Asterisk logs and automatically disable traffic to/from ip’s that enter a wrong password 3 times in a row.

With the above you are secure

I followed your procedure changing /etc/default/rcS.

If I use the init=/bin/bash and then “. /etc/default/rcS”, I can log in using ssh. When I use the “normal” boot process, I can’t log in. I receive a message from putty that says “Network error: Connection refused”, looking like the sshd server isn’t up, but if I “ping” the IP I put in the “ifconfig” line, I receive an answer. For me, this means that the code in rcS was executed, but sshd failed to start, and now I don’t know why and I can’t think in other way to analyze the problem.

I also tried something I saw in another site, pressing “m”, but all I received was a message: “Spawning maintenance shell” and nothing more (for some minutes now).

I also thought it would be cryptdisk, although I now have changed my mind and think its the dvb-usb-cxusb driver. If I try to load that manually then modprobe hangs and the system becomes very slow. Once I can get a terminal to respond a rmmod on the module does
recover things, but I still think this may be sufficient for the module
loading at startup to cause the startup problems I saw.

I’ll debug the module when I have some time.

Cheers, Tridge

-c

I think part of the problem with this sort of thing is that Ubuntu abstracts away the back end to “make things easier” but in reality this adds additional complexity, especially when things go wrong. There’s also the issue of trying to make everything “just work” which means installing everything on there that any user or system might possibly want. Recall the Wacom tablet service which would be installed and started on every Ubuntu system whether it has one or not. Seems like a waste of time and resources to me.

I’d love to see a Linux distro which adapts itself to your very machine over time. For example – no printing enabled by default yet when you plug in a printer it automatically installs _required_ software and configures it. Blam. (Fedora actually already does this, but it’s something that I’d love to see expanded to other devices.)

Plug in a scanner, web cam, tv tuner, etc and you get a similar dialog box. Of course during installation if you already have these things it will automatically configure them.

Aside from hardware, it could do things like recognise your most used applications and do things like pre-cache them, offer suggestions on how to improve them, perform maintenance on them, etc.

This way we can have a slim, light weight, custom operating system that grows with you and your hardware over time.

-c

-c

Are you willing to talk at all about the cost and the financing? We’re looking to buy some property down here near Albury within the next couple of years, and will want to install a PV system there (unless it already has one), but at this stage I don’t have a good feel for how to cover the initial outlay.