[ale] HOWTO modify hosts.allow on CDROM based distributions ?

[Bjorn Dittmer-Roche]

On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, Courtney Thomas wrote:

> I'm trying to get Mandrake9.2 and Suse90 going on a couple of machines
> and need to move some BIG files around and am trying to use ftp.
>
> I find that I'm unable to access the CDROM based installs [using ftp] of
> the aforesaid two, getting "connection refused" from a third machine
> when I try to ftp into them.
>
> I'm assuming it's because I need to enter the third machine into the
> hosts.allow files of the Linuxen. Maybe not.....

Assuming that hosts.allow is the problem (do you have ftpd running? can
you access from localhost? Firewalls down?) here's how I would approach
it. Hopefully someone has an easier idea:

* create a ram disk big enough for /etc.
* mount the ramdisk somewhere.
* cp -r /etc [ram disk]
* unmount the ramdisk
* remount ramdisk onto /etc, it will mount *over* the existing /etc,
making the existing /etc invisible.
* modify the new /etc to your heart's content.
* send whatever signals are needed to whatever processes to get them to
reread the file.

You could also use actual hardware instead of a ramdisk, thus saving your
configuration and so on.

Good luck!

	bjorn