gwion
wild colonial boy
Premium,ExMod 2001-08
join:2000-12-28
Pittsburgh, PA
| You should, ideally, be running it as a service, anyway... it's grossly less secure run as an application...
Running as a service, the interface is universally accessible from any account, and can be secured using its own password mechanism. Long as you have the password, or don't set one up, you can fully access it from any account.
I've always used 2.15 since I started using XP, and the only problem it can cause is a freeze with laptops entering hibernate or standby. I never use either, myself, anyway, so I've had no difficulty transitioning. 2.1.5 runs just fine on XP, no problems whatsoever, here.
Run it as a service, though, unless you have the hibernate/standby issue on a laptop, and consider that a priority over "best practice" security. I preferred to disable hibernation, myself, over running as an app. A service runs at a higher priority than a user launched app; it has certain inherent protections around itself (like, for instance, it's hard to stop (by script, for example) from a limited user account, just to name one). Mainly, it starts almost when the system does, as opposed to after you're logged in. That allows you to control packets even while no user is logged in, during startup, and so forth. Loaded as an app, you have to start it after logging in, and it stops with everything else when you're logged off. The TCP-IP stack, on the other hand, is always running, when your computer is... and it's always able to access the internet... it's unprotected during startup and as long as the firewall isn't started, unless you run the firewall as a service. That's a big potential security hole...
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Semper Eadem
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Ils ont change ma chanson ma
Ils ont change ma chanson
C'est la seule chose que je peuz faire
Et ce n'est pas bon ma
Ils ont change ma chanson.
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