[ale] questions re: hosts.allow/deny and X

[balaunma at gpc.peachnet.edu]

Greetings, folks.  My name is Matt, and I've just made the switch
to Linux (specifically, redhat 5.0, kernel 2.0.32.  I'll be upgrading
my kernel this weekend)

I have a couple of questions regarding linux configuration. 
I know this isn't a tech support mailing list, and these questions
would be better suited for a comp.os.linux.answers post, but
I currently have no usenet access, so please forgive me.

I have some experience with Linux, but some of the finer tweaking
details escape me.  Currently, I am having the following difficulties:

1) FTPing to my linux box doesn't seem to want to work. I get
"connection refused, service not available." Pinging works. 
HTTP requests work.  Telnetting works.  FTP doesn't.  Not even
when logged into my box and ftping to localhost.  I don't get
it.  The FTP service is not commented out in inet.d.  I'm thinking
it may be something to do with my hosts.allow/deny files, since
I don't really know what's supposed to go in them, and they're
blank to begin with.  Could someone show me a sample set of hosts.allow/deny
files?  Does anyone have any other suggestions of things I should
check?

2) X...  Something is very wrong with my X display.  I'm using
a CL-GD5434 2mb PCI card.  When X starts up, the screen is unreadable.
 It looks almost as though someone has taken a piece of cheesecloth
and draped it over my screen, so that everything is blurred beyond
comprehension.  I can see well enough to exit out of fvwm, but
once I get back to the shell, it (and all virtual consoles) have
had their fonts messed with.  Everything is garbage, and I have
to shutdown and reboot.  

If it makes a difference, the system is a P100 on an Asus board,
64mb ram, one other PCI card (my Ensoniq AudioPCI soundcard...which
I'm hoping either kernel 2.2.0 will have drivers for, or will
be compatible with the drivers for the Ensoniq Soundscape or
Creative Soundblaster Pro).

Any ideas?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I'm very determined to
make this work and not go back to MS products.

Thanks!

-Matt


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