Just a friendly notice, rather than any question.

This afternoon I noticed some strangeness in the MEPIS Linux I installed yesterday morning. There were 3 instances spamd running -- though I never use any mail client. Watchdog, rather than Guarddog, was running. Find had been disabled. Navigating through the file system, even as root, seemed peculiar -- some files were not present, though I had selected 'show hidden files.' I was running nothing, yet the (256) memory was being heavily used. As fast as I killed getty, more appeared (not that I knew what those procs were, but they were using lots of RAM!).

Well, I decided to reinstall, from scratch. But first, I disconnected the router from the cable modem and left it off. This time, I was able to see a clear (though difficult to read) line of text at the top of the screen during the boot from CD. So I selected the Normal install this time, and my video problems are gone.

Yesterday, since I could not read my screen at all, I naturally assumed I needed to use some other install for this old machine. It was the first time I had turned on this PC (Dell gx1, Dec. 1999), so I didn't know what to expect. My theory is that the cracker/hacker who's been plaguing me had infected the video RAM. This is something that seems to happen once in awhile. Usually, having powering off the monitor clears the problem, but this time I had the highspeed network turned on while I was trying to install. Not a good idea, it seems.

I still don't have any sound, but at least my video problems are over. Now I just need to figure out how to lock down this system! I'm writing this offline, and will try to copy/paste it from KEdit once I've reconnected cable modem to router.

P.S. The network came up instantly, as soon as I reconnected cable modem to router. I strongly advise anyone having difficulty with an installation to disconnect highspeed access until the installation is complete!