Preventing booting from a CD

[bookem]

Can anyone point me in the right direction for preventing booting from a CD? I know it's been posted here before, but I can't seem to find the post.

[simX]

The best way to do this would be via the Firmware. It has support for passwords, and there are three levels of security. None is default, and asks for no password. The second asks only for a password when not starting up from the internal hard drive (which sounds like this is the setting you want). The third asks for a password no matter what. I think you can access the firmware by holding down Command-Option-O-F on startup, but I'm not sure.

I think there are some programs that allow you to configure the Open Firmware via a graphical user interface. Just go to www.versiontracker.com and search for "firmware". I'm sure you can find something.

I had a couple questions about the open firmware myself, though. I have heard that if you take out or add a RAM module and then zap the PRAM, you can reset the firmware to a no security state. Is this true? If not, is there any way to get past the open firmware password?

[rubberchicken]

You are correct, you can reset the open firmware that way. If you are worried about security then remember that once someone can touch your computer they will be able to do what they want to it. You can encrypt your drive but if you have a crash kiss your data goodbye as a recovery utility won't be able to recover it.

If you want to stop the casual abuser then format your partition to ufs and if you must use classic have it on a different drive or a separate partition. OS9 discs will not be able to see the ufs area. when you boot from the installer cd you can reset the root password from the cd.