[Tfug] router/firewall distro

[Casey Townsend]

How about Smoothwall <www.smoothwall.org>?  Anyone have any experience with it?

Casey Townsend
System Administrator
Department of Transportation
City of Tucson
ctownse1@ci.tucson.az.us
Ipage: 5205168235@airtouchpaging.com
pager: 520-516-8235
voice: 520-791-3115 x 430

>>> Nicolas Lopez <nick@the.glowingmonkey.org> 09/11/02 02:33PM >>>
On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 10:24:25AM -0700, James A. Gronowski wrote:
> I recently read a post about someone who had done this, but, I with my trigger finger, deleted it.
> 
> I have an older machine (P133) that I'd like to turn into a router/firewall.  It only has 24MB RAM (potentially a little more may be added) and 2 170MB hard drives.  I'm going to put in between 3-5 NICs.  It also has a CD-rom drive, if that helps.
> 
> So, 1) Are 170/340MB enough space?  
  Extremely excessive. Most (free-*nix based) firewalls run from floppies.

> 	2) Will the machine be able to handle a load like that?
  No problem. I've got a Cyrix PR166 for mine right now. Not that the old
486 I pulled out was too slow, it's just that I didn't want to deal with ISA
NICs.  Well, ok, maybe it was a little be because it was slow. That's only
because I was bringing in IPSEC and PPTP VPN stuff with this "new" firewall
and didn't want to limit the throughput.  Ok, and I didn't have another 486
around to build and test with before cutting over.

> 	3) Any specialty distros anyone can recommend?  Easy and Fast preferable. 
  Others have mentioned FreeSCO, which is what the old 486 ran. It's pretty
easy to configure but not designed for the amount of flexibility LRP
derivative provide.  That's why my "new" firewall is running and
LRP-derivative called Bering (http://leaf.sf.net/)  I droped a few packages
in and got an IPSEC(With x.509 Cert based auth) and PPTP VPNs, and wireless
accesspoint capabilities. (Well, once I find hostap_cs compiled for this
kernel again.)

  The only downside with those floppy-based systems is that floppies are the
spawn of the devil and half as trustworthy.  I have mine running from a 64M
IDE flashdrive with maybe 8M used.  I you can find a 16M or 32M flashdrive
for <$20 I'd grab it and use that instead of a floppy.

  - Nick Lopez
    kimo_sabe@atdot.org 
--
> At that point we're supposed to believe MS is a big cozy teddy bear and
> really wants to help
"Oh, sure, they look cute now, b-b-but in just a second they're going to get
big, and they're going to get mean. Didn't any of you guys ever WATCH the
show??" Let's get the schools switched to Linux before a Microserf eats Guy! 
 -tapin on /.
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