[ale] Experience with Coyote Linux

[Jeff Hubbs]

For the past few months, I've been wrestling with the issue of connecting
more than one computer to a shared DSL modem in a home-LAN environment and I
thought I'd share my findings for the benefit of those who may be
contemplating doing something similar.

Initially, I had two computers slated for connection to the home LAN - one
Win95 system and a Linux system, with occasional guest appearances by a
Linux/Win98 laptop.  I also have an NEC 468DX/33 and my original goal was to
use that as a firewall for DSL.  I got my DSL service through Telocity,
which was selected by virtue of their somewhat-cheaper-than-Speakeasy
service which isn't bandwidth-limited by cost, and the Linux-friendliness of
their whole arrangement.  Once I got the Telocity DSL modem in hand, I was
able to connect single machines to it, Linux or Windows, with only a DHCP
request.  Aside from a mail server outage last weekend, have been zero
issues with the service.

Because I was trying to resolve numerous other issues with physical layout
of the home LAN and components in the new Linux machine, I wanted to get a
NAT firewall up and in place in the shortest time possible and I did not
feel I was in a position to work out the vagaries of ipchains and ip-masq
just yet, so I popped for Cybernet's Linux-based NetMAX Firewall/Router at
CompUSA and took it home in hopes of putting it on the NEC.  I also gathered
a handful of NE2000-compatible ISA NICs.  To make a long story short, the
NetMAX firewall was hopeless on the NEC - couldn't finish its installation
procedure, etc.  It turned out that you just CAN'T put NetMAX on a 486 -
it's apparently compiled for a Pentium - but furthermore, the NetMAX
WWW-based management interface was just dog-slow, even for a 486.  They
aren't kidding when they say Pentium with 64MB RAM and 1GB disk as a
minimum.  

I picked up a Compaq Prolinea 575e at Micro Seconds and started over with
better success.  Yet, even with 72MB and the P/75 with external cache module
present, the Web interface was slow, slow, slow.  I actually succeeded in
getting the NetMAX to work on the Compaq and I plodded ahead.  Eventually,
though, the NetMAX software would crash and/or lock up.  Then, the Web
interface stopped working, and then the console interface stopped working as
well.  

I should say in fairness to Cybernet that the Compaq turned out to have a
failing disk drive in it; that took 2-3 weeks of intermittent work and
numerous Compaq support board messages to figure out.  However, in the
meantime, I began looking into using Coyote (I think at the suggestion of an
ALEer - see www.coyotelinux.com).  

Here is what attracted me to Coyote:  perfectly happy on a 486, uses ISA
NICs without requiring special attention, 100% floppy-based, mostly
pre-configured (using the Linux Router Project as a basis).  For the free
download version, all you do is run a script under Linux that asks you some
questions and then it kicks out a floppy for you, which you then boot your
Coyote machine with.  After boot, everything that transpires does so in RAM,
so you can flip the write-protect thingie on the floppy and only unflip it
if you change the configuration and need to write it back to the floppy
(which is accomplished from the console menu).  Another side benefit is that
you can experiment with different configurations just by switching floppies
and rebooting, and I realized that whereas you can and should put the Coyote
box on a UPS, there's no need to have the Coyote box shut down cleanly
because the only file system you can trash is the one in eminently-trashable
RAM.  

In the Coyote box, I removed the hard drive completely and I have an old 2x
CD-ROM drive in place but disconnected - it's only there to fill the hole in
the front of the case.  Someone had suggested that because of the the
reduced load, I could disconnect the power supply fan - but when I tried
that, the air temperature inside the power supply rose to 124 deg. F, which
is hotter than I feel a power supply should reasonably be, especially one
that's around seven years old (if I persisted, though, I probably could
improve on the 124 degrees by removing the fan completely and turning the
box on its side with the power supply on the top).  I'm using a 3com 3C509
and an RMC NE2000-compatible for NICs.  When you first run the floppy
creation script, you need to know what the module names are for the NICs
that you're using, and you have to know their IRQs and I/O addresses ahead
of time (if you have a 3C509, you also need to know that you have to leave
that info blank in the script or it won't work!).  NAT and a decent set of
ip-masq modules are present and in place by default.  You can enable an
identd server if you like and there is a provision in the script for the
vagaries of certain ISPs (e.g., home.com).

Coyote's minimum requirements are a 486DX/25 with 12MB RAM, but anecdotal
evidence on the Coyote Webboard suggests that 8MB is adequate and that's
what I'm running mine at now.  Anything more than 16MB is considered to be a
waste.

I have not tried to speed-test the Coyote box yet, so I don't know how much
I'm suffering for using a 486, but I consider that to be a secondary
consideration to having a simple, effective NAT firewall, and whereas I miss
the Web interface of the NetMAX firewall, at least I don't have to be
running it on a PII in order to avoid falling asleep during screen
refreshes.  I figure that NIC choice can greatly affect top throughput, so
you can probably benefit from choosing the best of the available supported
cards.  Since Ethernet speeds are going to be no less than about 10 times
DSL/cable speeds, latency from port to port would seem to be the biggest
bugaboo there.


- Jeff
--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.