[ale] Distro for router/server?

[Joseph A. Knapka]

Michael B Golden wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
>         A friend of mine recently got DSL and has given me the task of
> setting up a linux router for him since the Win98 connection sharing is
> quirky and doesn't work half the time for him. We also want to be able to
> run apache, and ftp server, a samba server, a firewall, some sort of ad
> and porn filter, and probably an OpenSSH server on it. The box we have to
> work with is a Pentium 90 with 16 MB RAM. Will this box handle all of
> these tasks or will we have to cut back a little? If so, which are the
> most resource intensive that we should/could do away with? Also, what
> would be the best distribution to run on this type of box? I'm pretty
> sure one with a 2.4 kernel would work best because of the DSL, but I'm
> not sure. We don't plan to install X at all, but some type of config
> tools for network/routing/firewall would be nice to have. I'm thinking
> perhaps Slackware, but I haven't used it since version 3.5, so I'm not
> sure if it has what we want and I'm not nearly as experienced with it.
> I'd even thought about trying a BSD, but I have nearly no experience with
> them and I'm on a more limited time frame than I though. Any suggestions?

As long as there won't be a large amount of traffic through the
firewall, the machine you describe should suffice, but it would
be a really good idea to add some RAM. I bet someone would
be willing to give you some old 72-pin SIMMs at the next ALE
meeting (I've got about 40MB worth of 'em here that I'll
send you, if not).

I used to run a firewall, WWW, and Samba server on a P75 box
with 32MB of RAM.

OpenBSD makes a really nice firewall, but that's all I use it
for - I haven't tried running any services on it besides
OpenSSH. OpenBSD's "ipfilter" is, IMO, a lot easier to configure
than ipchains/iptables, though perhaps not quite as
flexible.

-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
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