[Glastonbury] firewall using 486 with floppy

[Martin WHEELER]

On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, d.hopkins wrote:

> in the process of trying to setup a firewall using an old 486 machine
> (currently has windows 3.1 on which can be removed)
>
> MAIN POINT - i know that the 486 needs a basic LINUX running on it, but it
> only has a Floppy drive on it. Is there a recommended version of LInux on
> Floppy which could be used?

Not really.  I always use Tom's Root-Boot for anything which requires a
single-floppy version of Linux (see:  http://www.toms.net/  for quite a
few one-, two- or three-disk versions of Linux -- all of 'em great fun
to play with).

But as you're talking firewalls, you're going to need a little more than
just one (even compressed) floppy's worth.

>From memory, a very very basic Debian is about 2 floppies' worth of
root-boot disks; plus about another ten floppies of necessary stuff.
I've got a set kicking around somewhere, so will try and look them out
for Wednesday.

The best solution for you is to
EITHER
install a very basic version of whatever (usually spelled 'debian' :)
and then use that to go on the internet and upgrade your installation to
whatever is the minimum necessary for the task in hand;
OR
stick a network card in the machine, and do likewise over a local
network.  (It's already got two network cards in it, right?)

Alternatively, you can take the lid off the box, hang a CD drive in
there with lots of trailing cables and stuff, install from CD, remove
drive, and put lid back on.

Depends what you've got hanging around in the shack.
(I used to go around with a 100M version on zip-disk, and a plug-in
drive.)

I'd go for the minimum install from floppy, followed by upgrade over the
internet.

If you examine your CDs very carefully, you'll find floppy-disk images
on them which you can then rawrite to floppy.

I've also got various single-CD firewall distributions that I'll try and
remember to fish out for Wednesday.

HTH,
-- 
Martin Wheeler   -   StarTEXT / AVALONIX - Glastonbury - BA6 9PH - England
mwheeler at startext.co.uk                http://www.startext.co.uk/mwheeler/
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