[Sussex] Linux Firewall on a 50mg CD

[Geoff Teale]

Mark wrote:
===========
> Hi all
> 
> Changed my subscirbed email address so i can now send plain 
> text (if i 
> remember).

Excellent - makes all the difference!
 
> I looked yesturday at many small distro's however, their 
> seams to be one 
> common theme among them. They all use the 2.2.x kernel. I am 
> looking at 
> using the 2.4 kernel so that we can make use of the power of  
> iptables. 
> I am going to have a look at how easy it is to swop the 
> kernel in ipcop 
> and see if this works or not. If not i need to some how build 
> a mini 2.4 
> distro.

You might want to look at some of the non-install/CD boot disk distros -
they are pretty easy to customise.  

As an example (as only one of 3 CD bootable distros I've used)  Gentoo's 1.4
boot disc (As used for the Unreal Tournament 2003 LiveCD) would boot you
into a 2.4.19 kernel environment capable of doing everything you need.  You
could adjust the disk so it was just your minimal environment and tool set
and probably get it down to a very small image indeed.

It wouldn't be too hard to put a scripted install from this build onto the
disk (the LiveCD's are all fully functional install discs for Gentoo) if
that's what you want - this saves having to  compile everything (which is
how Gentoo works generally). 

I guess there is also a chance that you may not want to put a hard drive in
a firewall machine anyway (for added security) in which case these things
are almost ideal.  GNATBox (NetBSD based methinks) works a bit like this but
boots off a floppy disk (at least it did 4 years ago when I saw it)..

-- 
GJT
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk




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