*nix Router Distros

[(Shovel)]

Right, this was going to be easy, but now it's a little more complex.

There are - it seems - many "micro" distributions of *nix (Linux or BSD specifically) designed with a small number of packages for setting up a network router.

I specifically stumbled apon Freesco. "Great" I thought and vowed to look into it more nearer the time. However, I'm slightly worried by the outdatedness of it - Kernel 2.2 I think, or maybe 2.0.
Then I have people telling me (well, one person, and he has a beard, and he's 19) specifically to use BSD for router duties. I have to concede, I've not been able to appreciate the differences between BSD and Linux as yet.

I've poke around a few sites for these, but many of them are keen on being Floppy disk based distros, which is fine, but I would want to run it of the Hard drive in the old PC instead, for expandability and convenience reasons. None of them seem to obviously document how to go about that.

Soooo.... could someone recommend such a mini distro that I could get set up? And obviously beat each other with sticks Over whether I should use BSD or Linux. Just bear in mind that what attracts me toward these is the presence of "reletively easy to set up" tag lines.

Thanks.

 

[Testin da Cable]

this looks like a nice linuxy one:
http://www.fli4l.de/english/e_fli4l.html

this one's based on the original LRP:
http://www.frazierwall.com/

here's a *BSD one:
http://www.bsdrouter.org/index.html.en

this one seems cool too:
http://www.closedbsd.org/index.html

this one is the daddy:
http://people.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd.html
but may not be for you


sans has written a paper on floppy based stuff:
http://www.sans.org/rr/paper.php?id=808

 

[(Shovel)]

Ooooh, thankyou

From your own experience TD, how easy would you think it is to have any of these floppy based distros run of the hard drive?

 

[whipped]

I went for FreeSCO as I was looking for a completely silent option to my router. A hard drive whirring would keep me awake at night. I've never had any problems with FreeSCO and there are a number of packages you can add on using a nifty download script.

It is stupidly easy to setup and can be transfered to a hard drive in no time. I've never been comprimised through my router and the router itself has never been *hacked*.

Definatley worth a look even though it is still based on the 2.2 kernel.

 

[Testin da Cable]

um, assuming I read correctly that you want to run a distro the size of a floppy off of a harddrive....it's not that hard I guess:
stick your harddrive into a working unix box and dd the image to it.
example: let's say the image is floppy.img and the target harddrive is /dev/hdc then you must issue the command dd if=floppy.img of=/dev/hdc[enter]

it's entirely possible that this procedure won't work (I've never done this before) because it may be that you'll have to fdisk the target harddrive first to makeit bootable and create a primary partition to hold the image. after you've done that the target harddrive's partition in this example will be /dev/hdc1.
after this just move the harddrive to the router and turn it on


edit: as whipped says btw, the 2.2 kernels are not hugely old and dated as you seem to make them out to be. sure, the newer ones contain lots more bells and whistles...but a router doesn't need bells and whatnot now does it?

 

[(Shovel)]

Okie - thankies

The reason for wanting it on the hard drive is cause I will - inevitably want to play. This is an old PC, so we're not talking "big server(TM)" - cause even I can see that that would be very very silly.

So, I want a bit of space to be flexible with.
On top of this, I'm not at home most of the time, what with being at Uni. Trying to get the family to update their virus definitions is hard enough, so the idea of them backing up and replacing a floppy disk on a regular basis is..... well.... maybe you see now

If it was "just mine", then I might well be going for the full blown silent treatment, I'm trying to calm it a little with a bit of rearrangement inside, but this being a predominantly computer illiterate family, it needs some level of security.

Thanks very much for the replies.

 

[xane]

If you want to run a *nix based router on the hard disk why not go the whole hog and get a firewall too, the footprint is still quite small (about 20MB).

SmoothWall and IPcop are two such examples, I've been using the latter for a few years and although I've yet to update to the latest version (requires a rebuild unfortunately) it seems to do the job.

The advantage of a Router/Firewall is that updates are more regular to close off the exploited holes that appear from time to time.

 

[(Shovel)]

I guess, after that, is that I'm not sure what I want. I was looking at the mini distros because they advertise themselves for running routers - this made reasonable sense to me.

THanks for those links cama, I'll have a little looksie and see if I can work out how deep the rabbit hole goes...

EDIT: Smoothwall is the nicest looking that I've seen so far. I see what you mean about the "regular updates" side of things.

Thanks very much again.

 

[mookie]

whilst we're on the subject of routers and stuff, i currently have a netgear MR314 which is ok, and extremely useful for the wi-fi stuff, but i was thinking of moving that to my girlfriends house so dont have to steal her cable connect every time i go to hers with the laptop , and setting up a *nix router/firewall box at home. because i need the wi-fi(and tbh, the signal on the 314 isn't what i'd expected), could i set it up so there was only 2 NICs in the router, one for my cable connection and one going into a nice big hub or something? could i then plug in a wireless access point (i hear the linksys ones kick ass. do they have ext. antenna sockets?) into a port on the hub and that would do my wireless access?

i'm pretty open to suggestions, and i like to play with new toys, so i wouldnt mind tyring somethng a little different that usual (down wij! )

 

[Testin da Cable]

Originally posted by mookie
could i set it up so there was only 2 NICs in the router, one for my cable connection and one going into a nice big hub or something?

yes

could i then plug in a wireless access point (i hear the linksys ones kick ass. do they have ext. antenna sockets?) into a port on the hub and that would do my wireless access?

no idea tbh. never tried it

 

[bids]

Originally posted by mookie
could i then plug in a wireless access point (i hear the linksys ones kick ass. do they have ext. antenna sockets?) into a port on the hub and that would do my wireless access?

Yup - I have a Linksys 802.11b Access Point connected to my switch, which has the cable modem linked in using a Gatelock X200 - works a treat. They do a signal booster box for about £50, but the two attached antennae have a fair range on them - I can get about 150 metres with a signal strength of about 30%.