linux for p90

[mrweirdo]

Hello I have an old pentium 90 dell computer around that I have installed two network cards in and plan on turning it into a router and I am wondering what would be a good small distro to use for it.
Features I want or will need include 2.6 kernel, iptables of corse, ssh, then I plan on installing webmin on it as well. I dont need any of that fancy GUI stuff eather as a simple shell would be fine. Anyone have a good sugestions on what to use?

 

[Chaotic42]

I always recommend Debian, but that's what I'm comfortable with.

Do you really need the functionality of 2.6?

 

[drag]

Debian.

2.6 will run on it as well as anything.

But I wouldn't worry about it to much. No X of course, but this level of computer will make a fine simple fileserver as long as the hardware is able to support big enough harddrives.

You could program and hack on it if you can deal with only using the command line.


Also something to look into is vector linux

It's a distro that is based on, and is compatable with binaries from, slackware.


It has hand picked and optimized programs and features that are designed for it to specificly meet the needs of people trying to get the most use out of old, or otherwise slow hardware.

It'll be the snappiest Distro your going to find and compatibility with Slackware means that you have lots of pre-compiled software aviable to you.

Oh and there are lots of router specific OsS's out their based on Linux, check out the LEAF firewall project

 

[pitupepito2000]

I would suggest you try Small Damn Linux.

 

[Nothinman]

Debian.

 

[jhu]

how much memory do you have? if you have at least 32mb, you might be able to get away with no harddrive. i did this with my 486 router. it had 48mb of ram and a disconnected harddrive. i loaded the now-defunct linuxrouter.org distribution, customized a few scripts, and i was good to go. also, you don't need 2.6 kernel for a router. pretty much any kernel will do and will be smaller. i had a 2.2 kernel and wanted to upgrade to a 2.4 kernel, but given the space constraints of a floppy, this wasn't feasible. in fact, after some more reading, i tried to downgrade to a 2.0 kernel, but wasn't really able to accomplish that. and the machine would be up as long as there wasn't a power outage.

 

[daveshel]

Debian because you can do a kernel compile and eliminate everything that isn't needed by your hardware and end up with a very lean and zippy kerkel, which you will need with hardware that old.

 

[jhu]

Originally posted by: daveshel
Debian because you can do a kernel compile and eliminate everything that isn't needed by your hardware and end up with a very lean and zippy kerkel, which you will need with hardware that old.

if this thing is going to be a router, a kernel recompile would not provide much benefit. indeed, a recompile to eliminate unneeded features would make the kernel smaller. that is beneficial for a space constrained system. however, since he's going to have a harddrive, it really won't matter.

 

[daveshel]

Originally posted by: jhu

Originally posted by: daveshel
Debian because you can do a kernel compile and eliminate everything that isn't needed by your hardware and end up with a very lean and zippy kerkel, which you will need with hardware that old.

if this thing is going to be a router, a kernel recompile would not provide much benefit. indeed, a recompile to eliminate unneeded features would make the kernel smaller. that is beneficial for a space constrained system. however, since he's going to have a harddrive, it really won't matter.

If he simply eliminated support for unneeded devices - sound, display and whatever - the kernel would end up with a smaller footpring in memory, which would be a benefit on this box.

 

[jhu]

Originally posted by: daveshel

Originally posted by: jhu

Originally posted by: daveshel
Debian because you can do a kernel compile and eliminate everything that isn't needed by your hardware and end up with a very lean and zippy kerkel, which you will need with hardware that old.

if this thing is going to be a router, a kernel recompile would not provide much benefit. indeed, a recompile to eliminate unneeded features would make the kernel smaller. that is beneficial for a space constrained system. however, since he's going to have a harddrive, it really won't matter.

If he simply eliminated support for unneeded devices - sound, display and whatever - the kernel would end up with a smaller footpring in memory, which would be a benefit on this box.

it really doesn't matter unless there's less than 8mb of memory, especially if it's just going to be a router with a harddrive. on the other hand, if he's going to go without a harddrive, it would definitely matter if he had < 16-24mb of memory.

 

[NewBlackDak]

if you just want a route I suggest coyote. Easy linux and window scripts to make the floppy. just boot off the floppy, and it's all done.

 

[Klixxer]

If you are looking for a firewall and nothing else there are several specific versions to do just that and nothing else, i would choose one of them for the job, i have used several of them, Rock router Linux is my favourite but i like Freesco too, probably the easiest to set up and it can run on a 386 or higher, with or without a hard drive (needs hard drive to do DNS-caching).

BBIagent is another one and would work fine on your hardware, it is updated often enough too, just keep an eye out for kernel patches and security patches and you'll be fine.

If you want to do more than that on it, Vector Linux, as drag suggested, is a great distro for older hardware and it will work well with swaret or slapt-get, preferably set up to auto update every night.

You have some options, check them all out before you make a final decision.

 

[mrweirdo]

I tryed freesco on it and I didnt like the the fact that the only way to install it on a hard drive is to have a fat formated partition. I was hoping for something like ext3 instead.

I should also mention i tryed fedora on this box before with just its basic install and that barely runs or doesnt work at all 9 times out of 10 it wont boot :/

Damn small linux looks interesting just I hope i can find away to remove the fluxbox gui that comes with it. When i get the time I'll try it out and see how that works.

 

[mrweirdo]

I tryed freesco on it and I didnt like the the fact that the only way to install it on a hard drive is to have a fat formated partition. I was hoping for something like ext3 instead.

I should also mention i tryed fedora on this box before with just its basic install and that barely runs or doesnt work at all 9 times out of 10 it wont boot :/

Damn small linux looks interesting just I hope i can find away to remove the fluxbox gui that comes with it. When i get the time I'll try it out and see how that works.

 

[drag]

The LEAF product is a decendant of the linuxrouter.org stuff.

My router is setup to boot of off a floppy. It doesn't require any harddrisks at all. Other verions include cdroms and stuff like that. Been running happily for a couple years now 24/7 no complaint. (although the floppy itself is getting flaky.)

 

[mrweirdo]

I finaly settled on a distro called IPCOP wich is a firewall/router security system based on linux. http://www.ipcop.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view/IPCop/WebHome