Recomendations for Linux firewall/router on on pentium 1 PC

[robmurphy]

Any recomendatons for something like smoothwall to run on an old 60 Meg 5V pentium PC?

As far as I can remember the PC for this has 32 Meg memory, and the harddisk is about 2 Gig.

The reason I'm asking is that I'm trying to help some one setup a home network. All the machines are pretty old and funds are very tight at the moment.

I have the above machine and its not been used in a few years. If it can run something like smoothwall it would help greatly. I know it already has a 10 BT network card in it, and I'm pretty sure I have another 10/100 BT card lying about.

This is kit I'm not likely to use so if it can be made into a functioning firewall/router it would help and would effectively be free.

What I'm looking for is smoothwall or something similar. The first priority is compatability with a wide range of hardware, the next is simple install, and the third would be how little maintenance it needs.

Any advice/recomendations welcome.

Rob Murphy

 

[Nothinman]

First you should find out what hardware's in there. All you likely care about really is the hard disk and the NICs (remember you need two to route) but with that old of a box the NICs might be ISA which can be a PITA in any OS.

 

[robmurphy]

There is one NIC in there already, and yes its an ISA. Its an intel card, and the box runs a real time Unix like OS called LynxOS. I do not have a log on to that OS.

The hardware is similar to what I described. 32 Meg Ram. HD is 850 Meg. When I was using this machine it ran Unixware 1.1 and 2.3. Later on these boxes used to run a version of Linux quite well so I think the hardware would be supported OK. There are PCI slots so maybe a realtek 8139 PCI NIC would work.

The case and mother board are proprietry so no chance of updating any of them. Its an Intel Robin from what I can remember.

All the SIMM slots are full, so increasing the memory is out.

I do not need the machine to act as a cache in anyway, so all that should be needed is to store the image used and an utils needed. Access would be remote login, not worried about using X windows. That how we used to use thes boxes.


Rob.

 

[acaeti]

Honestly you might just be better surfing Craigslist or finding a local university surplus shop and grabbing a $49-$99 special. For that kind of money you should be able to get a P3 or P4 of modest speed and RAM. You will get so much more hardware for the pittance you will pay, and it will be a quicker install and better running firewall to boot. Try out m0n0wall or smoothwall or IPCop or something for the linux firewall.

 

[Nothinman]

But that money won't actually get him anything, a P3-P4 is way overkill for a router. Passing packets, even with complex rule sets, doesn't require much in the way of hardware. At my last place I had a P60 doing my routing for years and everything was fine.

 

[robmurphy]

As I said this is not for me its for a friend.

Its not a matter of buying another machine. Routers can be had for about £20 - £25 pounds. One of those would do fine, but as I said funds are very tight at the moment.

If the old Pentium 1 machine can do the job, then thats fine. If it can't it will just get binned. I did have a look at smoothwalls site and for the express version 3 the hardware spec is 128 MB memory. The old machine has 32. So much for a distro that will run on old machines. Most of the PCs on the network I'm trying to setup only have 128 MB of memory.


What I'm after is a distro, old one is fine, that will perform basic firewall and NAT and PAT. That way the machines are not connected directly to the net. What is important is that the image used runs in 32 MB. It does not need to provide stellar performance.

Does any one have experience of running an early smoothwall release in 32 MB memory?

Does anyone know if there is a downloadable binary for IPCop that would work with that amount of memory?

Are there any other releases I should look at?

Is it possible to provide a basic firwall, and NAT and PAT on a normal OLD linux distribution?

Rob.

 

[Nothinman]

First I'd try Debian even though it says 48M is the minimum, failing that I'd probably try OpenBSD. I doubt you'll find a firewall distribution that will run well in 32M because most of them run webservers for their management interface. I could be wrong though.