Am interested in using an older PC for a basic router/firewall for both sharing web-access and SSHing w/in a hubbed 2-3 PC
PAN -- Private Area Network of course .
Any really good hints for installing Slackware 11.0 on such a system?

"Old" PC is:
Pentium K6-2 400MH+ CPU
32MB RAM
2GB hdd
2 x 10/100 NICs (no dial-up modem)
CD-ROM, fdd, kbd, ...

Have already rvwd :
- shilo's site http://shilo.is-a-geek.com/slack/
(basically brought to here through this)
- cdale77's LQ thread http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...kware+firewall

Already have the Slack 11.0 install CD's and have used these fine on other dekstop systems.

Caveats:
- Would prefer Slackware for now unless really no choice other than SLAX, freesco, smoothwall, floppyfw, ipcop...etc which others have already suggested.
- Also wish to avoid X pkgs, gtk+ and qt libraries due to memory conservation reasons. From this, suggestions of specific gui-type apps for iptables/netfilter (e.g. guarddog) would also be out.
- Would prefer NOT using other wm's such as xfce4 or ICEwm if possible, nor use of any 3rd-party IDS.
- In 2GB hdd, would prefer having swap partition of at least 32MB for same amt of RAM (performance) and at least 1 GB for packet logging.

Suggested bash scripts for iptables would be fine.

TY for any good recommendations.

Why don't you add some more RAM?

Running with 64MB is going to be much more pleasant than with 32MB.


Anyway, I'd recommend using Arno's iptables firewall script:
http://rocky.eld.leidenuniv.nl/

It is easy enough to configure, and easy enough to tweak (just a bash script and a configuration file which is another bash script), and supports many features (including natting, dmz, port-fordwarding,...).

Just avoid anything related with X, TeX, TCL, KDE, most compilers/interpreters, and make sure to hand-select the packages from ap/ and n/ so you only get what you need (I really don't think you're going to setup a CIFS/SMB server in that comp, so you can, for example, get rid of that).

Either the 2.4 kernel or the 2.6.17.13 would do fine. I believe that the 2.4 might take less memory, tho'.

Edit:
Hold on a sec.! There's no such thing as a "Pentium K6-2", is it? Maybe I missed the AMD/Intel fusion...

AMD used to make K6. I still have a 450mhz K6-something in my odds and sods box.

If you have a way to move files to this system, then you could use Easy Firewall Generator to generate a firewall script for you.

Cheers.

TY for fast reply.

Reply to both here. Apparently, one of the two RAM banks had some of its tin pin-lining crushed and its end tabs broken -- probably from a clumsy DIMM insertion or a yanked DIMM removal .
No 64 or 128MB DIMM available here and now for compatible PCxx speed as the current 32MB module.
Even worse, the CPU itself is indeed an Intel Pentium; a Pentium I 166MHz CPU at that, more than twice as slow as a real AMD K6-2 400MHz....... it turns out that stickers both on the outside of the PC case and on the inside mislabeled the CPU as a "Pentium" K6-2 400+.

Maybe there was a real K6-2 400+ CPU in the m-brd's Socket 7 which was downgraded at the exact same time as the RAM-bank was damaged? Just an educated guess....
Whatever the case, the need here is to approach a more minimalist Slack install for a router/fw
(heck, this old PC had Windows 95 wiped out)

Yep, makes perfect sense.
From the /slackware packages directory, this all leads to :
- no e/, f/, k/, kde/, kdei/, t/, tcl/, x/, xap/, y/ sets
- just enough a/, ap/, d/, l/, and n/ set pkgs to run the system as intended.

Dear,

I did exactly the same thing with an old box of mine, the difference though is that mine is wireless. It runs on a pentium 2 with 64mb of ram! I'm sure yours will run fine with 32mb though since this sort of things doesn't use much memory.

If you want your computer to act like a commercial router you only need to use iptables, this is what I do. If you want to have some sort of control over the flow of the network you would need to use iproute2, there is a great howto on that. Slackware comes installed with both packages!!

Oh and if you are going to use iptables for your firewall I would recommend you try something like shorewall to help you configure the filter table, unless you want to write over 100 rules yourself.

You can also have some fun by trying a proxy and all this....

good luck

Slackware should run fairly well on such a system, but you will need to know how to slim the install down confidently. You might want to also consider the BSDs, I have run them on machines all the way down to 386s, and the responsiveness was fine (though with a machine that slow, it may be possible to saturate the CPU if you have many simultaneous connections like Bittorrent).

But really, all you need is SSH and iptables. You would definitely do yourself a favor by using some sort of rule generator, however.