I have an extra box. Suggested uses?
 

I have an extra box lying around. I don't know the specs for sure, but here is a guess:

200 MHz Pentium
16 MB RAM
2 GB HDD
10/100 NIC

It's an old HP Pavilion desktop (as opposed to tower). The CD-ROM is busted, so I'd either have to 'borrow' a drive from another box to install an OS, or quickly become acquainted with NFS or similar.

Anyway, what could I use it for? It's sitting in the corner begging to be used! Firewall maybe? I have a Linksys cable modem and Linksys 4-port router with 2 unused ports.

In any case, it doesn't have enough RAM for an X install, but I'd like a CLI box anyway. Firewall idea is really interesting to me (I am paranoid). Plus it would be good practice for the Local Area Networking class I am taking at school. It's late... hope I didn't forget anything. I'll check back tomorrow morning.

So it's got at least a 1.44MB floppy? If so, then yeah, you can do pretty much anything you want with the box (non-x). Firewall, Packet sniffer, diskless NFS system (yeah that'd teach ya a few things, combine that with a Firewall AND packet sniffer (Snort) and you'd definitely have some fun!) or whatever you'd like.

Really depends on the capabilities of the system as far as getting things started I'd say.

Cool

Firewall: I suppose so. I heard about people using old boxes for that.

It might also be possible for a mini server (files, web, media). You might need to up the hard disk or ram for that.

MasterC, now we're talkin'! I like the diskless NFS idea. I think I'm also going to take this opportunity to get some *BSD experience (going with OpenBSD). I think my Linux learning curve has leveled out since I ditched Mandake/RedHat and got into Slack, Debian, and Gentoo. And yes, it has a 1.44 floppy.

Winno, yeah I thought about that, but I really don't want to upgrade any hardware... perhaps just another NIC if it's going to be a firewall. I don't have any spare hard drives at the moment.

Anyway, I think I'll go with the diskless NFS firewall/packet sniffer. Thanks for the suggestions!

try building an LFS on it, then turn it into the firewall/NFS/etc thingy. an LFS really teaches you some great stuff.

Big time, that'd be a hurdle! Good idea, great learning idea!

Cool

That hard drive is plenty big enough for your suggestions I think. If you want to do minimal upgrades (ie add a CD-Rom, new ram, etc) you could check Ebay which is a haven for old computer parts (and anything else in general). I saw some 2.5gb hard drives been sold at 50p which is a bargain.

aren't the specs decent enough for a home LAN firewall? I really don't want to spend any money on a computer that is fine for what I want it to do. Now if I could just obtain a spare CD-ROM... oh well, I could use a lesson in NFS...

those specs are absolutly fine for a home lan firewall. if you want a cd rom you could probably pick up something on ebay for £5, and i still say you should give LFS a go.

CDROM's are free if you find the right business ;) Walk into a large corporation and head to their IT dept, ask if they have 1 spare CDROM for your project. It works, you might just have to ask 2 or 3 places before you find one.

Cool

I am definitely going to give LFS a try. I just need to plan my approach! :-)

I actually do have a CD-ROM, but it's at my parents' house 2500 miles away. If I don't have NFS down before I visit them, I'll snag it.

Re: I have an extra box. Suggested uses?
 

Nonsense. I did it in only 4MB. Personally, I'd suggest using it as a dumb terminal to your main box - I did that recently, and it was a great experience! Check out the Linux Terminal Server Project for info. Of course it'd also make a good firewall, but that just seems like such a waste of good CPU cycles :)

Hmmm. I seem to remember trying to install RedHat -- I believe v7.3 -- on a test/closet box with similar specs and the installer notified me that anything less than 32 MB is not suitable for X. However, this was several months ago. I've performed several linux installations since, and my memory could be foggy for this topic. Another possibility could be that it was a distro-specific issue.
I agree, but the CPU is the best piece of hardware in this box. This of course only applies to me, as it is an opinion. A 2-GB HD and 16 MB RAM is nothing for me. And like I said before, I am paranoid about security (especially after reading various security-related documents), and I want to put something else between the 'net and my linksys router. Also as I said before, I am in a LAN class and it would be good practice. Maybe I could ask my instructor about extra credit! :)

I believe what he is referring to is using it as an X client. Yes for servers those specs would blow up the machine, but as an X client only (with something like LTSP) would be more of what he's referring to. You can of course do all of the above:
Build an LFS system, migrate to a diskless NFS setup with the LFS box, compile all the tools with it, and leach from your main stations X server via LTSP to graphically view/alter your security/firewall features.

Cool

MasterC, that all sounds great, but i haven't even heard of LTSP. I will do some googling.

As for LFS and NFS, I have been reading docs but I am still a bit confused about the process.

Is it correct that I must first boot off another distro's boot CD to install LFS? If so, does it matter which distro I use? (My main box is now running Gentoo 1.4). From your "leach" description, MasterC, it seems that I should build the LFS on my main workstation and copy it to the firewall box.

I will keep reading about this process, but maybe you could give me a few more pointers, or some links? I am already reading the following:

LFS HowTo
Linux NFS HowTo

Thanks!

LFS has its own brand new designed website, www.linuxfromscratch.org

yeah, I've been there. It's where I found the LFS howto. Unfortunately, the mirror nearest me (and also with the fastest connection) doesn't have functioning download links. Oh well, after I finish some homework I am going to finish reading the HowTos already mentioned.

That is the Linux Terminal Server Project I mentioned earlier :)

Also, regarding X running in 4MB. MasterC is right, I was using the laptop in question mostly for an X client only (actually, X server if you want to get technical; the client is the one running the X software, while the server is the one displaying it); however, I did have standalone X and X apps running in only 4MB. With that little, it is extraordinarily sluggish, and thrashes the swapfile, but I am confident that the setup I have would run more than comfortably in 16MB. muLinux comes with X and three window managers, which worked decently on my other 16MB laptop. And keep in mind those are both 486es! For the 4MB one, I was even using the most recent version of Slackware, with its largish 2.4.20 kernel. Using an older kernel and paring down memory usage even further would make it work even better. This story mentions one guy who got X plus Blackbox running in under 800K of resident memory (though he had 32MB to work with).

Anyway, I digress. I just wanted to make the point that X can be perfectly happy with only 16MB RAM. As long as you're not running 20 apps at once, it should be fine. But all this is irrelevant if you don't plan on running X :)

Ok, I guess the first thing is to decide what you want to go with, and I'd personally say, go for an LFS instead of Diskless on the box itself. You can certainly have plenty of diskless/NFS'd mounts on it, but the experience (IMHO) would be best if LFS was on the firewall, and then for most other things (if you desire X) you run diskless/NFS setups. Here's the diskless How-To:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Diskless-HOWTO.html

Should you want to go all diskless, you should read this one:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Diskless-root-...her-HOWTO.html OR
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Diskless-root-NFS-HOWTO.html
For setting up the / filesystem over NFS.

Anyway, assuming we go LFS on the box, here's how I'd go about it:
Throw in your Gentoo CD, get to the prompt, change your root pass, then start up lynx:
lynx linuxfromscratch.org
And start. Instead of untarring a stage tarball into the filesystem though, you'll take off with LFS from there. You can also/instead just boot up, don't use any of the Gentoo ideas, and just start from ground zero with LFS (probably more beneficial). Then, when it's all done, you should have a working/bootable LFS system, and you can begin with your Firewall needs. No need to go BLFS, other than to get a few text editors, maybe some of the bare minimum other things running as well, DHCP (should you need it) and then begin with IPTables. If you are going to be using a tool, I suggest a look at shorewall OR, since it would fit, you could put Apache on that same box, and setup a remote admin client over a secure web browser. The world is your oyster at that point.

Cool

Step 1... Install Linux.

<< SNIP >>

Step 100... TAKE OVER THE WORLD !!!

Wouldn't it be 101, as the book title would go much better as:
101 steps to World Domination using Linux.

:D

Cool

I'm going to go straight LFS (no Gentoo boot CD). I'll post back the results later. Thanks for the feedback everyone.

AFAIK, you need a host still to do an LFS install. Unless they've conquered how to "install a compiler without a compiler" somehow?

That's where the Gentoo Boot CD comes into play, simply pawning off as a host distro without actually needing one.

Cool

MasterC is correct, you need something to start compiling from.

ok, I will post my results when I have some.