Selecting distro for home network router/trafic shaper/fileserver/misc
 

Hello, I am new to this forum.

I would like to make myself a nice server with the following features:

• Firewall
• DHCP server
• Trafic shaping
• Remote controlled eDonkey2k/kadmelia client (p2p)
• File server

This is the hardware that I have:

Celeron 300a (an intel P2 with 128 kb cache)
384 MB RAM
2X 10/100 NIC
5-port switch
4 GB HDD for system
60 GB HDD for shared files

My internet connection is a crappy 128/1024 with only 2 IPs.

I would like my network to be like this:

[interNet connection]-[Server]-[Up to 4 win/lin boxes via DCHP]

The eDonkey/cadmelia remote control and files should only be accesible from the clients, not from outside.

I would like the trafic shaping to work like this:

[High priority] Games on the client boxes
[Low] eDonkey2k/kadmelia client on the server
[Medium] Everything else

Or I could settle for:

[Low] eDonkey2k/kadmelia client on the server
[High] Everything else

I have been at this once before, but I gave up. That time, I was trying it with Ubuntu, which was real easy to install. I even managed to get internet connection sharing and DHCP to work, by following some tutorials. But when it came to trafic shaping, I was pretty much lost.

Now I have my eye on IPCop, which looks real nice with its graphic interface. Being a windows slave, I tend to like graphic.

So my questions are:

1. Would setting up IPCop, with the above features, be feasible for a linux n00b like me?
2. Is there another ditro that would be more suitable?
3. Are some of the features not wise to include in such a server, and why?
4. Should I just forget about it for now, and install a dual boot, to learn some basic linux first?

If I have left out any important information, or something is unclear, please do not hesitate to ask about it.

Thank you in advance!

If you really want to make that CPU move like lightning, try out BSD. It is a super secure router/firewall and I'm sure putting file server software on it would not be to hard. I have checked into this a good while back and OpenBSD is supposed to be one of if not the most secure OS for a router/firewall there is.

It is very lightweight on memory usage and should run great on even a CPU that is slower than that. I installed it once on a 200MHz machine with on 54MBs of ram and it ran pretty fast. It was only using 28MBs of ram too.

It may be worth looking into.

:D :D :D :D :D

Hmm... Are you shure? Won't it be at least as much work as setting up ubuntu for that job? Remember that I gave up on that.

I do want to learn, but I don't have all the time in the world for this one project...

Edit: Also, if it gets too slow, I can quickly bump the CPU to 450MHz, in the BIOS. That really should be enough for such simple jobs, right?

Can it really be true that no one has info on it? After nearly 3 months, I am still interested in this.

Any help or suggestions appreciated!

The problem is that this is just another one those questions "Which is the
best distro?". You have narrowed it down to specific purpose, but really,
ANY distro will do this if you configure the tools. Which is why people tend
to get very bored of answering this over and over. It's a question of what
suits you best, what your preferences in administration are.

But the answer REALLY (as always) is Slackware ;}


Cheers,
Tink

Thank you for replying Tinkster!

I tried really hard to be specific, but I guess I didn't do that well...

Maybe the problem is, that it is not really a question about which distro to use, but rather what softwares to install on it?

As for what suits me best, and my preferences in administration goes, I prefer graphic interfaces. If this is not what you mean, then I would appreciate it, if you could specify a bit more.

Thanks again!

For BSD distros look at pfSense or m0n0wall or for linux try IPcop, Endian Firewall, ClarkConnect and about a million others but BSD is the bomb :p

Well, I suppose it really IS that. There's this amazing write up
by Eric Raymond, it's called "Asking questions the smart way".
It pretty much guarrantees that you'll get sensible responses
if you follow his advice. Read it http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Quite possible - but again, there's just too much choice, with
too many different focuses. You'll really need to bite the bullet
and do some serious reading. There's many solutions for traffic-
shaping, firewalling and routing, with different approaches. I'd
suggest you sign up to freshmeat (with an actual user-account,
that grants you more granular searches and sort-options) and
do some serious searching and filtering.

If Gooey is what you're after you're probably best off with something
like Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros and the likes. Just be aware that the
Gui always comes with two penalties: those distros tend to be slower
by default, and they lack flexibility in configuring things the way YOU
want (if someone, for instance, made a GUI for squid that took
account of ALL its configuration options, I assure you, no one would
want to use it - the GUI, that is, not squid).

At the end of the day, if you want full control you'll find yourself on
the command-line. Btw, I have heard that some Windows admin make
good use of the command-line, too ;} - Knowledge is power.


Cheers,
Tink

If it were me doing this, I'd setup a dedicated distro (like Smoothwall) and then 'tweak' the rest of my needs into it. The benefit of using Smoothwall is it's OS neutral, controlled by a browser for the firewall/router/traffic shaper stuff. Then you just stuff a huge hard drive in it for the fileserver, and I haven't got a clue what your P2P thing is, but I'm sure that if it's possible on other distros, you can somehow cram it into smoothwall. The added benefit is that if it's controllable to set your P2P "controls" accesible on a specific IP, then Smoothwall is a perfect solution because it will block traffic outside the lan from accessing it while allowing anything inside freedom to do with it whatever they please.

At the end of the day though, really any distro with something like webmin will probably be close to your needs.

Cool

Thanks alot, MasterC! I'll try that, then. I'll probably need some advice on installing software on smoothwall, after setting it up, though.

I just went over my first post again, and I still think it looks well thought out. I go over my very specific needs, and then I ask 4 very specific questions. I really don't see what the problem is with that, and I certainly do not think I need to learn how to ask questions again.

About the many choices, I really can't find the place where I ask what all them are. I am not looking for an oracle, just for people with exprience, to give me advice. If all this forum was able to do was tell newcomers to search and read, with no directions for what to seach for and read, then it would be a little useless for those newcomers, don't you think?

Also, while knowledge really is power, I doubt that my brain could hold all the knowledge in the world. :) Luckily, one of the things that mark maturing technology, is the fact that its users do not have to know all its details, to use it.

Anyway, thanks for trying!

That may be an overly confident view ;}
There's no mention of, for example, whether the "file server"
aspect of the machine is geared towards Unix/Linux, Mac or
Windows machines. Makes a big difference, even though these
days samba is well understood by both Macs and Unices. NFS
might still be the better (faster) option for Unix boxen.

Not really. I don't understand myself as a free technical
service but more as a consultant for do-it-yourself. I try to
teach how to learn rather than solving their problems, specially
when the problem description is quite vague. As for the "no
directions" - you probably didn't read what I wrote :}
I said go to freshmeat, create an account and search for.
I didn't tell you which filters to use, because I don't know
what you're after; but IF you went there, created the account,
and looked at the filter-options you might well find it's quite
good, popularity and vitality are quite important sort-criteria.


I think you're wrong on that one - but that's just my thoughts. I believe
that a slightly more than basic understanding of how a Linux tool works
aids in proper and efficient use. And as far as I'm concerned it's not
a sign of "maturing software", but of software that makes the user
dependent on the vendor.


Cheers,
Tink

Actually, there is. :)

Something along the lines of?

"I'd like to server files to 2 windows and 2 linux machines, both of
which lots should have home-directories on the server and be able to
swap files via a shared folder and have read-access to my multi-media
files. Which option would grant me this?"

I can't see that. You're certainly not referring to this?

Cheers,
Tink