light OS

[Charles Steinkuehler]

Brian Densmore wrote:
> Help, my firewall box is burning out and I need to
> replace the MB, but I also need to keep it up until
> I have a functioning replacement. Well, I found this
> old 200MHz Pentium Pro laying around, but can only get 
> 16MB to be recognized by it. So I need a light OS to 
> use to install on it, and am looking for suggestions. 
> My Mandrake 9 and RH 8 won't cut it, and I don't have
> a gentoo burnt for Pentiums.

That's pleanty of RAM to run LEAF, which can boot from a floppy, 
hard-disk, CD, or flash, runs out of RAM once booted, and is 
specifically geared to be a firewall/router system:

http://www.leaf-project.org/

I suggest you use Bering, which uses the 2.4 kernel and the excellent 
shorewall firewall scripts for stateful filtering:
http://www.leaf-project.org/mod.php?mod=userpage&menu=904&page_id=21

Initial setup is *REALLY* simple (typically just configure the proper 
NIC driver and any static network info if you're not running DHCP), but 
you can add on extras like ssh for administration, snmp for monitoring, 
ipsec for making VPN's, and more.

About the only drawback is there's no pretty web-based gui configuration 
front-end, so you'll actually have to edit some text files...shouldn't 
be too hard for anyone subscribed to a linux list. ;-)

-- 
Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net