turgon on 9 Mar 2004 21:24:02 -0000


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Re: [PLUG] Replacement for Mandrake Single Network Firewall?


> I've been using Mandrake SNF for about 2 1/2 years.
> The distro's intended functions are as a dial-on-demand gateway
> for a LAN (i.e. doing NAT) and a firewall.  I have expanded that to
> acting as a print server and file server.
>
> Generally, I've been very pleased, but Mandrake stopped providing
> updates some 9 months ago.  Lately, the machine has been locking
> up every once in a while and I'm trying to decide whether it's worth
> it to try diagnosing the problem or time to upgrade the OS.
>
> I'm leaning towards the latter, but have never had to configure iptables,
> NAT, etc. by hand and am not especially looking forward to doing so.
> Mandrake SNF provides an easy, web-based config tool that handles all
> of the settings for the dialup gateway and firewall.  I can handle
> configuring samba for file/print serving.
>
> Do current distros offer something like this, and which would be
> a good one to try?  I'm really not up on what current distros offer,
> and most reviews are desktop-oriented.  Given equal tools, I'd lean
> towards a Debian-based system.

LEAF - Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall
<http://leaf.sourceforge.net/>

Runs from floppy; does everything you want (via add-on modules);
originally based on Debian Slink. Config is actually more from command
line menus than anything else. Really easy, tho.

I run mine from a 2 floppy (no hard drive) Pentium-100, 32M RAM. Uses
Shorewall for IPTables config. I run a mail/ftp/web server from behind
mine. Has add-on modules for SSH and samba and DNS server and just about
any thing else you might want. Can run from HD if you want. Also has IPSec
add-ons, for VPNs. All sorts of goodies. :-)

I used to use mine on dial-up, before I went to DSL a few years ago.

> The machine is a Pentium 133, with 80MB RAM, an ISA analog modem and
> running on a peer-to-peer LAN.
>
> Thanks,

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