Coyote Linux / BrazilFW Update

I previously wrote about my Coyote Linux set up here. I did switch to BrazilFW on my home system, but I wanted to post a stat from my work system:

System Information
Kernel Version	2.4.30
Machine	i686 unknown
Current Date and Time	Wed Mar 29 13:15:02 EST 2006
Uptime	13:15:02 up 197 days, 2:42

197 days, that's pretty cool; the D-Link router that we were using had to be restarted every week to keep it stable.
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I started using BrazilFW when I noticed that uTorrent was maxing out my connections and causing limited internet access. When it had the same problem as Coyote Linux, I had to tweak the system to maximize the connections, while minimizing the connection problems. In the end I limited uTorrents number of connection, and increased BrazilFW concurrent connections.

The 486 I am using only has 8 Meg so it's probably below minimum requirements, but I can probably tweak some more usage out of it if I remove the Web interface. As well, if I switch to the IDE version, that may remove the necessity for extracting the floppy image to RAM. (Not sure about that one).

Coyote Linux

For a home firewall I use Coyote Linux personal firewall (CL firewall). It runs off a single floppy disk and handles my needs. I use an old 486-33 VLBus with 16M Ram. There is no hard drive in the system, just a floppy drive, the motherboard, video and network cards (two).

I have also installed this at work where the network is shared by between 5-10 people at a time. As I write this, the uptime is 45 days, 51 min, which is an improvement over the old D-Link hub. It needed to be restarted weekly to keep the internet connection running. It runs over PPPoE (DSL).

My next step is to all dynamic dns updating to both firewalls, currently I use DynSite at work and at home I use the Official Windows Update Client - DynDNS Updater. I actually didn't know it was the official client until I wrote this article, I had settled on it after my own research. I don't let it run all the time, I have it scheduled to run every two weeks or at boot up; and only to update if changed, or 28 days have passed. The latter is one requirement of any modification to the CL firewall, that it must force an update. If not, the address can be dropped by DynDNS.org and must be re-registered. (It has happened to me once, luckily my preferred IP name had not been taken during the lapse.)
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I may upgrade to the BrazilFW made by Claudio Roberto Cussuol who has taken on maintaining the floppy disk version. Vortech Consulting is moving on to IDE based or CD based versions only of the personal firewall (plus their commercial versions).

I love being able to re-use old hardware for this purpose; I know you can buy router/firewalls for under $100 but really, you get what you pay for. We ended up tossing ours at work because it was so unreliable. The CL firewall is much more robust, and configurable, especially in its port forwarding and DHCP server abilities. I also like the DNS caching, which improves internet performance.

Linux MisterHouse

So, I'm trying to set up a Linux server. It took me three attempts to find one that works on an old Pentium 133 I've inherited, which is probably part of the problem. It only has 32 megs of RAM, but I've stripped out any graphical interfaces to run in pure text mode, so once I start to get things set up I can check whether it is sufficient. I haven't used much in the way of Unix/Linux for several years so I'm relying on documentation pretty heavily.

I started with a mini distribution of Mandrake 10.1 that I had burned to CD a while ago, for this purpose. It installed, but would continuously reboot after LILO and when starting initrd. So I scrapped that, and tried University Linux. It installed fine and booted fine. However, when I tried to run MisterHouse, it was not up to the task (improper Perl versions, etc). It didn't take kindly to XAMPP Linux either.

Success was found with RedHat 2.1 which I had on CD. I had purchased a book a year or two back about Linux (in the bargain bin), and I think it has version 2.0.x so it's not a recent kernel. However, it does match the hardware in historical terms. Misterhouse extracted fine and started to load. The configuration needs heavy work, however. Lampp also extracted and attempted to configure as well.

I've skipped the steps needed for installation (such as teaching Linux to use my network card - Mandrake auto detected my ISA 3Com 5c309B but RedHat did not), and having to hang on an ATAPI CD-Rom to boot from - no way was I going to use floppies if I didn't have to. Then setting up a remote login so I don't have to work on it in the basement workshop any more.

My current hurdle is configuring Samba to make it easier to transfer my settings from a Windows 98 server running MisterHouse, as well as make the CDs available for use. This computer was an auto mechanic's server, so it has 4 CD-Rom drives tied in with SCSI, that used to run library software. The 3rd and 4th drives are hosted in a custom box with only a SCSI plug and power plug. The main unit is built much like the IBM PS/2's used to be, with a custom rise to attach the ISA and PCI cards.