[ale] best dist for firewall?

[Christopher R. Curzio]

I have friends that would scoff, but I'm an avid Slackware user. All of my
machines that run Linux (meaning all but one) run Slackware. That includes
my firewall/router box.

If you're looking for a tight, locked-down distribution that can be
squeezed into small spaces, I would highly recommend Slackware. Definitely
upgrade to 2.4 and use IPTables. Compiling the kernel will take longer
than on faster machines (duh), but look at it this way. You'll only have
to do it once in a VERY long time. Just compile, reboot, sit back, and
watch your uptime soar. 

As for MySQL... on a 120MHz machine with a database that's going to get
pretty big, you may want to rethink that. You could automatically shunt
the data to another box with the MySQL database using crond and scp, but
that seems like it would be a bit excessive. Any particular reason you
want to save all that data?

-- 
Christopher R. Curzio
http://www.accipiter.org
:wq!


Thus Spake John Wells <jb at sourceillustrated.com>:
Mon, 29 Apr 2002 16:09:07 -0000


> I'm setting up a firewall on a 120mhz, 16meg machine.  I'd like to run
> iptables, snort/acid and a mysql db to store the snort info.
> 
> Any recommended distros?  It'd be nice to get something minimal
> (possibly tightened) but with the 2.4 kernel (for the stateful
> firewalling capabilities).  I considered Slackware or Debian and then
> upgrading the kernel, but the thought of compiling on a 120mhz machine
> is not a happy one. Considering Peanut as well, but it seems to be
> heavily configured for the desktop.  I guess it's a last resort.
> 
> Thanks as always,
> 
> John
> 
> 
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