Smoothwall

Last edited by kahrn on Mon Nov 28, 2005 4:38 pm; edited 1 time in total

This article is based upon running a router/firewall using old components.

The amount of times I have suggest people to run hardware firewalls using pentium and 486 cpu based setups and they have replyed with \"omg?!?!?! are you stupid?!??????\" is crazy, So I have written this document to hopefully shed some light on how to turn old computers into something usefull.

One common project for older computers is to turn them into fully functional firewalls with a wide array of other features.
Smoothwall is a hardware firewall that is based upon Linux, it does it's job well. Some of the features include Proxy(s), VPN, wireless access point, IDS, Network analysis, DHCP, dynamic DNS, Time server, Traffic shaping, Port forwarding, and a wide array of logging features. There is also an active community that creates mods/hacks for it, however I will not cover these.

To run a smoothwall box all you will need is a computer with a pentium I processor (or equivalent), 486's could also be used.
The reason for using a low spec CPU is simple - you do not need the speed of today's and even yesterdays processors. You may think that they will do the job crap, but infact they will do the job just as well as a P4 could do, and processor speed or technology is no matter. (This however depends on the amount of users)
[If you are running a network with more than 40 users, a pentium II might be better for the job, and in excess of 90 users a PIII.]

You will also need at least 16mb ram. I use 64MB, and 64MB is what many recommend. Excess of 64MB is normally useless unless you have lots of users.
A floppy drive is not needed, however you can use one if you want to run a network install instead of a CD. Floppy can be used to store and backup settings, but the floppy is *almost* dead these days.
For the installation a CD-ROM drive (any speed) is needed, and a monitor is also needed. Both of these are no longer needed after the install.
Last but not least you will need a NIC and a modem. How many NIC's you use is your choice. you could also have wireless access.

The install is relativly easy, assuming you have a little experience with networking.
Once the install is complete you can remove the monitor and cd-rom drive (and floppy drive and graphics card if you want)
This will help you to use as little power as possible to power the machine, as we don't want it to be using lots of power which is un-needed.

You can login to the server using SSH if you want. Or you can access the firewalls web interface by typing the ip into your browser, at which point you can configure other things if you like. And you can connect to the internet and such.
Those with a little Linux/Unix experience can install hacks, and various other things if you want.
For instance, on my box I use yasuc [YetAnotherBasicUptimeClient] from uptime-project.net

Other projects like smoothwall include IpCop (which is based off smoothwall, with more USB Modem support), and m0n0wall, a unix based project aimed at flash cards.

I may cover the installation and such in more detail at another date if others wish to build such a system :)

Installing Smoothwall takes all the fun out of it. :(

Last edited by KoolDrew on Tue Nov 29, 2005 2:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

I prefer using something like OpenBSD or Debian and doing everything manually. Using something like smoothwall takes all of the fun out of doing that.

I disagree, I think it can be just as fun doing it in smoothwall.

Of course, it doesnt really matter what OS you use to do it, as long as it works well. If anything is fun, it's building a machine that fits the needed specification almost perfectly. That's notable in many m0n0wall systems.