[CLUG] Lookin' for a second-hand box...

[adam beecher]

> I've been messing around with OpenBSD for a while and I'm impressed by
> how precise and uncluttered it is. It certainly feels safer than the
> average Linux distro which installs all sorts of crap (and enables it).
> It's also proactively secure without being a major pain in the backside.
> The installation is arcane however, but it worked fine on my old box. My
> next project is to get it doing NAT (masquerading) and automatic
> dialout.
>
This is why the spec of the machine doesn't matter *that* much, because I don't
need all that fancy-shmancy stuff. I certainly won't need X. In fact, I'll
probably only use the monitor once, since I can always telnet in from another
machine on the network. All it needs to do really is dial into SurfNoLimits, act
as a firewall and connect to the LAN. Anything else is just pants, because I'll
be spending most of my time in Linux on another machine. I chose OpenBSD on a
recommendation, because it's reputably the best for security. And I'll probably
be forced into some kind of always-on connection at some stage, so I'll
definitely need the security then.

> OpenBSD doesn't have diald, but apparently the usermode PPP daemon can
> do most of the diald basic stuff. However, I don't think it's possible
> to configure PPP to keep the line up different durations for different
> network activity, e.g. to leave the line up for 5 minutes for http, 2
> minutes for POP, 0 seconds for POP and so on.
>
I won't be serving anything from here anyway, if that's what you mean. All it'll
have to do is connect or diconnect at certain times via cron, monitor the
connections, and maybe do a little pinging on my remote servers. I've decided to
leave setting up the NOC in the garage for a while. :)

That said, I probably should have been a little clearer about what I'm looking
for - I'm aiming for a low-spec box, complete with mouse and keyboard. Low-spec
means as high as I can get without paying too much. Or anything at all for that
matter - I'm sure loads of peeps have rigs they just couldn't be arsed dumping.
I'm not looking for parts - because I wouldn't know what to do with them - or
something that just wouldn't be able to handle it. But thanks to the peeps who
already offered.

My next request will be for an OpenBSD CD. Talk about wanting jam on it, huh? :)

adam