[ILUG] Firewall / File Server

[Wynne, Conor]

Smoothwall is yer man, version 0.99 is being released soon, but the current
0.98 supports ISDN adaptors. No file and print I'm afraid but you really
should keep them behind your firewall anyway. 

The one that came with linuxFormat is 0.96 and you should just download the
new ISO, its only 20MB anyway, just do it!

I love smoothwall, I wan't its babies. I now have 20 days uptime with no
worries, snort is also available as a precompiled binary for smoothie.
Routing, firewall forwarding, yes. NAT, not quite but next best : IPMasq. 

I agree with you, Debian is not very user friendly - we are looking for a
hidin' here I think - coz we're ignorant b****** I hear them all shout. 

All the info in the world about smoothie is avaiable in tree friendly PDF
format on their website. Even how to best secure your network! Nice. Mind
you I haven't read them yet, downloaded them though and thats half the
battle. 

At the end of the day, its a piece of piss to get up and running,
userfriendly and I hear rumours that the next version will have demand
dialling. At the moment you have to connect to the box over http from you
ie5.5 browser, or better the ie6 Preview :)

It doesn't bother me in the slightest that I have to connect to the machine
to dial, coz all you do is click dial/hangup. 

Check out their site, http://www.smoothwall.org and join their mailing list,
you only receive a mail once a month or so, but it lets you know about
security recomendations, updates etc etc. 

My HAN is Smoothwall on an old p133 64MB, then a proxy (Squid on RH7.0) on
dual Processor (also runs samba), then clients behind it. Unfortunately I
had to plug back in the windows box coz I can't import my digital
certificate for internet banking, for some reason, bizarre - anyone use
anytime online banking with linux?

I don't really mind, coz I demoted the windows machine to 64MB - Its a bit
too much for a shite OS but It was the smallest module available. Its a good
laugh watching it chug chug. HA HA HA, O yes, I also stuck it on that dodgy
mobo/cpu combination! HA HA, great craic. 

CW

HA!

--------------
Hi All,

I have finally backed up all my data from that cursed Win2k server, and am
about to put Linux on it.
I need it to do the following:
ISDN Dial-on-Demand
Routing, Forwarding, NAT and Firewalling
File and Print Serving.
Which distro/generation of distros should I be looking at.

Redhat 7.1 and Mandrake 8.0 both seem to address security a lot more openly
than previous versions, but I do have a proper boxed set of Redhat 7.0
server.
I don't like Debian, it's just not very friendly, and I haven't seen
Slackware in years.

Does anyone have any decent info on smoothwall?
I saw it on the Linux Format CD, and it looked pretty interesting.

I wouldn't mind seperating the File & Print onto a seperate server if it was
really necessary or better off.

Effectively I have two LANs, one of which has an ISDN Router connecting me
to work, and the other one being my own little private network.
I'd like to set the ISDN card in the box to dial on demand for standard
internet traffic instead of going through work.

Thanks,
	David.

David Hamilton
Senior Technical Consultant
HP Ireland