Linux box as a firewall


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I'm going to setup an old PC as a firewall on my network. This will my big leap into the world of Linux, so I need some advise on what software would be best to use to log incoming and out going traffic.

I'll be installing mandrake 9.1, is this version up to the job? There are 4 PC on the network running XP Pro SP1.

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If you just want it as an intelligent firewall, almost any Linux will do. You won't even need a GUI. Text only will be fine. (GUI is fine, too, if you want, but not needed).

You might also want to look into FreeBSD. They have quite a solid reputation for being secure and reliable. (BSD has 50 of the top 50 servers world-wide for uptime)

There are also versions of Linux that have been specially designed for firewalls (try google to look for some, as I don't have experience with them)

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You might also want to look into FreeBSD. They have quite a solid reputation for being secure and reliable. (BSD has 50 of the top 50 servers world-wide for uptime)

FreeBSD? They? They what? FreeBSD iws only one of a handful of well known/supported/maintained BSDs. As for security OpenBSD wins hands down. Locked by default.

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FreeBSD? They? They what? FreeBSD iws only one of a handful of well known/supported/maintained BSDs. As for security OpenBSD wins hands down. Locked by default.

Sorry... I should have said "one of the *BSD variants"... :rolleyes:

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Try fli4l. Fli4l is a single floppy Linux-based ISDN, DSL and Ethernet-Router. You can build it from an old 486 based pc with 16 megabyte memory, which is more than adequate for this purpose. Here at work a small Pentium 1 with 32 MB RAM handles ~50 clients, it works like a charme.

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Another good possibility is SmoothWall. It's a very small ISO (in the neighborhood of 50-60 MB), and, judging from the user comments, a very well thought-out and put-together distro.

Thanks for al the help :D

This SmoothWall looks just the thing, looks like my weekend has been taken care of (I hope the girlfriend understands ;) )

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Another one - that has more than just firewall/gateway is www.clarkconnect.com - nothing against smoothwall, its a great distro. This is just another option. The iso is a bit bigger than smoothwall, but it does have quite a few more features than just a firewall/gateway, etc..

And I also have to agree - that you could not go wrong with any of the BSD's open being on the top of my list.

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