Newbie Linux question

[wyvrn]

I am going to be building a inexpensive Linux box to act as a firewall/router for my cable connection in the next month or so. But I am new to it and have a couple of questions.

1) How do I know the hardware I want to use is Linux compatible?
2) What is the most newbie friendly distro, Mandrake or Redhat?
3) What are some good websites that I can do some reading on in the meantime?
4) I want to also run a web and email server, just for practice, on that box. Should I or use another box one hop away from the firewall?

Thanks

 

[tasslex]

1) I checked my stuff by looking for drivers for questionable devices. Really new PCI devices, like PCI sound and modem cards can be a hassle (I think Winmodems are still a no go), but most things are either natively supported or you can install drivers.
2) Mandrake is the most newbie friendly, but if you're going to build a firewall go with RedHat. Mandrake is based on RedHat, but installs a lot of extra garbage.
3) Linux.com has some OK articles, otherwise find a Linux Documentation Project (LDP) mirror and start reading How-to's. I always got really pissed off when people said "go read the how-to's". but now that I have done that I feel better for it.
4) You can run that stuff on the firewall, just run it on the internal portion. When you're finding out how to set up the firewall the documents you find will be pretty clear on how to allow port access to the private network and not the internet.

Good luck!

 

[Kadesh]

1) Check the website for the distro. Technically, if it works in one distro then it should work everywhere else. The amount of work required to make that happen is another story though. 3D cards prove to be difficult for newbies.
2) Mandrake (provided you're color blind, jk, it does helps )
3) www.linuxnewbie.org (read the NHF's that seem important or obvious, like basic commands), www.freshmeat.net (for apps), the distro update/security page for patches, www.slashdot for propaganda, www.linuxdoc.org (for firewall info)
4) Depends on the computer you're using and how much you want to get your hands dirty.

 

[wyvrn]

Ok thanks for the replies. I think I am armed with enough sites to keep myself busy while I build this computer. Believe me I will be coming back for more help

 

[Buddha Bart]

If you want to run redhat/mandrake or basically anything with a GUI you should make sure to have a semi-respectable system. Like a p-233 or so.

However for very simple web/email servers and routing, straight-up command-prompt slackware or the like would probably make your life easier.

bart

 

[wyvrn]

Ok I was thinking along the lines of a Celeron 366 box. And would probably prefer to use the GUI to get around as I learn the command line.

 

[bubba]

if you just want to have a firewall/router, then try out FreeSCO. It will do all that and is easy to configure. You could just use a 486 for that and then have your celeron 366 for trying linux on.

 

[Tekchip]

FreeSco is pretty cool for router/firewall some other very very good linux based router/firewall are bbiagent and Mandrake SNF. When your talking just a regular distro the two I've found to be the most user friendly and hardware compatable are Mandrake and Caldera eDesktop. Redhat runs a close 3rd and Slackware close behind. Slackware is a little more technical and you have to know what your doing to use it. But your original question was about the firewall routers. If you don't know much about linux and your looking for something basic bbiagent is the way to go. You don't even need a hard drive and cdrom drive to get that going. Mandrake SNF only requires about 250mb hard drive space to run and could use a little more hardware behind it. I'm running an old ibm chip at 133mhz with a pair of pci realtek cards and 64mb ram(72pin simms none the less!) and the bbiagent software works perfectly. It has even been fire tested at a small lan party with 15 or so people all recieveing there ip's via it's dhcp and shareing a dsl connection through it and it help up perfectly, never faltered.

 

[thornc]

or any *BSD OS....like:
FreeBSD
OpenBSD

Anyway first learn linux/unix checkout the guides and howtos at the:
Linux Documentation Project

And usually any distro will have its own "Installation Guide" that will cover
most issues about getting started!

But for a first start I would recommend Linux Mandrake 8.0, its easy to set-up
and usually will recognize your hardware without any problems...

 

[wyvrn]

K thanks for replies. I wanted to use Linix because I am going to *try* to get away from MS products, hence Mandrake or Redhat. Also after I finish CCNA, going to take some Unix classes and I figured Linux would be an easier way to start learning.

What is BSD? Is it a Unix variant?

 

[Bremen]

heh, depending on who you ask BSD is THE Unix :0) Although it isn't an official unix variant. Anyway, its based on the Berkely (IIRC BSD stands for Berkely software design) 4.4-LITE which in turn was based off of the orginal AT&T Unix.

Anyway, if you want to do a firewall router I'd say check out OpenBSD. Probably the most secure OS around.

 

[lucidguy]

BSD stands for Berkeley Standard Distrobution.

 

[lucidguy]

There is no firewall in OpenBSD 2.9 because the programmer of the firewall code changed his license, and he and Theo had a public cussfight, and Theo took out all the firewall code from OpenBSD's newest distro.

Theo is the maintainer (and copyright holder) of the OpenBSD project. His full name is difficult to spell.

 

[Bremen]

What the heck are you smokin' lucid?? First off ipfilter was never the default firewall, second there are other firewalls available. Third, ipfilter is still in 2.9, it was just removed from the devel tree.