Do we have anybody that is familiar with the SmoothWall router/firewall package?

[John Collier]

I have an old P133Mz box with 32MG RAM that I was about to throw in the trash and then someone pointed me toward this software. The problem is that I have never been through any kind of Linux install before and the documentation that comes with it seems to assume that anybody reading it should have some basic background.

My little machine that I want to load this on doesn???t have a CD ROM in it and I don???t happen to have a spare one that I can just throw into it at the moment. This means that I will have to use the boot disks (which a friend of mine was gracious enough to make for me) and try to do an FTP install. That seems fair enough since they seem to provide a link in their FAQs to an FTP server that is available.

My next question is regarding the actual HCL for this particular version 1.0 of the program. I have heard that it exists on the SmoothWall web site, but can???t seem to locate it. Could anybody point me to it? What I am trying to determine is if the two network cards I have will be supported by the current release or if I will have to do something different. The first card that I want to use in the ???Red??? capacity is an old ISA 10 base card so I???m not so worried about it. The other one is relatively new. It???s a PCI LAN Adapter from GIGAFAST (an EE100-AXP to be more precise).

I also understand that I will have to assign IRQs to each of these devices, but I can???t locate any jumpers on either of the NICs to do this and the BIOS didn???t offer too much help in this area either.

One last question comes to mind. I already have a Linksys router in place. If you were in my place, would you put the SmoothWall box in place of the existing router or simply put it between the existing router and the switch?

Bottom line would be that I am obviously very new to any type of Linux install and I would appreciate all of the HELP!!! that I can get???

P.S.
I do award points for answers to my posts, but I will hold off on assigning them until the issue is resolved so I can be fair to all who attempt to answer. I want the correct person to get their bunny ;-)

[Steven E. Protter]

Hey John,

Linux is not nearly as good as Windows at network card support. To boot and do the install off ftp requires a NIC card/driver thats known to the Linux release you are using.

Red Hat has the best hardware support, in my opinion, and 7.3 has a router/firewall configuration out of the box.

To pull of the ftp install, a known NIC driver is a must.

As to the router question: The linksys router will be needed to do the ftp install. When you suceed in creating a router with TWO NIC cards, you can use it to replace the linksys. Card 1 is assigned the address by your ISP, card 2 is the one for your internal network.

Hope this is a start if not a solution.

SEP

[James Wilson_5]

This is actually one of the few cards at this point in time that state in its documentation that it has Linux support. See http://www.gigafast.com/products/Adapters/EE100-AXP/ee100-axp.pdf.

This probably means it uses a common chip that has a driver in the kernel. Having said that it is probably a good idea to use the latest of whatever distro you are using/planning to use. These days most distro's have firewall software setup by default and some have nice tools to configure your firewall. (RH, Mandrake, Suse)

[James Wilson_5]

Just reread your post :)
You want to set this box up as a dedicated firewall and want to use smoothwal.

Just visited the smoothwall site and they are still using the 2.2 kernel. I am not sure it will support the new nic as I don't know what chipset it has.

Although the package seem to have recent activity the docs are outdated.
I was going to suggest that you use a floppy based firewall system, but that implies you make your own because of the nic's you have.

IRQ's: You don't have to bother on the PCI card and if the ISA card does not have links it is a plug and pray card - Linux can deal with it OK most of the time.

[John Collier]

SEP,

Your hopes have been realized. This is a start. Unfortunately it is not a solution.

I guess either my original message was too long (I never know how much detail to put into the first message) or not very clear. I already have the two NIC cards for the donor machine and what I am trying to figure out now is the next logical step in this process.

The software I am looking at is a self-contained package that is stripped down to the bare necessities for the actual OS and then has the additional firewall code packaged with it. I wasn???t really looking for a replacement or alternate OS.

I was considering the idea of keeping the Linksys router in place at this time as more of a two-tier intrusion deterrent than anything else. The ???Red??? NIC is set up by default in this package to receive its address from a DHCP server. Since the existing router does NAT translation, I figured I could use the existing router to serve an address to the system I am building until I get it all straightened out. Then I could either leave it that way or remove the Linksys all together.

Just my brain-drizzle on the subject???


James,

One of the reasons that I purchased the PCI card was that it specifically states that it is Linux compatible. I didn???t see any other card in the store that made that claim. Would it help if I located the chip information from the card and posted it here? I just don???t want to keep a card that will be of no service to me in the long run???

I had the same opinion of the docs for the software that you did. By the way, assuming that I can locate a CDROM for this system, how do I make use of the ISO that I downloaded? I may not be the brightest crayon in the box, but I can tell that even *NIX won???t recognize that file extension if I just burn it to CD the way that it is.

IRQ???s: The docs for this package, outdated or not, specifically state that I have to manually set the IRQ???s for the NICs. Are you telling me now that I can leave it all alone and the software should be able to figure it out? I thought the plug and pray thing was a M$ Windoze thing only.

That would be great, but I have to admit that I???m sceptacle???

[John Collier]

Any more input, or have I stumped the Linux gurus?

[John Collier]

Ping!

[Denis Goffinet]

ISO files are ISO9660 images of all the bits present on the cd.

As ISO files are standart, any CD writing software that support Image Burning ( Nero under windows for example) support that kind of file.

There should exist the same kind of software under *NIx but I didn't burn once a cd under linux so I can't help you much.

I used Smoothwall 1 year ago and the CD was bootable, and Installation was very easy and intuitive.

[Denis Goffinet]

While I was driving my mouse on the web, I found this related to ISO burning, i hope it could help you a little bit:

[quote]
The command to burn a CD out of the ISO under Linux is:

cdrecord -eject speed=16 dev=0,0,0 KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-04-15-EN.iso
Where cdrecord is the command, -eject ejects the CD once the recording is complete, speed=16 is the speed at which to burn the CD, dev=0,0,0 is the device ID and KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-04-15-EN.iso is the name of the ISO image. If you don't know your CD device ID, the command cdrecord -scanbus will present a list of available devices. CD burning applications on Windows, such as Ahead Software's Nero Burning ROM , Alcohol Software's Alcohol 120% , and Roxio's Easy CD Creator , also allow you to create a CD out of an ISO image
[/quote]

Source: http://newsforge.com

[Steven E. Protter]

John, I can send you a cdrom among the bunch sitting in my basement that will probably work for that server. Hardly worth the shipping expense though, since you can get them at Best Buy for $29 or less.

So you've got two NIC cards and a network boot disk. Assuming you've got the band width, your done.

Here is how I approach an ftp installation.

First I go to http://www.redhat.com/download/mirror.html

I pick out a site that seems fast, for me that's usually the University of Indiana.

I do an nslookup for the ftp server and get the IP address, then I click through to get the subdirectory of the network image.

Boot off the diskette, which must have been made with the netimage, not the regular boot image. Hit enter after the mini kernel comes up, put in the IP address and the subdirectory, the rest of the information is pretty logical and intuitive.

Let the Linksys router assign the temporary IP address with DHCP. After you find an image, you can pick the router configuration and you are on your way to building a great router.

SEP

[John Collier]

Denis,

So if I understand you correctly, I can use my Windoze PC to burn this ISO file to CD by simply inserting a blank disk into the burner and dragging the ISO image to the burner???s software interface? There is no special software needed to reformat the .ISO into a file system or anything else?

Why does that sound too easy to me?

On another note, I have tried the software install a couple of times already and it wants to configure the internal ???Green??? NIC first. The problem with that is that the one I want to use for the internal NIC is the PCI card that I mentioned earlier. When it probes my system for all available NICs it finds the old ISA card (apparently an older 3COM card) but it doesn???t see the PCI card.

I dug through the list of drivers that it has to see if I could perform a manual install and it seemed to like the drivers for one of the Realtech cards but when it asks me for the URL to download the .tgz file from it locks up and won???t let me enter it!?!

I am beginning to think that I will have to ???borrow??? one of the CDROMs from another machine in the house long enough to do the install whether I want to or not.

This is why I am suddenly interested in exactly how to get the .ISO file successfully burnt to CD. If I need other software to make this work, then please point me to a way to create this disk on my Windoze PC so I can then use it to load the software on the little donor machine.

This is really starting to become much more complicated than I expected???


BTW, thanks for the input so far. I will get to the points when it is installed and functional (or I give up, which ever comes first :-). I promise that much!

[Steven E. Protter]

Yes John,

Though the question was not aimed at me, I burn all my Linux CD's on Windoze boxes. If you have the burn software in, all you need to do is double click on the iso file.

SEP

[John Collier]

Sorry SEP,

I didn???t realize that the question looked like it was pointed to anybody.

So, if I understand your entry, all I should have to do is to double-click the .ISO file and it will know what to do from there. I will give it a shot and see what happens.

Thanks for the input guys!

I???ll let you know what happens???

[John Collier]

OK,

It would appear as if I am officially dumber than your average doorknob when it comes to these ISO packages and burning them to CD.

I tried the method of double-clicking the .iso package and it asked me what I wanted to open it with. Obviously not what I wanted.

Next, I tried simply dragging it into the window of what is supposed to go on the CD and I got a nice little CD with the same .iso file that I downloaded from the web site. Since this is not in a suable format, I just made a $0.20 coaster (anybody want to by one?).

I???m obviously missing something here. Could someone point out where I am going wrong?

[Denis Goffinet]

As I don't know which program you use to burn you cd's this won't maybe help you.

But under Nero Burning ROM, you just have to clik on File -> Burn Image

then point to your iso image file.

If you you use another burning software, just hit "F1" to get help, and try to search on keywords like "burning image".

[James Wilson_5]

It sounds to me that you are using directcd or whatever it used to be called. This will not give you the desired result. You need nero burning rom if you use windows - there is a demo you can download at http://www.nero.com/en/#root
.

I use linux and there are a number of good packages. As I use KDE the frontends (K3B and CD Bake Oven) does the job.

[John Collier]

Thanks again for the continued support and input.

For the information of those of you who have mentioned being able to use the Windoze packages to burn the .iso download to disk, I feel it may be helpful to inform you of the steps I have finally had to go through to make the disk image.

I tried first to use the NTI CD software that I have had on my computer for quite some time. While it is a great package and has worked beautifully for me in the past with everything that I have ever wanted to do with the CD burner, it failed the task of using the .iso package to create a CD.

I was told of another package from an acquaintance of mine called Fireburner. While it would recognize the .iso image, it never would complete the burning process for reasons I have yet to determine.

The last suggestion of using the Nero software (thanks for the nudge, James) was only successful after installing said software from the CD that came with my last CDR drive and then using the updates from the Nero site. The original software had no idea what to do with it.

That being said, I now have a full CD image that I will attempt to use on the little donor machine sometime tomorrow (if all goes as hoped).

The end appears to be near (as well as all of the long awaited, fully deserved points)!

I will post my future successes and/or failures here when they occur???

[John Collier]

A quick update on the current situation:

As you know, I have been successful in creating the bootable CD-ROM from the ISO image for this software package. What you haven???t heard yet is that even with the image and a borrowed CD-ROM drive, I still haven???t been able to successfully load the software on this machine.

The closest I have gotten was booting with the CD and allowing it to pull all information from the CD for it???s software load. Everything appeared to have gone well and it looked like I was off to the races (as they say in these parts) until it came time to actually use the software.

I was unable to use either of the two different NIC cards that were installed in the machine to communicate with any other network device and they both refused to respond to a ping from any other machine on the network. On top of that, the software locked up and refused to allow a smooth shutdown, forcing a power off, which ultimately lead to unrecoverable disk errors!

I have since then tried to use both of the NICs in different combinations and have failed to achieve communication with either card on my network. I have verified the cables by swapping them out with other network machines in the house and all is good there.

Thinking this may have had something to do with the older 2.2 Kernel that the current 1.0 version uses, I also brought down the latest beta version that uses the newer 2.4.19 Kernel and had the exact same results.

Since the software recognizes the NICs, loads the drivers for them, and I get good connection to the switch from both NICs and STILL can???t manage to communicate through or with them, can anybody give me a clue as to what I may be overlooking before I throw this entire thing in the garbage and call it all a lost cause?

[Steven E. Protter]

I don't know if its worth the money but a pair of Bay Networks PCI cards will work. I've got a Linux server at home with that setup.

Last I checked they listed for $19.99 at Best Buy.

Certified with Red Hat, and working in production, that's fore sure.

We might want to make a time and meet in the chat site and interact real time on your issues.

SEP

[spanky mcfoo]

I'd forget doing a full install, or even wasting a hard drive on this machine.

Check out floppyfw, which puts a linux-based fw on a floppy. Boot, do some basic configuration, and go:

http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/

[Jerome Henry]

What I do not get very clearly is could you intall up to the end, and then no card is read, or do you have kinda install process running, and it doesn't work at all ?
The difference is, as maybe you were explained before, you have to look at the kikstart file precising your HD size and partition for example. Did you fix all this ?
BTW do you know clarckconnect ? Why choose smoothwall ?
RGDS
J