Re: [TCLUG:18539] Tiny laptop firewall distro suggestions, please

[^chewie <chewie@wookimus.net>]

On Thu, Jun 01, 2000 at 10:06:50PM -0600, Chris Schumann wrote:
> Here's the rub: I want to use the original 170MB drive that came
> with the machine.

No biggie.

> Another rub: There's no CD drive, but I have two IBM Home & Away
> NIC's that do work with linux (I installed on a 2.1GB drive I had
> installed).
> 
> I've tried Red Hat Linux 6.2, and even when I pare off all I think I
> can, it still requires about 180MB, and I would like to have a *little*
> room left over for log files and such.

ROFL!  RedHat as a minimalistic firewall?  The ONLY way you'd be able
to do this is if you found someone who had stripped it down to the
essential packages for running a network only server.

Try the Linux Router Project (though a bit behind in kernel releases).
http://www.linux-router.org.  Follow the link to the "beta" web site
and look into Materhorn, the 2.2.14 version of LRP (which is 2.0.36 by
standard LRP distro).  LRP is based off the Debian distribution.

Otherwise, if you want a very minimalistic installl, but you want full
distro tools, install Debian from a floppy.  Just remember to quit the
installation process when it asks you to pop into dselect.  Then use
apt-get to install packages individually.  If you install from potato,
you should get most of the basic packages in about 40MB.  Then add
what you need.  You can use packages such as aptitude or console-apt,
or even dselect, to choose your packages in an n-curses environment.

Watch out if you use dselect, however, as it a little over-excited
about installing packages for the first time.  IOW, it'll select quite
a bit of stuff you don't need, and you'll find yourself "unselecting"
a lot.

Frankly, given the choice, I do a minimalistic Debian distribution.
I've done it before and it works out just fine.  Plus, the Debian
floppy install does well with laptops...

Good luck!

-- 
  Chad "^chewie, gunnarr" Walstrom <chewie@wookimus.net>
              http://wookimus.net/chewie

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