Firewall/Webserver

[wrender]

Hey,

I have a firewall/webserver that is running mandrake 10 official right now. The computer is damn slow.. only 64mb ram and a pII 350 proc. I don't need a gui on it, so I just installed mandrake with out kde.

Does anyone know of a distro that is good for specifically setting up just firewall/router/webservers?

Thanks,
Wes

[Zyglow]

Take a look at http://www.ipcop.org/ or http://www.smoothwall.org

[wrender]

Hey,

Thanks for those sites. They seem to be just firewalls though. I need a server os. Something that runs, ftp,samba,apache and a firewall.

Wes

[GnomeProject]

Slackware? Ummm...debian...or even check out www.distrowatch.com ??? Slackware or Debian should work for you...good luck!

-Adam

[Choozo]

Originally posted by wrender
Hey,

Thanks for those sites. They seem to be just firewalls though. I need a server os. Something that runs, ftp,samba,apache and a firewall.

Wes That would defeat the purpose of a firewall.

Put your FTP, Samba and Web server tasks on a box behind a firewall - on a DMZ segment.

[Zyglow]

I suggested those two because they are good at what they do. I originally thought that you were looking for a firewall/webserver. Apache is very easy to install. If you don't want to build the other packages yourself and want a fast "server class" distro, IMO you should take a look at Slackware.

[bryan.6]

people suggested to me openbsd... so i'm trying it out. i like it, and hey, it is a good oportunity to try out a bsd.

[wrender]

Ok, thanks for the info. I have two computers I can actually use for this, so it should work out ok. I have a junker with 64mb ram, and a pII 350 cpu. I could use that for the firewall, and put ipcop or smoothwall on it.

I also have a Duron 700, 384mb ram, which right now is running enterprise server 2003. I'll format that one and put on slackware maybe, for my apache, samba, ftp. Then i just have to forward the traffic with the firewall to this computer. Would that be a safer setup than putting all those services just on my slow pII 350 computer?

Thanks again for the help everyone.

Wes
www.ridevillain.com

[Choozo]

Originally posted by wrender
Would that be a safer setup than putting all those services just on my slow pII 350 computer?
Absolutely, and also the "proper" way of doing it ;)

The reasoning is this:
If you have services not related to firewalling on a firewall - e.g. FTP, Webserver, Gameserver, etc.
What do you think will happen to your firewall part of that setup after e.g. your FTP server has been compromised by a vulnerability giving a malicious cracker root access?

[squeegy]

if you're going for linux, go with slackware or debian. or you could go with OpenBSD if you want to try something different.

[wrender]

ok, i think i'll setup smoothwall for my firewall computer, and then put my website and other services on a faster computer behind the firewall. Maybe i'll try out slackware.


Thanks everyone
Wes