[linux] Slackware updating, NAT/IPMasq specs, and NO-IP updater/domainname setup on DHCP

[Garrett Cooper]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Talkington" <dtalk at u.washington.edu>
To: "Linux/Unix Users Group at the UW" <linux at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: [linux] Slackware updating, NAT/IPMasq specs, and NO-IP
updater/domainname setup on DHCP


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> Haven't used Slackware, but that won't stop me from tossing in my $.02
> US:
>
> Garrett Cooper wrote:
>
> >    I was going to setup a Cable/DSL router using Slackware 9.0 (just
> >because it would have taken eons to compile everything using Gentoo),
> >on my old P1 66 Mhz with 16 mb ram
>
> I use a similar machine, P90 with 16MB and a 500MB-ish hard drive, for a
> home bridge/router.  Only downside is that if my ISA NICs ever die, I'm
> screwed.  :)

Hahaha... I know.... Thankfully my ISA slots are also PCI capable =D.

> >I'm open to finding out results for any other distro or BSD clone
> >(Gentoo, Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc).
>
> I did this with Red Hat for years, until it got so flippin' bloated that
> it was no longer acceptable for a small installation.  About the time
> that I switched to a Gentoo desktop, I switched to an OpenBSD
> router/firewall/bridge, because a) it rarely needs updating, b) it has a
> tiny footprint, JUST an operating system; and c) pf is much slicker and
> more flexible than iptables.

Heh... I tried Redhat and I knew that it would become expensive after a
while on the CPU/Memory. Iptables is ok, but an easier solution would be
nicer.

> Any of the BSDs, of course, will suffer from the same need to compile
> updates as does Gentoo, unless you have another machine on which to
> offload that function.  The good news is that I've only had to patch
> OpenBSD once, ever, that I remember. I do install the latest version
> each time it's released, but that's really easy, no compilation
> required.  Highly recommended for a boot-and-forget black box.

Cool! I ran FreeBSD for a while as my personal OS (and that was a pain),
but it would have been better as a server I suppose since it was such a
quick
and easy install. One question though: if you install the packages and
everything
is compiled, can you move the harddrive to another machine and it would
automatically detect and run like it did on the other machine? Part of the
issue
is that my P1 doesn't have bootable CD capability in the BIOS-partly because
the IDE card isn't built-in to the motherboard I suppose. That is the main
reason
why I've been using Slackware; other Linux/BSD distros I've seen so far
don't
support that kind of "portability", or at least the kind I need to install
my OS. Plus,
I don't have enough floppy disks hanging around the house to boot to ramdisk
and install either =\... Plus-correct me if I'm wrong-but isn't OpenBSD a
network
based install? I would LIKE to do something like that, but seeing as how I
would
be running off of a slow 56k PPP connection (dubiously because of WinModem
drivers), that would take a long time to say the least =(.

Thanks, and until next time!
-G