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The IPCop Firewall Distro comes with snort and has an easy-to-understand web interface and a decent set of default rulesets. Unfortunately, tuning the rules cannot be done through the web interface, but you can log in and tweak with a text editor.

Cheers,
Jim

I did it with an old Pentium 75 (free from an aunt who'd upgraded and wanted rid of the old box), a couple $5 bargain bin ISA NICs and a copy of IPCop. So, including the cd I burned the ISO onto, less than $11 Canadian. It worked so well I built another one with an old P100 at work to share out a DSL line. So, yeah...no need to illegally obtain software when, for what 99.9% of us need it for, the free stuff is perfect. And if you actually *need* a router worth that kind of coin, you should have no problem getting the money. So what else, besides freesco and ipcop is everyone using for routers? (free/legal options only ;)

I recommend avoiding smoothwall (search usenet for "richard morrell smoothwall" for more info..).
Try IPCOP for a GPL fork of smoothwall that is not a hidden attempt at selling things and is GPL in spirit, not just name.
This article shouldnt have been how to make a pix it should be how to make a legal,cheap,open source alternative to one.

Look into IPCop or come out to a local user group (LUG). Both have people with skills to and they want help out. At the same time, they and you will give back, by helping bring others up to speed with both knowledge and questions. So do a presentation, or start a security SIG.

Yes, joining CERT notices or Bug Track will be your first information feed, but it is putting into action by talking to friends, testing firewalls, and helping others gets the information in use.

What you need is a firewall with multiple interfaces. You could go commercial and buy something like a Watchguard Firebox or set up a cheap linux box and use a pre-packaged linux firewall like IPCop or SmoothWall where you just boot off a cd and install/configure a Linux firewall.

What you end up setting up is a DMZ. You would have a "Trusted" interface that could be your private library network, a DMZ interface that could be your public access network, and an external interface that is your connection to the Internet.

You could set up the IPs as 192.168.0.0/24 for the trusted, 192.168.100/24 for the DMZ, and use your external ip segment for the external. You still can use all of the same network hardware that you have in place.

Hope this helps.

I think making special-purpose distros are a good idea. If I can borrow a disk from a fiend, install it on a box and have everything I need to start creating music, this is a tremendously hassle-free to put their hardware to good use.

One of my friends is a composer and a musician - he's also a programmer, but he has *no* Linux/Unix experience at all - could a distro like this help him get started? Sure.
How about a music teacher at a highschool? Don't count on him/her having much computer experience at all - given teacher salaries and the typical equipment in schools, he or she would probably welcome something like this.

I just don't see how focusing an effort on specializing a distro has any bad effect on other, more general distros. It takes nothing away, just adds...

Look at the demand for Firewall distros like IPCop. (My personal favorite!) With that, I can dl a 20mb iso and have a working firewall in 20 minutes - I don't have to go in and disable a lot of services the way I would if I had started with any of the standard distros.

Just my opinion...

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

• http://www.superant.com/smalllinux/
  
• http://ibiblio.org/vectorlinux/
  
• http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/
  
• http://www.xandros.net/
  
• http://www.gentoo.org/
  
• Smoothwall ...
  
• http://www.ipcop.org/
  
• http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/snf
  
• http://www.freesco.org/
  
• http://www.coyotelinux.com/
  
• http://leaf.sourceforge.net/
  
• http://www.gnatbox.com/Pages/gblight.html
  (this ones based on BSD IIRC)
  
• http://www.bbiagent.com/
  
• http://www.clarkconnect.org/"
  
• http://www.linux-firewall-tools.com/
  

• Astaro Security Linux: kernel 2.4.x
• BBIAgent: kernel 2.4.13
• ClarkConnect: iptables, kernel 2.4.9-31 (RH 7.2)
• Trinux: iptables, kernel 2.4.x (Slackware)

• Coyote Linux: kernel 2.2.19
• IPCop: kernel 2.2.x
• LEAF/LRP/Dachstein: kernel 2.2.19
• Mandrake SNF: kernel 2.2.19
• Smoothwall: kernel 2.2.19

• Freesco: ipfwadm, 2.0.38 (!)
• FWTK: Dunno, looks old, mentions ipfwadm

IPCop works just like Smoothwall for now. The next version has some incredible features that will take you to places you can only go with Smoothwall if you're willing to pay, if you can go there at all. Plus, the support is quick and friendly.

I use IPCop at home, at work and set it up for freinds and couldn't be happier.

It has IDS, VPN, a web proxy...eh, I could go on and on. Go check out the page!

Long live IPCop!

IPCop now is using Ext3. See features of V0.1.1. 2.4 Kernel and IPTables in V0.2

http://www.ipcop.org/

It started as a fork of SmoothWall (without the
attitude) and has grown steadily since.

I encourage everyone to check it and the mailing lists out!

http://www.ipcop.org/

It started as a fork of SmoothWall (without the
attitude) and has grown steadily since.

I encourage everyone to check it and the mailing lists out!

Yep, Morrell is definitely someone to watch out for. He threatens, harasses, and insults practically anyone that doesn't tell him Smoothwall's the greatest thing since using the GPL as a way to fork off to a commercial product after getting overenthusiastic community ego boosting.

He's gone so far as to make legal quasi-threats against me and other critics of his treatment of Smoothwall users. He's driven away enough developers that the IPCop project was formed and seems to have done quite a good job at proving themselves to have intentions of being more than just another forked project. IPCop has performed just wonderfully for me since my abandonment of Smoothwall.

For the morbidly curious, I have an archive of my emailing back and forth with Richard on this webpage.

Give IPCop a go. Very similar to Smoothwall without the "attitude" that some people suffer from.

for this reason, (and others) there has been a fork from smoothwall gpl to create a new project called ip cop. you can download a beta .iso from the website. ipcop.org

for me it was a straightforward switch from smoothwall to ipcop. easiest install of any operating system i've ever seen. ipcop supports ext3 (for no extra cost!) which is great for unplanned reboots.

As your momma always said: 'If you don't have anything good to say about someone, don't say it' or 'if you someone keeps "bothering" you, just stay away from them.' It's as simple as that.

So if you don't like Richard Morrell, head of the SmoothWall project, consider:

• ignoring him
• the fact that SmoothWall is free software and freely supported (regardless of the "requests" for monetary support made)
• disregarding SmoothWall altogether, if it really "bothers" you that much (see below)

Personally, I'm sick of the "one-sided" reporting on Mr. Morrell. I've seen way too many people "complain" about him, but never comment on various personal details that are partially the cause of this -- let alone the daily on-slaught of Windows users who've barely heard of Linux, who don't bother reading the FAQ, let alone demand that SmoothWall automagically support every little, crappy-designed Windows application and their proprietary protocols that don't work well with firewalls anyway. After a week of being on the SmoothWall lists, I'd kill some very rude and ungrateful users well before Morrell. If you feel Morrell is "really bad for the project," then that's his problem, not yours!

Now if you still want something like SmoothWall without the SmoothWall(TM), take notice that others have forked the project into a new one called IPCop. Version 0.1.0 features SmoothWall 0.9.9, all the major post-0.9.9 patches and various enhancements. A final 0.1.1 release is to follow shortly before the team starts to work on version 0.2.0, an Linux 2.4/Netfilter implementation.

For all I care, you can think of IPCop as "SmoothWall without Morrell." Just don't say it outloud since many of us are all sick of hearing it!