Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

SmoothWall 2.0 Linux-Based Firewall Released

Posted by simoniker on from the so-smooth-it's-criminal dept.

thegraham writes "Despite some earlier server problems, SmoothWall 2.0 has been released this evening - there are also release notes available. SmoothWall is 'a firewall operating system distribution based on Linux, enabling a low-end, possibly otherwise redundant, Intel and compatible PC to become a hardened Internet firewall', and changes from version 1 include: 2.4 kernel, new web interface, improved networking and many bugs corrected through the Beta program."

9 of 351 comments (clear)

  1. I use this one at home by rabbit994 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've been using the 2.0 Beta at home without any problems. It's makes a great firewall for old boxes and has support for Proxies, DynDNS and everything else you expect in a good firewall. All configured easily from a web based interface. Works great for protecting those Windows boxes too. Think Windows cowering behind a big Tux. Kudos smoothwall team.

  2. Can't wait to try it out. by Tha_Big_Guy23 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've been using version 1.0 of their firewall for just over a year now, and I have to admit that it is a rather good firewall. I was able to load it on a p100 box with only a 540MB hard drive. Granted with a hard drive that small, my firewall doesn't do alot as far as web cache is concerned, but otherwise it operates great. The patches are easy enough to install, all you have to do is download the gzip from the patches page built into the firewall web client. Upload the gzip's and they're installed.

    Managing the firewall is exceptionally easy as well. You can setup port forwarding to internal computers in under 30 seconds. All-in all the firewall takes the major annoyances out of running a firewall. I highly recommend it for anyone who's got an old system lying around, and doesn't have the time to bother with setting up a firewall.

    --
    If you're looking here for something insightful or thought provoking, you're probably looking in the wrong place.
  3. I tried smoothwall then switched to ipCop by lww · · Score: 5, Informative

    ipCop is a fork of the smoothwall source that has more of an open source community behind it. Personally, I found the whole "Buy Smoothwall Now!" experience just a little too annoying to use.

    But, let me be the first to say that I love the concept behind this type of distro. A boot-cd and 20 minutes turns any old wintel machine into a damn god firewall appliance (one that has a shell!).

  4. Re:OS? by theonlyholle · · Score: 5, Informative

    because it's easy to set up on a bit of spare hardware, however old it may be? Because it provides all that the average firewall user needs? Because it is easy to maintain once it's running? Because most hardware firewalls are as unflexible as they are expensive? I can think of a lot of reasons. In my company, a number of offices use Smoothwall and will certainly upgrade to Smoothwall Express soon, simply because it's an affordable way to secure our network boundaries and because the ongoing maintenance work is minimal.

  5. Google to the rescue by Hal+The+Computer · · Score: 5, Informative
    Cached:
    --

    int main(void){int x=01232;while(malloc(x));return x;}
  6. Worth a try. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's a really nice product now.

    Once upon a time I wouldn't go near it - one of the original founders was a real rude little shite and a huge liability to the project. And when I say rude, I mean rude - he used to tell potential or even existing customers to fuck off on a fairly regular basis, and that was when he was being polite!

    Only his small circle of friends stayed on the IRC support channel - anyone else got kick-banned without even saying a word (either party).

    Basically he used the wrong license, as in the end he seemed to detest the GPL and the "freeloaders" that were "stealing" copies of "his" work (perhaps he was the inspiration for SCO, huh?)

    Thankfully he fucked off. It a nice project now, supported by nice people! Give it a try.

  7. Re:I use the forked IPCop by wpanderson · · Score: 5, Informative
    I'll try and answer this as best I can ...
    IPCop does have a faster upload speed for USB ADSL on BTOpenworld (30Kb/s for IPCop, 3Kb/s for Smoothwall GPL). The IPCop team have updated the driver, whilst the Smoothwall GPL version does not have the driver update. Of course you can pay for the Smoothwall Home version if you want the faster upload.
    This refers to a long-old version of SmoothWall GPL and the Speedtouch driver - both SmoothWall GPL 1.0 and SmoothWall Express 2.0 have no problems with USB ASDL upstream.
    IPCop uses ext3 journaling filesystem, whilst Smoothwall GPL uses ext2.
    SmoothWall Express 2.0 uses ext3.
    The next version of IPCop, 0.2, will be more of a radical departure from Smoothwall. Currently IPCop 0.1.1 is much the same as smoothwall GPL
    This shows how old the parent post is, information wise. IPcop 1.4 alpha/beta still bears a lot of resemblance to SmoothWall GPL 1.0 / Express 2.0.
    Oh and IPCop is GPL and being actively developed, were as Smoothwall GPL is backing a back seat to the Home and Corporate versions, i.e. new features are being added to the Home/Corporate version and *maybe* back ported to Smoothwall GPL.
    Untrue - our commitment to the GPL is a firm as always, and new features are constantly being backported from the commercial products into the open source project.
    neuro said that...' there are cool things in the works for GPL, and some of the corporate proprietory stuff may be backlicensed to GPL in the future.'
    Yes, this has happened.
    Richard is pushing for the money right now, not that I blame him. Though using Smoothwall GPL means that one was much of a beta tester for the Home and Server base versions.
    Possibly true. We do occasionally deploy features into the open source project to see how they pan out - if they work well, we roll them into the commercial products with proper source attribution where required.
    --
    neuro at well dot com (when I post, it's my opinions, no-one elses)
  8. Re:I used smoothwall for a while by wpanderson · · Score: 5, Informative
    And I highly recommended it for many moons.
    Thanks! :)
    Unfortunately, the developers really annoyed me. One time, they released a patch that added a splash screen to the web interface that popped up EVERY time you changed page. And set chattr+i on the file on the server, then deleted the {ls,ch}attr commands on the server.
    That patch was pulled very quickly after the backlash, and nothing of the sort would ever be contemplated again. Ever.
    Which was just offensive. I went into their [community] IRC channel and mentioned how to fix it, and was kickbanned.
    This sort of offensive behaviour does not happen anymore.
    They make a big thing about being GPL and community-friendly, but in practice I just find them offensive.
    I'm sorry to hear you were mistreated.
    --
    neuro at well dot com (when I post, it's my opinions, no-one elses)
  9. Smoothwall kicks ass. by pair-a-noyd · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've been using Smoothwall 2.0 beta X for over a year now and I've had very few problems.

    The most recent I'm using is Pendolino and it's great.

    I have installed several customer sites with Beta5 (after extensive testing at my site) and they are all very pleased with it.

    I highly recomend it. You can take an old PC and load it up and really be covered.
    It's very easy to use, very reliable, very flexible.

    What's even better is that you can use the built in,
    transparent proxy (squid) to block ads. (sorry /., your ads too)..

    I made a dull gray "this ad zapped" gif and put it in /home/httpd/zaps and edited the wrapzap file to tell adzapper to look on smoothwall ofr it's images rather than using the resources of sourceforge. I found that the black and yellow gif was more annoying than the ads it was blocking.

    Man, it's great. EVERY machine that I plug into my lan automatically gets it's ads zapped. Friends and customers are freaked out and impressed with that. Then after seeing how cool it is they want a smoothwall too. Problem is I end up setting them all up for free.. ;-/

    Smoothwall is very cool, get it....