Re: Distro for low-spec machine

At Sun, 03 Jun 2007 16:21:57 GMT Shadow_7 <wwwShadow7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


On Sun, 03 Jun 2007 13:41:40 +0200, L D wrote:

Hello,

I have an old 386 lying around doing nothing, so I thought of putting
some version of Linux on it to use as a firewall box. My preferred
distro, Debian, won't even install - what I need is something quite
old-school. It's a 25MHz 386, 1Mb RAM, 40Mb hard disk.

Any advise?

I run debian on my router, and I have about 1GB of stuff installed on
it. To include compilers and the -devs needed to compile a custom
kernel. The kernel alone if 400MB-ish once compiled.

You'd be hard pressed to make a router on only 40MB's of space. It
probably could be done, but you should be looking at distro's geared for
PDAs, not desktops. Coyote or DSL might install on it. DSL being damn
small linux. With only 40MB, you can't even install gcc to compile
anything. I don't even think that holds the tarball of the current linux
kernel sources.

All you need for a firewall/router is a kernel with iptables and a few
odd-and-ends. The OP probably *won't* be able to do a normal install
from a typical distro. He'll have to 'cross-install': put the 40mb
disk in a more capable machine and create a file system with just the
needed bits and pieces, including a custom-built kernel, probably with
all of bit he *needs* compiled in and many of the extra stuff disabled.
Then he'll need make a boot-floppy (the '386 almost certainly has a
floppy drive). Then reinstall the drive in the '386, boot from the
floppy and then install the boot loader. 40mb should be more than
enough for a firewall/router -- afterall how much disk space / RAM is
there in a Linksys broadband router box? The Linksys broadband router
box run Linux on an ARM chip using a Flash memory device as a 'boot
drive'. They even run a (small) web server as an admin tool. And a
DHCP daemon as well.





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