RE: Most stable firewall distro

["Ed Street" <blacknet@simplyaquatics.com>]

Hello,

The correct choice to go with would be debian.  You can do a minimal
install from a business card cd and have everything you need.  For those
of you that's interested contact me off list for the details and the
script/iso file (approx 41 megs)

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: netfilter-admin@lists.samba.org
[mailto:netfilter-admin@lists.samba.org] On Behalf Of Antony Stone
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 6:34 PM
To: netfilter@lists.samba.org
Subject: Re: Most stable firewall distro

On Wednesday 03 July 2002 11:23 pm, riffraff wrote:

> ---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
> From: "Miguel Laborde" <miguel.laborde@canada.com>
> Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 18:22:38 -0400
>
> >Hello all,
> >	I have a question here for those of you who use iptables heavily
in a
> >production environment. Right now I am about to replace a older
Mandrake
> >(release 7.2) with an updated linux firewall however before I go
ahead and
> >do that, I'm interested in knowing what you people consider the most
> > stable distribution for a linux firewall.
> >	I realize that the underlying OS and iptables software is common
across
> > all distributions however some distributions apply patches which
others
> > don't, and as result might be better suitable as a firewall.
> >
> >
> >	Thanks for your time,
> >				Miguel
>
> I just used redhat 7.0 (I think, it's been a while), and removed
everything
> that was completely unnecessary, then compiled a whole new kernel (I
had
> to; I'm using the bridge-netfilter patch).  So, it isn't much of a
redhat
> anymore, just uses redhat paths and rpm.

I agree with this approach.   A firewall shouldn't really be any
recognisable 
distro, because distros basically differ in all the add-ons they include

around the kernel, nearly all of which you should not have on a
firewall.

And, as suggested above, you really ought to compile your own kernel for
a 
firewall, too, so it contains what you want and doesn't contain what you

don't want, therefore you start from ftp://ftp.kernel.org and 'make
config' 
(or whichever variation of that you prefer).

The 'distro' I would really like to see people use for firewalls is
Linux 
From Scratch, because this is expressly designed to contain only the
tools 
you choose for a specific job, and not a whole bunch that someone else 
thought might come in handy one day.....

Not the easiest thing to play with though, admittedly.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org

 

Antony.