RE: Most stable firewall distro

["Steve Fink" <stevef@netvantix.com>]

Anthony,

	For use of iptables on a mini-firewall distro ( fits on a diskette or
two ). I would have to recommend Bering, available at
http://leaf.sourceforge.net.

Best,

Steve



-----Original Message-----
From: netfilter-admin@lists.samba.org
[mailto:netfilter-admin@lists.samba.org]On Behalf Of Antony Stone
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 4:34 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.