I recently used OpenWRT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWrt) using the "White Russian" (named for alcohol) release. It worked okay, but seemed to have some issues. Namely, the WiFi subsystem would not stay disabled. I could disable it via the GPIO, but it would somehow always come back on. The other issue was that there is no un-installation procedure. There are a few listed (jumping hardware pins and rebooting), but they didn't work. The installation of the WR release is done via a hacked bug in the ping routine. This made returning to Linksys firmware impossible for my hardware version (later HW, bug was slightly different). So, be very careful about selecting the right version of hardware before you start. Then again, since you have the source code, you can always change it... ;-)
On a side note, it appears that MS has been taking lessons from the RIAA (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867 /). The last 4-5 paragraphs elude to some very interesting plays to come.... Steve -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kevin Wise Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 12:26 AM To: LDS Open Source Software Subject: [Ldsoss] NAS and Firewall Hardware / Software I was wondering if anyone out there has some suggestions for me. You can reply to the list or to me personally ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) if you think your responses would not be appropriate for the whole list. And let me apologize in advance for the length of this post... I'm trying to solve several problems at once (seems to me like many other people face these same problems). Here are my needs (for use in my home network): -- a fault-tolerant (RAID 5 or mirrored) network drive, say 250 GB - 1 TB, available from Windows -- web content filtering proxy / firewall Now I know we've talked about specific software solutions (such as Samba or Dan's Guardian) on this list before. If you have suggestions on what software I might use, I'm all ears. But I'm mostly interested in what kind of hardware I might get or reuse to make this work. I'm pretty sold on Linux for the OS, but there are still a blinding array of possibilities, even if I ignore the choice of distribution. For example, my co-worker has installed Linux on his Linksys router for his firewall, and Linux on a NAS server for his network attached storage. I'm not quite as adventurous, and I'd really like one piece of hardware that does both. In my mind this would save me maintenance (fewer patches to apply) and maybe even cost. Any comments? I was thinking about getting a new bare-bones Intel or AMD system. One problem I have with that is that every computer I've purchased so far is from Dell or Apple, and neither offers a system without the OS. Any suggestions on where I might turn to get a Linux-ready system (need not be pre-installed) suitable for the above purposes, preferably for less than $300? I'm also looking for input on what the system requirements would be for such a system. Is 512 MB of RAM enough? Should I get hardware RAID or software RAID? In terms of importance to me, reliability is second only to cost. I don't want my files to disappear because my single RAID controller failed and the drive is unreadable by another controller. Another choice is to reuse an old computer (Pentium 4, 2.2 GHz). It does not have a SATA controller, so I'd be stuck buying new ATA drives (it currently has 2 80GB drives, which is really not enough for what I want to do). Would I be crazy to use something that old from a reliability standpoint? Also seems like a waste to buy new ATA drives (are they even available any more?). Another option of course is to buy a SATA controller card. Any idea how much that might cost? I look forward to your replies. I'm open to any ideas you might have on how to solve these problems. Kevin Wise _______________________________________________ Ldsoss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss _______________________________________________ Ldsoss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
