On Wednesday 03 July 2002 11:23 pm, riffraff wrote: > ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- > From: "Miguel Laborde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > 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.
