Here's a message I originally posted on Tuesday. I'm reposting it in the hope that somebody out there cares about my firewall saga. ----- Bob Miller wrote: > This is a bit long, so here are the main points. > > * Coyote Linux makes setting up a firewall way too easy. > * The Linuxcare Bootable Business Card rocks. > * My firewall uses 32 watts. > * Yet another failed tech startup. > * Diverse tales of hardware acquisition and assembly. Here's an update. I spent the weekend trying to make Coyote do things it doesn't do. Specifically, I wanted to: Put an sshd on it so I don't have to use telnet. Give home machines static IP addresses via DHCPD Put a DNS cache on it Put a DNS server on it to give names to the machines on the LAN Hang a whiteboard in my office. (Oops, sorry, not Linux content. (-: ) Anyway, I messed around for quite a while, and learned that LRP packages do not plug in to Coyote. The startup scripts for Coyote are completely different. I got sshd working, and started reading about djbdns (Bind is 400K, djbdns is 28K, and we're limited to a single floppy, so djbdns is the obvious choice). I also learned about superformat, which will make a floppy hold 1680K instead of 1440K. Then I noticed that the Unix version of Coyote is 1.27, while the Windows version is 1.20. I built a 1.27 disk, and it came with two new features: ability to format disk to 1680K size sshd Oops, I'd wasted all that time. (-: So I built a brand new 1.27 disk and threw away the disk I'd painstakingly customized, then edited /etc/dhcpd.conf to give several machines static private IP addresses, then I put up djbdns on one of the machines with static IP. Is anybody here using djbdns? Wow, it's as idiosyncratic as its creator! So, once again, the lesson I failed to learn is, don't tinker. (-: On Friday, my cubemate had warned me that LRP systems are nothing but time sinks. I'd said, "Yeah, but I only spent five minutes configuring the software." Well, he was right. I've now spent a whole weekend on it. Other "upgrading pays off" news: I bought a copy of MacOS 9.1 on Friday, the last day before OS X was available. That allowed me to run the AirPort Setup Utility on my Mac, and the latest AirPort Setup Utility includes a firmware upgrade for the AirPort that fixed most of its buggy behavior. So my AirPort is happier now. And the whiteboard is up. Covered with router setup notes. -- Bob Miller K<bob> kbobsoft, LLC, software consulting http://kbobsoft.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]