Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: routers and mp3 players that do FLOSS Was: slaveryware

[Greg Bur]

On 10/1/06, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote:
> The thing I'm debating now, is if I choose to go full computer anyway, why
> not go lowest end amd64 I can buy, and run Gentoo on it the same as on my
> main system, in which case I can share at least /some/ packages, the ones
> without desktop specific USE flags that I want on both systems, anyway.
> In theory, I could even run a distcc client on it to help with compiling,
> altho my coming upgrade to dual dual-core Opterons (285s, most likely)
> would mean I'd not get /that/ much benefit out of it, and it'd break the
> rule of not putting stuff like gcc on a firewall purposed system.  I
> figure low end bare-bones, with a smallish <100GB hard drive set hardware
> write-only mode after installation) and using an extra half-gig RAM stick I
> already have, would run ~$300-ish.
>
> So... anybody have any opinions on this?  Should I go straight 32-bit or
> 64-bit Gentoo?  If I went 32-bit, I'd probably go with a pre-built router
> distribution instead of bothering with trying to keep up with Gentoo on
> it, altho I might change my mind on that after I get the dual Opteron 285s
> in my main system.  Anybody else running such things, either Gentoo or
> other Linux or BSD?  Why did you choose what you did?

I just finished building a Gentoo router on a spare PC I had laying
around.  I'm using it for much more than a router though.  It's an old
P-III system so it only has a 100MHz bus and I had to use a Promise
ATA card for ATA66 support but it more than does the job.  Two things
I did add were a local portage rsync mirror so I only have to run
emerge --sync once and then sync my other Gentoo machines against the
"router."  I also installed squid and set up a faster drive with
reiser4 and a huge cache for the purpose of saving bandwidth.  I've
noticed quite a difference when downloading packages for installation.
 For instance, if there is an update for glibc the first computer to
grab it will download at the speed of my DSL link but subsequent
machines download at LAN speeds.  This of course assumes that my AMD64
and x86 machines are downloading the same version of the file from the
same mirror.  I've also thrown a lot of other packages on there like
snort, backuppc and ntop.  Basically I'm using it to play around with
various bits of security software along with the usual routing duties.
 Of course there is the matter of breaking the unwritten rule of not
having a compiler on an Internet-facing machine and I completely
understand that point of view.  However, I am often left wondering
about how people running FreeBSD address this issue due to the
compiler being an integral part of the base system.

All-in-all if you're looking at building a PC-based router I would
just use an old box if you have one laying around and put a pair of
network cards in it.  Unless of course you have all AMD64 systems on
your network.  In that case it would make more sense to buy or build
an AMD64-based system and then do something like I have done with
squid.
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