IPCop and FreeNAS

A

Axeldoomeyer

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 3, 2006
Messages
290
I have been running IPCop for about a month now and I must say that I am impressed with all of the features that are available.

I was wondering if anyone has tried to run FreeNAS (or alike) and IPCop on the same hardware, one installation of each Distro on one CF card and/or HDD. The idea being that I could have a SAN and a firewall in one small form factor machine.

I don't know if this is even possible, but I have googled it with no luck, any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
 
Wait you want to run dual operating systems at once?

Pretty much you could just load linux on a server and load the extra programs and make it do everything ipcop and freenas does. You could also load the samba stuff onto a ipcop install. There are a lot of ways to do this with a hard drive based install. Running the os off compact flash would just add some work.
 
Ya... Pretty much... HEHE

I really don't know that much about *nix. But I do know that FreeNAS and IPCop are *nix based. I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to install a distro of *nix and then IPCop and FreeNAS. I am a Windows guy, but I have been learning a little about *nix since I have been playing with firewalls more and more. I just think it would be cool to have one small RackMountable server that has both IPCop and FreeNAS installed. I don't think that either program take up that much processor. Just a thought though... :)
 
one thing you could do is run freeNAS on the system and then load up a VM player on it, and run IPcop on the VM.

The trick there would be to make sure freeNAS isn't using the internet connected network card, so IPcop can bridge to it and be the only one actually talking on it. Then each machine can share the card connected to the internal network.

I'd only run an integrated solution if security was a non issue. Yes, you could lock down the linux machine, but the rate at which vulnerabilities are discovered you'd really have to sit on top of that machine to make sure it was patched since it would present a greater ammount of options for exploits than IPcop by itself. Of course an IPtables firewall in current linux distros presents a very nice level of security, I'm not aware of many desktop GUI linux distros that make the routing functionality management as easy as IPcop does.

You can definitely mod up IPcop to prvide the freeNAS kind of functionality, but you'd have to dig up a way to add the freeNAS web admin gui, particularly if the non-gui web based admin feature is what you're looking to get out of the whole deal. 2 seperate systems is probably the simplest solution.
 
I wouldnt run anything but a firewall on my firewall box, simply because the more things you have running on it, the more potential vulnerabilities the box has.
 
If you want a file server and a firewall/router in one your easiest solution would be to use Clarkconnect. This has samba built in and everything is done via the webadmin interface. If you know nothing about Linux, getting FreeNAS and IPcop setup may proove to be daunting. But if you want to try it just for fun then go for it.

In my opinion hacking together FreeNAS and IPcop isn't the best idea if you want a secure system.
 
Ya that is what I am thinking now... The best option may be to have several ITX mobos in a small Rackmount case and each board preforms a specific function. But hey it was a thought.

I think in the interest of security the whole idea needs to be scrapped.

Thanks for the input all. This gives me more to chew on. :)
 
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