quick question - smoothwall

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piako

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 5, 2006
Messages
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so is smoothwall a standalone operating system or does it run as a application on windows? are there specific hardware requirements? floppy needed? :)
 
It's a highly customized distrobution of the Linux OS designed to be a router/firewall. It is it's OWN operating system.

Do your OWN research, it'll serve you well... Documentation is here: http://smoothwall.org/docs/

Smoothwall is slick and VERY tweakable. Their forum community rocks!
 
Thanks when I was reading the quickstart pdf on their website it said to put the smoothwall cd into the "windows cd rom drive tray" so I thought it required some type of windows version. Here's what it says I think it requires windows to make the boot floppy then?
The normal installation procedure is as follows:
1. Insert the SmoothWall Express CD into the CD-ROM drive of a Windows® PC (Internet Explorer
version 5.5 or later is recommended). The Autorun procedure allows you to (a) read the license, (b)
view/print the Installation and Administrator’s Guide in Adobe Acrobat format, (c) create boot floppy
disks, (d) browse the CD or (e) download Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Click to expand...
 
You can actually boot from the CD if the box you're using supports this, or make floppies with the windows app.

EDIT: Page 10 of the Install Document (Section 2.1)... Now READ ;)
 
You may come into some trouble when adding "add-on" features to smooth wall. You'll need *.tar.gz files.

These are just zip files in the linux file format.
 
I talked with the mods at smoothwall.org and they don't even have a official hardware compatibility list. So I'm not trying this. Oh well. Btw the floppy was for systems which required that. I forget.
 
There have been some successful projects to boot Smoothwall on a Virtual Machine within Windows.
Your PC connects to a virtual network adapter, through Smoothwall onto your hardware NIC.

I had a quick go about 2 years ago and managed to get smoothwall talking to the web.
The virtual adapter into Smoothwall could be pinged but couldnt route through it.

Overall CPU use on an Athlon 64 @ 2.5GHz was between 2 and 5% with no traffic.
It should be no trouble at all to run this on a dual processor machine.

I'll have a go again some time.
 
piako said:
so is smoothwall a standalone operating system or does it run as a application on windows? are there specific hardware requirements? floppy needed? :)
Click to expand...

To answer your simple questions:

1) It runs standalone
2) Based on Linux, doesnt need Windows at all
3) Hardware requirements are very low, i have a P3 800Mhz, 256 MB Ram, 2 Gig HD, running Smoothwall Express 2 very well for a small LAN of 10 users!!
4) It doesnt even need that much RAM, it would work perfectly with 96 MB.
5) You only need a bigger HD if you use the Proxy service and want to have a big cache for lots of users.
6) You dont need a floppy drive, boot directly from the CD and install.
7) The Setup completely erases your drive before actual installation so make sure to use a new hard drive!
 
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