What kind of System Specs do I need for a Endian Firewall box?

R

Raystream

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 27, 2005
Messages
135
After seeing YeOldeStonecat praise Endian Firewall so much I looked into it. It impressed my dad and I so much that we want to put together a box! (Dag on Netgear FVS338 Firewall is still buggy as hell.. grr) But after looking at the Endian site I can't find any good information for system specs plus it says something about the os requireing 7GB or something??

We have around 11 computers in the house currently counting servers and a 6mb/384 cable connection. I think we have an old box with a 1200Mhz Celeron, 256MB RAM and a 20GB HDD... couple of 10/100 Nics and an Intel 8940XF Fiber card lying around but is it fast enough? We would really like to get one of those IDE to CF card converters so its almost silent but how big of a card do we need... that is if it will fit on one?

Thanks in advance!

PS: Were looking for a 1U or 2U rackmount case to conserve space so if anyone in South Jersey has one available please PM me!
 
I think you'll be fine speedwise...I'd double the RAM though. If you want to poke around mine and peek through the web admin....we can gotomeeting and you can take a looksie if you like.

I can't compare the performance of my Endian....on the prior small form factor box that I was running IPCop and pfsense on. That old PC was a PIII 833 or something like that, with 256 megs. Plain old IPCop seemed to run fast on that. When I added Copfilter....pages were coming up slower...I know it hit the RAM much harder. When I transferred that hard drive to my current small form factor box, a P4 2.4 with 512, that same IPCop install w/Copfilter ran much smoother. Endian...being built pretty much on IPCop w/Copfilter...I would expect the same.

As for hard drive install space...7 gigs sounds high...here's my hard drive usage..columns are whacky from cut 'n paste..but you can make them out.
Size Used Free
none /dev 249M 1M 249M
1%
/dev/root / 12194M 261M 11315M
3%
none /dev 249M 1M 249M
1%
/dev/hda1 /boot 10M 4M 6M
39%
/dev/hda4 /var 24387M 463M 22686M
2%

RAM usage.....
RAM 508560 400152 108408
78%
-/+ buffers/cache 179692 328868
35%
Swap 1016056 176 1015880
0%
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I think you'll be fine speedwise...I'd double the RAM though. If you want to poke around mine and peek through the web admin....we can gotomeeting and you can take a looksie if you like.

I can't compare the performance of my Endian....on the prior small form factor box that I was running IPCop and pfsense on. That old PC was a PIII 833 or something like that, with 256 megs. Plain old IPCop seemed to run fast on that. When I added Copfilter....pages were coming up slower...I know it hit the RAM much harder. When I transferred that hard drive to my current small form factor box, a P4 2.4 with 512, that same IPCop install w/Copfilter ran much smoother. Endian...being built pretty much on IPCop w/Copfilter...I would expect the same.

As for hard drive install space...7 gigs sounds high...here's my hard drive usage..columns are whacky from cut 'n paste..but you can make them out.
Size Used Free
none /dev 249M 1M 249M
1%
/dev/root / 12194M 261M 11315M
3%
none /dev 249M 1M 249M
1%
/dev/hda1 /boot 10M 4M 6M
39%
/dev/hda4 /var 24387M 463M 22686M
2%

RAM usage.....
RAM 508560 400152 108408
78%
-/+ buffers/cache 179692 328868
35%
Swap 1016056 176 1015880
0%
Click to expand...
Ok... so to verify from your HHD usage a 512MB Compact Flash card is not going to cut it but a 1Gb should handle it all correct? Or do you have a gross amount of logs (etc) taking up that space in which technically I can stick this on a 512MB card?
 
Raystream said:
Ok... so to verify from your HHD usage a 512MB Compact Flash card is not going to cut it but a 1Gb should handle it all correct? Or do you have a gross amount of logs (etc) taking up that space in which technically I can stick this on a 512MB card?
Click to expand...
You do not want to use compact flash with Endian. It uses the disk far to often and you will end up killing your drive.
 
MorfiusX said:
You do not want to use compact flash with Endian. It uses the disk far to often and you will end up killing your drive.
Click to expand...
Well in that case... what would be the best for whats needed...

1.) 12GB 5400RPM 2MB cache drive

2.) 30GB 7200RPM 8MB cache drive

3.) 18GB SCSI U160 10,000RPM 8Mb cache drive

By the way thanks... I really appreciate the help!

[Edit] One other thing, what do I need to have connected to this when I get it going? Can I do away with the monitor and keyboard and just have power and cat5e cable plugged in?
 
Drive doesn't matter much..I guess out of principle I'd use a 7200 because it's most likely newer, has a longer runtime, most likely more quiet, etc. I just stuck an old 20 or 40 gig Seagate 'Cude in there...the liquid bearing one, have a few kicking around, I like them, nice, reliable, quiet, cool.

My disk access is pretty much 0% average. Hardly touches it, my swap usage average is also very low.. 0.02% average. I'd wager disk access on these are probably similar to Windows..not enough system RAM, lots of hard drive use. Adequate system RAM, little hard drive use.

My CPU usage has never gone above 5%, I average around 2%.
 
Depending on your PCs BIOS that you use for it, most these days allow headless running...once mine was built I disconnected from the KVM, sits over in a corner..just power, and the 2x patch cables going to it.

To get it going...can just run it with the LAN interface. The install isn't as smooth as IPCop..you'll need to figure out which NIC is your green zone...configure a workstation with a fixed IP in the same range as you built it..log in, setup the WAN NIC (red zone), and enable DHCP server (disabled by default)
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Depending on your PCs BIOS that you use for it, most these days allow headless running...once mine was built I disconnected from the KVM, sits over in a corner..just power, and the 2x patch cables going to it.

To get it going...can just run it with the LAN interface. The install isn't as smooth as IPCop..you'll need to figure out which NIC is your green zone...configure a workstation with a fixed IP in the same range as you built it..log in, setup the WAN NIC (red zone), and enable DHCP server (disabled by default)
Click to expand...
Alright cool, any suggestions for setting up Endian in a domain with a PDC running DNS?
 
Raystream said:
Alright cool, any suggestions for setting up Endian in a domain with a PDC running DNS?
Click to expand...

Simplifies the setup even more..you have 1x less step..don't have to reset your machine to a fixed IP to log into the Endian box and enable DHCP. During the install...set the green interface IP to be whatever your current gateway is.
 
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