Re: [SLUG] Older i386 looking for buff firewall. Must know how to handle bad packets...

[Pete Black <pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Around about 1047h 28/11/2000, Aaron Binns delivered the following wisdom:
> Seriously, if all I am running is IPchains, how much swapping will be going on?
> it is headless - no GUI - and I am going to remove the soundcard and any other
> devices which are not required.. though the 20MB drive will stick about as I
> have nowhere else to put it.

If you can, take the hard disk out and create a boot floppy that will function
as the file system for the firewall box. This will make you have to consider
what you want on the file system, since you only have a very limited capacity.

This will reduce the amount of data that linux would want to cache. Although
this is a minor concern, it will ease you swapping pain if you only have 4MB
RAM.

> For all the talk of a basic 386 running Linux .. is it really true? The mobo
> cannot handle any more ram chips and I don't want to spend a heap of dosh on new
> chips for such old equipment. So can Linux really handle a 386 sx with 4mb ram
> (stable with decent uptime).. or have I found my first myth & untruth about
> Linux? heck Id been looking forward to seeing Linux run on the old box.

I've had Linux running on a 386 SX 16MHz with 4 MB o' RAM. I took it to my
girlfriends place for when I got console withdrawals ;-)

It's possible, but don't expect an interactive shell to be very fast if it is
compiled in with all the goodies. A heavily cut down version of the Bourne
Shell would do nicely.

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