Re: Problem with list?!

On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 15:16:25 +0100
William Anderson <[email protected]> wrote:
> Paul Tansom wrote:
> > On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 06:59:18 -0400
> > taharka <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>geblaat wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Just wondering.....
> >>
> >>Yes, no activity for a few days. Smoothwall running smoothly or a 
> >>problem with the list?
> > 
> > Well I'd been thinking there was little activity for months now, but then I noticed (well, remembered I guess, as I think I do remember them being announced - probably!) that there are web forums. Whereas I will dip into a mailing list and scan the subjects and respond, I will rarely (if ever) drop into a web forum and see what is going on unless I have a specific problem. They look pretty active though, so it's nice to see that SmoothWall is not dead. My ageing 1.0 install will be meeting its maker soon though and replaced by a hand rolled Debian box. SmoothWall was not designed for the flexibility I require now (and I'm not saying it should be).
> 
> dead?  what made you think it would be? :)  What flexibility are you after 
> mr whaletales, as there are plenty mods now that add on some stunning levels 
> of functionality to express ... (hint: check the mods forum on 
> community.smoothwall.org :)

Hi Neuro, well the lists were decidedly quite compared to what they were when I was active with the project and I'd forgotten about the forums - I rarely if ever have need to visit the website. The team has been being 'reorganised' for a long time now, and I think Summer 2004 (such that it ever is in the UK) can be classed as over now ;-)

Plan A was to have a setup with an external (red) interface, twin internal (green) interfaces (with one for ethernet and one for token ring), and twin dmz style (amber) interfaces (with one for a mail relay / mailman / extranet server, and the second hooking into my wireless network). I've now had to move onto plan B though, as my new ADSL box has a reasonably solid firewall built in (I believe, it's not been powered up yet, although my current one hasn't let anything through to my SmoothWall box anyway) as well as being a WAP and having a 4 port switch - so that pretty much covers the DMZ and wireless features if I configure the firewall box appropriately to ensure nothing other than the wireless clients get through (and secure them adequately for work behind the ADSL boxes firewall). This means that I'll be looking to run a mail relay with spamtrap and clamav, DHCP and local/relayed DN
 S as well as proxy (which I don't currently run) on a 'firewall' box which is less secure 
 in itself, but when combined with the ADSL one should be perfectly solid.

I suspect that trying to hack SmoothWall will be more work than matching in with the rest of my network and using Debian (which I'm more familiar with now, and I find digging round the SmoothWall configuration hard work - last time I had to do it was to cover the fact that to access secure sites bypasses the upstream proxy rules - which is a problem if traffic that doesn't use the upstream proxy is blocked by the ISP!). I'll take a look at the mods forum though as I'd not realised the were supported - well, in terms of being anything other than an underground movement anyway ;-) (Interestingly there's a better list of mods on that forum than there is features for the main app. on the site. I can't see what features 2.0 has on the site!). I've also got a few ideas to play with mirroring the drive used for the system too, which is part to improve resiliance (although my box has done little
  more than reboot on the odd power blip) and part just for the fun of it! My current thing
  is still sitting on an old P75 with 80M HD, so it is due for an upgrade given the spare kit I have lying around - certainly won't support any more NICs!

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/
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