Linux World / Network World 2006

[Colin McGregor]

--- Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 01:52:14PM -0400, Colin
> McGregor wrote:
> > While an argument can be made for keeping things
> > consistant, I prefer a varied enviroment for
> several
> > reasons. In the case of Coyote, it will run
> happily
> > off a single floppy, dispensing with the bother
> (and
> > potential for failure) of a hard drive.
> 
> Well if ti does what you want it to do and never
> needs to be touched,
> then it works great.  I tend to expect more from my
> firewall router,
> such as sometimes a web server or such, so I run a
> full PC for the job.

Fair enough, I have a FreeBSD box at the office that
is filling that sort of multi-role, router, firewall,
webserver and a few other things. There is a time and
place for that sort of thing. On the other hand for a
small home network Coyote suits me fine.

> > In my office enviroment I am currently dealing
> with a
> > mix of Windows (ugh!), FreeBSD boxes and an old
> RedHat
> > box. I don't know what I will run into at the next
> > workplace (some place I hope to move to soon, if
> > anyone is looking for a system admin. (or knows of
> > someone looking) e-mail me)), but I do know that
> for
> > learning purposes I DON'T want everything the same
> at
> > home.
> 
> I have run many distributions over the years.  I
> have learned something
> from all of them.  Sometimes only how things ought
> not be done, but
> usually also something useful.  It is much easier to
> admin 50 boxes if
> they all run debian than if I had to deal with a mix
> of machines.  Makes
> fixing security problems if any are found much
> simpler because you only
> have to do one thing to all the machines rather than
> a different thing
> to each box.
> 
> > I was NOT thrilled with the way Red Hat
> transitioned
> > to Fedora Core (not that I can totaly blame Red
> Hat, I
> > gather they were loosing money on the likes of
> RedHat
> > 9, and hey they have to make enough to eat...). I
> used
> > to be a BIG Red Hat fan, but that mishandled
> > transition got me to move my main Linux box to
> Debian.
> > Still, as a training tool I keep my 2nd oldest
> Linux
> > PC running FC4 (the oldest PC runs Coyote :-) )...
> 
> Well for the business model redhat has chosen to go
> with, a freely
> distributed linux is not the way to go, so yeah they
> got rid of it.
> Back when internet links were slow I used to buy
> their cd set from the
> local book store in waterloo about every 6 months
> for $25 or $30 or so,
> and thought it was great.
> 
> > I am sure Debian can/does do a very satisfactory
> job
> > as a router, but in my books Coyote is a
> > cheaper/better solution.
> 
> Sure, it saves having a harddisk and such.  Once you
> have to deal with
> T1/E1 drivers, ADSL drivers, etc, things grow past
> the ability of a
> floppy rather soon.  Add a web interface and you can
> really forget it.

Well, Coyote has some ADSL support and it does have a
web interface (yes, I am serious). Key trick used by
Coyote and several of the other floppy based firewall
packages is that most of the material on the floppy is
stored in a compressed format then uncompressed into a
RAM disk. It means that you can get a LOT more than
1.44 MB of software on to a single floppy.

Colin McGregor

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