[thelist] Restricting Internet Access by LAN IP

James Hardy evolt at weeb.biz
Fri Jul 1 08:37:00 CDT 2005


Matthew Lewis wrote:

> >A linux squid server can actually be on an
> > insanely low powered machine. I run my
> > proxy/firewall on a 200MHz Pentium with
> > 64Mb of RAM and a 2Gb HD that I found
> > on the pavement after someone had thrown
> > it out ; and it still has memory and processor
> > to spare serving up to 4 machines.
>
> In that case, I have an old box that I could just give them that meets 
> these requirements. Just wondering, what Linux distro do you use on 
> such a low-spec machine?  I thought they all required a bigger hard 
> drive.
>
> Also, is Squid pretty easy to configure on Linux? I tried it on 
> Windows and got nowhere with it.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Matthew

well I use Smoothwall - a custom firewall distro, though I have had a 
look and, although it does use squid, it is not really very configurable 
via it's web interface. Any major distro, eg SuSE, Redhat, Debian will 
allow you to do a minimal install of Linux without X (the graphics 
system used by Linux and various other UNIX type OSes) though of course 
the desktop distros will not. As for ease of configuration, I'm afraid I 
have never configured squid manually. There is a program called webmin, 
that you can install and then use to configure various things about your 
server (including Squid) through a web interface. With only the core of 
linux, squid and webmin running it's resource requirements should be 
pretty low.

There may be a custom distro purely for proxying that is easy to set up, 
might be worth having a search.

James


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