4 ms·

8 gigs of RAM? SSD disk? 2.4GHz (incorrectly stated as MHz)? factory image is 4 GB in size? All this for a router? I'm no expert by any metric, but that's one h

by arpa 10y ago

8 gigs of RAM? SSD disk? 2.4GHz (incorrectly stated as MHz)? factory image is 4 GB in size? All this for a router? I'm no expert by any metric, but that's one hell of an overkill IMHO. Shit, dude, my home pc is weaker in almost all aspects and I play video games and HD content on that, in addition to network stuff. In my day, a router was a Intel Pentium @90MHz with 4M of RAM. No HDD, only a FDD with Linux. Granted, it probably would have problems today with speeds we're all used to and WLAN, but, man, strip it down, strip it all down to Megs. You don't need X running on that. You don't need all these services. Fonts. Libraries. Default pictures. That's all bloat. Throw out the SDD. A 1G usb thumb drive is enough. I/O speed concerns? You got 8 gigs of ram, dude, you could fit your whole "factory" image in it and have enough space for the second one. Ramdisk the shit out the system. Dude... And, just out of curiosity, how does using iptables make that not a real firewall (even if you're using iptables in an indirect manner)?

icebraining 10y ago
Throw out the SDD. A 1G usb thumb drive is enough. Agreed, though if you do, you have to be careful with writes. I literally had to reflash my drive every time the power went out (I don't have an UPS). My solution was to move every writable directory to a tmpfs, then mount the root fs as readonly. Logs get shipped by a cron job over ssh. It's been rock-solid ever since. If you want to upgrade or reconfigure without reflashing, you can still remount with rw, do your thing and then remount with ro again.
- fnj 10y ago
  Or, rather than going through all that rigmarole, just use an SSD. If you want to save money, get a really cheap one. You can easily get a 60 GB SSD for $30.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Well, it's not like filesystems in SSDs never get corrupt when power goes off. And the USB stick is helpful if you need to mount it on a laptop, for example if you fucked up the firewall rules and you're now unable to SSH in :)
  - arpa 10y ago
    Or, alternatively, just use that USB drive for bootup and continue running purely in ram.
sofaofthedamned 10y ago
I've got pretty much the same hardware but it's got 2xSSDs for iscsi storage. It didn't cost too much and it's flexible - running Ubuntu server I can stick some Docker containers on it, run a/v for the network, Nagios, anything really. It's a good learning exercise too when you consider anything that impacts my son accessing XBox Live is essentially mission-critical in this house. When I replaced my ISP supplied router with it (BT Home Hub 5) I immediately saw better performance and less latency. Unfortunately I forgot they deliver their premium sport channels over IPTV/Multicast so it was a couple of days learning that but i've acquired a new skill for my CV, so hey-ho. BTW if the processor is like mine the 2.4ghz thing is the burst clock, it normally idles are 800mhz, which is important as the box is fanless.
- Aaargh20318 10y ago
  > It didn't cost too much and it's flexible - running Ubuntu server I can stick some Docker containers on it, run a/v for the network, Nagios, anything really. All those things should be on separate machines.
  - F00Fbug 10y ago
    Do one thing - do it well!
    - Aaargh20318 10y ago
      Exactly.
    - arpa 10y ago
      Sufficient is well enough, though.
  - hvidgaard 10y ago
    If it's imperative infrastructure, sure. But this is a home setup, no need to run 5 different machines on reduntant powersupplies. Be prepaired to reconfigure if the machine releases the magic smoke, which virtual machines will make extremely easy, and call it a day.
fnj 10y ago
Most assuredly you indeed don't need X and that other crap, and with linux you needn't install it. I think everybody with half a clue knows that.
- arpa 10y ago
  Base system of 4 gigs makes one doubt.
wvh 10y ago
In my day, it was thought PCs would never need more than 640KB... No, seriously... Usually these kind of devices end up doing a lot more, like file serving, backups, code repository duties, music playing services, SMTP relay or even build machine tasks. If it's accessible by a technical person, it will get some serious use and abuse.
- arpa 10y ago
  ...and none of these tasks that you mentioned are that resource-intensive, with a possible exception of build machine. What I'm saying is that we _waste_ those resources on trivial tasks very casually. Besides, the article talks about building a "router", not a "home server" or a "multipurpose hack box with routing capabilities". It's like taking $10 mil to make a bicycle "to commute".
shiftoutbox 10y ago
Likewise I was expecting the op to be talking about a 486 dx2 with 16mb ram . Not a box with the spec of my desktop .
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jpalomaki 10y ago
Memory was 40€, SSD 42€.

by arpa 10y ago

icebraining 10y ago

Throw out the SDD. A 1G usb thumb drive is enough. Agreed, though if you do, you have to be careful with writes. I literally had to reflash my drive every time the power went out (I don't have an UPS). My solution was to move every writable directory to a tmpfs, then mount the root fs as readonly. Logs get shipped by a cron job over ssh. It's been rock-solid ever since. If you want to upgrade or reconfigure without reflashing, you can still remount with rw, do your thing and then remount with ro again.

fnj 10y ago
Or, rather than going through all that rigmarole, just use an SSD. If you want to save money, get a really cheap one. You can easily get a 60 GB SSD for $30.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Well, it's not like filesystems in SSDs never get corrupt when power goes off. And the USB stick is helpful if you need to mount it on a laptop, for example if you fucked up the firewall rules and you're now unable to SSH in :)
- arpa 10y ago
  Or, alternatively, just use that USB drive for bootup and continue running purely in ram.

sofaofthedamned 10y ago

I've got pretty much the same hardware but it's got 2xSSDs for iscsi storage. It didn't cost too much and it's flexible - running Ubuntu server I can stick some Docker containers on it, run a/v for the network, Nagios, anything really. It's a good learning exercise too when you consider anything that impacts my son accessing XBox Live is essentially mission-critical in this house. When I replaced my ISP supplied router with it (BT Home Hub 5) I immediately saw better performance and less latency. Unfortunately I forgot they deliver their premium sport channels over IPTV/Multicast so it was a couple of days learning that but i've acquired a new skill for my CV, so hey-ho. BTW if the processor is like mine the 2.4ghz thing is the burst clock, it normally idles are 800mhz, which is important as the box is fanless.

Aaargh20318 10y ago
> It didn't cost too much and it's flexible - running Ubuntu server I can stick some Docker containers on it, run a/v for the network, Nagios, anything really. All those things should be on separate machines.
- F00Fbug 10y ago
  Do one thing - do it well!
  - Aaargh20318 10y ago
    Exactly.
  - arpa 10y ago
    Sufficient is well enough, though.
- hvidgaard 10y ago
  If it's imperative infrastructure, sure. But this is a home setup, no need to run 5 different machines on reduntant powersupplies. Be prepaired to reconfigure if the machine releases the magic smoke, which virtual machines will make extremely easy, and call it a day.

fnj 10y ago

Most assuredly you indeed don't need X and that other crap, and with linux you needn't install it. I think everybody with half a clue knows that.

arpa 10y ago
Base system of 4 gigs makes one doubt.

wvh 10y ago

In my day, it was thought PCs would never need more than 640KB... No, seriously... Usually these kind of devices end up doing a lot more, like file serving, backups, code repository duties, music playing services, SMTP relay or even build machine tasks. If it's accessible by a technical person, it will get some serious use and abuse.

arpa 10y ago
...and none of these tasks that you mentioned are that resource-intensive, with a possible exception of build machine. What I'm saying is that we _waste_ those resources on trivial tasks very casually. Besides, the article talks about building a "router", not a "home server" or a "multipurpose hack box with routing capabilities". It's like taking $10 mil to make a bicycle "to commute".

shiftoutbox 10y ago

Likewise I was expecting the op to be talking about a 486 dx2 with 16mb ram . Not a box with the spec of my desktop .

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jpalomaki 10y ago

Memory was 40€, SSD 42€.