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Install Endian Firewall (EFW) on a headless linux box
Hardware
- Gigabyte GA-M68SM-S2L motherboard
- AMD Sempron LE-1150 CPU (2.0 GHz)
- 1 GB RAM
- SATA harddisk (any size)
- MSI Midas case (including power supply)
- Zalman CNPS 7500 CPU cooler
- USB-CD-ROM drive for installation only, or USB stick
The MSI case is very compact, well built and includes the power supply and one 60 mm case fan. I chose the Zalman cooler to be able to run the fan at minimum speed and thus creating a very quiet box. To reduce the speed of the integrated case fan I connected the fan through a resistor which comes with any separate Zalman case fan.
Note that with the Zalman fan, it is impossible to fit a CD-ROM drive into the case.
The whole box cost you less than USD 300, and you could further save with a cheaper CPU fan, less RAM and a slower CPU.
Special considerations before installing
- EFW is based on IPCop, I actually started off with IPCop but later switched to EFW (see below)
- my hardware components are pretty new and therefore only supported in the latest kernel
- IPCop 1.4.18 (latest stable release) and EFW 2.1.2 (latest stable release) would not recognize the nVidia 680i or D-Link Gigabit ethernet cards
- IPCop 1.4.18 does not install from a USB-CD-ROM drive, you would need to attach PATA CD-ROM drive
- EFW 2.1.2 and 2.2 installs from a USB-CD-ROM drive
Installation
- Download the ISO from http://www.endian.com/en/community/download/iso/ and burn on CD
- Boot your box from CD and follow the installation
- After finishing installation from CD check wether you can connect from another client throught the web interface. Connect at https://<your ip>:10443
- If you cannot connect, try connecting the LAN cable (green) to another network card
- If you still cannot connect, login in on the box directly as root (initial root password = endian) and check your ip configuration
- To enable your headless box to shutdown after pressing the power button, you need to install the acpid daemon. Download at http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~igormt/endian/extras.html the i386 rpm package and install with
rpm -i acpid-1.0.6-endian1.i386.rpm. The acpid daemon works well also with EFW 2.2 beta 3