Enter: Warrior.

[Joe]

So, most of you know my internet situation, but for those who don't -- recap. I have dialup because DSL/Cable isn't available in my area and my whole family combined could hardly afford satellite / verizon. As such, my internet is slow. Anyhow, my family is ignorant to the fact that dialup is made for one user at a time and convinced me to network all our computers together, so I did. Anyhow, that technology is obsolete enough that dialup routers are off the market and as far as I know all are destroyed or stuck in a closet somewhere never to be seen or heard from again. That said, my internet is running through ICS on Windows XP, running on my brothers computer, and for those who haven't read some of my ranting threads, my brother doesn't know the first thing about computers (cleaning out his quarintine file the other day wiped out no less than thirty thousand viruses, yes, not a typo). As I sit here with ping -t -w 10000 www.google.com open in another window and returning no less than 4000ms I think to myself "this is rediculous". I'm taking action.

"Warrior" is a used OmniTech computer with a (IIRC, I'll verify later) 866MHz Pentium 3 processor, a 10GB hard drive, 128 MB of RAM, a floppy drive and a CD drive. He's attached to an umbilical cord feeding him internet, through the hole in my wall (cross-reference, "A Hole in the Wall" thread), a IBM monitor purchased in 1996 and has been dragged out long past it's useful life (if you say it's blue-screen-ness (not BSOD, blue tint to the picture) is a life at all), and some ghetto Dell QuietKey PS2 keyboard I picked up for $7 when I bought Warrior. This sad piece of wtf is going to turn into nothing short of a dialup router -- I mean, how much shorter can you be?

The name Warrior is a reference to the World of WarCraft character class, generally used as the main-tank in dungeons. I think the name fits well because not only is he acting as a tank (firewall), preventing other players (computers) from coming under a lot of damage, but he is almost an absolute necessity for the group to function properly (the group isn't functioning properly right now, obviously).

I'm planning to install a hardware modem (when I come across any.. I believe his slots are PCI, so PM/reply if you have one for sale for cheap or less) and possibly a bigger hard drive (something I have laying around). From there I'll be running either FreeBSD, NetBSD, or Slackware, running the dialup connection through pppd and finding some way (or should I say making iago find me a way) to run a deamon behaving in likeness to Windows ICS, so that Warrior will direct requests for external connections to the hosts and allow connections to run through him, etc.

Also, he'll serve as an almost-practical reason for me to learn (more of) shell script and C/C++. I'd like to first of all create some small programs -- one to block access to certain machines (IE, when my brother or his machine acts up) and one to monitor / reconnect the dialup connection as I want to blame some of this behavior on my ISP (Netscape, owned by AOL, doesn't have that good of a reputation anyhow, really).

Wish me luck, and do you have any tips / warnings etc on this?

[rabbit]

I have assloads upon assloads upon assloads of obsolete shit.  I think most of the cards are for 10/100, but I'll look.

[Newby]

x86] link=topic=8429.msg106388#msg106388 date=1169092515]
From there I'll be running either FreeBSD, NetBSD, or Slackware, running the dialup connection through pppd and finding some way (or should I say making iago find me a way) to run a deamon behaving in likeness to Windows ICS, so that Warrior will direct requests for external connections to the hosts and allow connections to run through him, etc

NAT?

[Warrior]

Here I thought you were welcoming me in, asshole.

[chuck]

If you've got a spare ethernet card or two, run m0n0wall in vmware. I dont know if that will work, but it would be usefull to have the firewall in a vmware session. If it gets screwed up somehow, just restore a backup of the virtual hard drive. :)

Also, its bad to run anything but the minimal software on a router, less chance of it being compromised.

[Joe]

If you've got a spare ethernet card or two, run m0n0wall in vmware. I dont know if that will work, but it would be usefull to have the firewall in a vmware session. If it gets screwed up somehow, just restore a backup of the virtual hard drive. :)

Also, its bad to run anything but the minimal software on a router, less chance of it being compromised.

I'm not sure why it'd be practical to run a firewall in a VM session instead of on the real box, since the VM session is on a dead end of the networking path.

@rabbit: I'm looking for a modem, not a network card, but if you have another network card that'd be nice as well. :)

[chuck]

I'm pretty sure that vmware sessions can take full control of network hardware, but then again, I just started using vmware a few days ago.

And I was just doing a bit of research on it and found this: http://chrisbuechler.com/m0n0wall/vmware/

[Joe]

I can afford to hold a copy of a 10GB disk image on my desktop, so once I get everything set up I can make a backup of it's physical hard drive and just run m0n0wall on the machine itself.

[chuck]

x86] link=topic=8429.msg106578#msg106578 date=1169253759]
I can afford to hold a copy of a 10GB disk image on my desktop, so once I get everything set up I can make a backup of it's physical hard drive and just run m0n0wall on the machine itself.

With m0n0wall running, you cant do anything else. Its kinda locked down, you don't even get a shell.

Also, a 10gb hard drive would be wasted with a 8mb m0n0wall image. :)

EDIT:
If you want to run everything on the physical machine, make sure you keep everything updated and don't run anything you have not examined carefully.

[Newby]

x86] link=topic=8429.msg106562#msg106562 date=1169246018]
Here I thought you were welcoming me in, asshole.

He's naming his machine after you.

[Joe]

x86] link=topic=8429.msg106578#msg106578 date=1169253759]
I can afford to hold a copy of a 10GB disk image on my desktop, so once I get everything set up I can make a backup of it's physical hard drive and just run m0n0wall on the machine itself.

With m0n0wall running, you cant do anything else. Its kinda locked down, you don't even get a shell.

Also, a 10gb hard drive would be wasted with a 8mb m0n0wall image. :)

EDIT:
If you want to run everything on the physical machine, make sure you keep everything updated and don't run anything you have not examined carefully.

Can I tell m0n0wall to let me run a shell and various programs I've written?

And yeah, this box wasn't meant to be a workstation. It wouldn't be running anything not required or that I haven't written myself.

[chuck]

x86] link=topic=8429.msg106596#msg106596 date=1169264296]
Can I tell m0n0wall to let me run a shell and various programs I've written?

Sadly, no. :(

[Joe]

Oh well. Anyhow, I still need a hardware modem before I can care about any of that.

PS: How do I bridge pppd or whatever with my network card to run an internet connection sharing service? (Wow, that question was pretty loaded..)