Got an extra box around..looking for suggestions.

[munky]

I'm a Linux / BSD only guy. I have a P2 400mhz laying around. I'm not sure what I want to do with it though. I'm installing Gentoo Linux on it now, and I figure I would decide after. I already have a mailserver which I would redo on this box but that's a lot of work. My webserver runs alright as of now, and I feel that the system is too nice to waste as a firewall. So I'm not exactly sure what to do with it. It also doesn't have a huge drive...I think a 6 gig and that comes down to 5 gigs because of swap and backup partitions. I don't need a ftp box or local dns. The only thing that comes to mind now is a mysql server and I'll double it as a firewall.

Suggestions are appreciated.

[mickwish]

It does seem a tad over-specced for a firewall, but that would still be my first thought. How about a firewall / router distro on it like IPCop? You can then have a nice DMZ in which to run your mail / web servers, so no nasties can get into your LAN via them. :cool:

Dunno if you have any young folk using your LAN to connect to the net, but you could also run Dan's Guardian (net filtering) on IPCop. That uses a bit more muscle, so the box would be used a bit more.

IPCop ain't designed to run databases on though. :eek: It's purely a security tool. Any hacking to run db's on it could compromise that basic function, so it would be no more secure than any other distro with ipchains or iptables rules set up. :eek:

Anyhow, whatever you choose, have fun with it! :D

[munky]

Thanks, no I'm the youngest in my family so I'm not worried about anything locally. Honestly I'm not too worried about my security WAN-wse. If I were going to make it a firewall I'd do it 1337, I'd use iptables and then port redirection. Thanks for the options though, I'm not a great fan of those distro made for a specific purpose because of the obvious reason that you don't get as much configurability because you don't do it yourself. I did use clark connect for a period of time as a router and for now am using it as a mail sever because the client needed it up asap. It servers its purpose but thats it.

-munky