floppyfw

Brief Description

floppyfw is a router with the advanced firewall-capabilities in Linux that fits on one single floppy disc.

Features:

• Access lists, IP-masquerading (Network Address Translation), connection tracked packet filtering and (quite) advanced routing. Package for traffic shaping is also available.
• Requires only a 386sx or better with two network interface cards, a 1.44MB floppy drive and 12MByte of RAM ( for less than 12M and no FPU, use the 1.0 series, which will stay maintained. )
• Very simple packaging system. Is used for editors, PPP, VPN, traffic shaping and whatever comes up. (now this is looking even more like LRP (may it rest in peace) but floppyfw is not a fork.)
• Logging through klogd/syslogd, both local and remote.
• Serial support for console over serial port.
• DHCP server and DNS cache for internal networks.

It will get more features, but only if it is possible to cram it into the one, single diskette. More than one floppy is bloatware..

News

2004-05-11: Some status; 2.9 goes along, new (unannounced) devkit is released (If you are curious about the development, check the development download directory from time to time and of course the newsgroups (Which is where I found this little cute GIF.). A 2.0.9 is also long overdue. The reason for me being a bit slow is that all free time is spent finding a new house since we sold the flat.

2004-01-04: floppyfw-2.9.6. See Changelog for details and here for download and install.

2003-12-11: floppyfw-2.0.8. Kernel 2.4.23. See Changelog for details and here for download and install.

2003-09-14: Introducing Blastfw, a very specialized version of the forthcoming floppyfw 3.0.

2003-09-07: floppyfw-2.9.5. Alot has happened, bridgine with both ebtables and iptables, ready ISO images available, SSH server (dropbear) available in the packages directory , images for Soekris is back. See Changelog for details and here for download and install.

Old news

Current version:

See the download page.

License:

Most of the libraries are from Debian. (Basically, just copied the library files from a Debian box. Newer versiones will use uClibc)

/licenses has the license and copyright notices for the software used.

As far as the scripts written by myself (mainly .ini files), feel free to use it. I'd like you to refer to me or these pages if you do.

Useful local links:

• floppyfw.general the newsgroup on a local server.
• The newsgroup available on the web, both reading and posting is possible.
• The FAQ
• Beginners instructions. David A. Nelson wrote this quite long and nice description and document. It's for earlier versions of floppyfw but should be useful anyway.

External floppyfw pages:

Packages:

• Mikael Bak's packages at the time of writing this is only qADSL for Telia in Sweden.
• Cristian Ionescu-Idbohrn floppyfw packages site.
• Graham's Floppyfw Stuff
• Andreas Schweitzer's floppyfw page. He makes quite alot of cool packages for floppyfw.
• Michel Van den Bergh has Transproxy here and there might be more later.
• floppyfw.wojci.dk some really nice packages.
• a few HOWTOs, HD; vpn and so on.
• ez-ipupdate, a package for dynamic DNS updates.
• Maybe some sort of a fork but these Austrian pages have a hacked floppyfw for bridging and proxy arp. It's all in german but a nice place for information if you want to do proxy arp.
• Another sort of a fork, It has quite many interestng packages.
• Ming-Ching Tiews packages a Windows traffic grapher and more.

Different versions (forks?):

• floppyfw on a USB stick. Not a fork.
• floppyfw-jt. Not sure what's really the difference here nor how much it is developed but it's there.
• Soekris package. A floppyfw build for the Soekris Engineering boxes. It's developed as a extra build script for floppyfw by me (Thomas) so it's not really a different version nor a fork but it won't fit on a floppy for sure, it's for Compact Flash.
• Keroppy looks like a kinda fork for snort and stuff on a floppy.
• an uClibc version of floppyfw and other sruff. It may not be developed further now that floppyfw will use uClibc.

Howtos:

• Dutch site for users of the Mxstream package used in Holland. This was submitted to me by the author, E.M. Janssen.
• Got a tip about these French pages for how to use floppyfw on french ADSL lines. it looks very good and also have it's own image with PPTP as many french ISPs seem to use this instead of PPoE.
• A very nice and good article and howto from Sysdmin Magazine.
• Japanese floppyfw page at Kochi Linux User Group's web pages. This is a Japanese mirror of this site with the pages in Japanese.
• A Japanese FAQ, it's a part of the Japanese FAQ/DOC Collection
• Another small HOWTO on floppyfw. ( searching for floppyfw on Google is fun. )

Other:

• The floppyfw counter
• Fwbuilder which now supports floppyfw.
• Coolgreen Computers in Japan sold a box with floppyfw preinstalled from january 2000 to august 2000. (Page is in Japanese). This works with the newer floppyfw versions, users can upgrade from the floppyfw that came with the distribution without too much hassle.
• Floppyfw for MXstream a project on Sourceforge.
• Etherboot will have a script for making a netbootable floppyfw image. Ken Yap wrote it.
• A darn nice review in the SANS Magazine.
• Another nice piece about floppyfw.
• A nice article in Chicago Tribune. It mentions floppyfw.