On 18/08/2008, at 12:16 PM, Joel Jaeggli wrote:

haven't used routeros in a while but at the time it was inoffensive, it's not derived from a general purpose system so it's not something you bolt additional bits on if you need them.

RouterOS is Linux based. You're correct though, you can't bolt extra stuff on to it, though I'm pretty sure they do their own 'packages', so maybe 3rd parties can bolt stuff on that way? I dunno.

I actually use freebsd as a router on soekris, but I do need a general purpose os on the system as well.

I do this as well, works fantastically. I've got some build scripts that build NET4x01 images. Kernel and root filesystem in a single file, boot off a FAT32 formatted compact flash card with GRUB installed on it. Config in a single file (a filesystem image that gets mounted at boot time). IPv6 support. Packages go in a separate filesystem image per package, and get mounted at boot time, and added in to PATH etc. Package upgrades are a single file. Packages include Quagga, for example. XORP works as well, but it's super slow on 133Mhz Soekris hardware. Takes about 20MB on a CF card. Upgrade is much like any other embedded device - upload a single file, tweak your boot loader, reboot. Everything is nice and read only, so you don't have to worry about people fiddling with stuff they shouldn't and having it break on upgrade. Every bit of config is in the config image. Not really wanting to give it away publicly as I don't want to have to deal with supporting it, but if anyone wants it as a basis for your own thing drop me an email (nward@braintrust.co.nz please). ps. before someone accuses me of trying to sell stuff, I mean free as in beer. Cheers, -- Nathan Ward

On 18/08/2008, at 5:20 PM, Scott Francis wrote:

sounds a lot like Chris Cappuccio's flashdist[0], although that's OpenBSD-specific.

(worth noting that I'm partial to OpenBSD here, for both the security track record and tools like pf(4), carp(4), OpenBGPD, etc.)

Yep, but no 6to4, which I needed. Also OpenBGPd/OpenOSPFd are a bit weird because OpenBGPd can't use the IGP metric in the path selection algorithm, as the kernel doesn't support metrics on routes. Quagga can do this obviously, as it is a single thing (well, all the kernel interface goes through zebrad). I also had some weird problem with how it would resolve recursive next hops, but I was using 6to4 addresses as next-hops, so I think that was part of the problem. Again, worked perfectly on Quagga. Oh yeah, it was trying to be too smart and resolve the recursive next-hop before installing the route in to the kernel, instead of installing the route and letting the kernel resolve it as it was forwarding packets. That broke because of how 6to4 and the routing table works in FreeBSD. Anyway, long story short, quagga did the job. Fine if you're doing vanilla BGP on a border router or something though, but doesn't work for me in a complex network. One cool thing about OpenBGPd is bgpctl irrfilter, which pulls in RPSL and does the business with it, and stuffs it in to your live BGP daemon. -- Nathan Ward

On 19/08/2008, at 11:32 PM, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:

Also, from time to time I have to reflash these to repurpose them (NanoBSD vs. pfSense vs. AskoziaPBX). It's a complete pain to disassemble their enclosures so I can get at the CF cards. I've often thought that if someone had whipped up a memory-resident image of something (anything, linux/bsd/whatever) that I could pxeboot, then I could just dd the new image in over the net. Haven't gotten around to doing that yet. Has anyone else?

My thing is memory resident, the kernel and root fs are all in one file. That's not exactly hard to do. Not quite what you're looking for though, as config (including passwd etc.) isn't. Wouldn't be difficult to change though. Having said that, I strongly recommend getting your stuff to the point where it's a FAT formatted CF card, with a couple of files - 1 kernel, 1 filesystem image. Filesystem images are good. That way, you can mount your CF card somewhere, and 'reflash' from a live system. Just like, for example, a Cisco router. Upgrades are easy, just copy a new root FS+kernel on there. -- Nathan Ward

Am 19.08.2008 um 16:28 schrieb Robert E. Seastrom:

What I want to do is have a minimal functionality netbootable image that is sufficient to set up network interfaces and then do:

ftp> get pfsense.img "| dd of=/dev/ad0"

and completely blow away what's on the flash and replace it with something new[...]

There is pxe in the bios on the ALIX... perhaps you know of something that's already pxebootable that will do this?

FreeBSD (or alike) will happily boot from PXE, either with NFS root or with an in-kernel RAM disk image. Booting a kernel directly (instead of via loader(8)) is not officially supported anymore, but the last time I tried (around 6.2) it was still working. Stefan -- Stefan Bethke <stb@lassitu.de> Fon +49 170 346 0140