Automatic Wake-on-lan Of Sleeping Computers

[phillipsjk256]

[Lightning]

[phillipsjk256]

Because of the complicated packet matching (and manipulation) required by my proposal, I looked into netfilter/iptables available for the 2.4 and later kernels.

The good news is that it can be done in user-space with the newer kernel, the bad news is that 68k (or even 200k) is not enough extra space on the floppy. That ignores that fact the all the old firewall rules would have to be re-written because the emulation can only be used if you are not using the new style as well.

Essentially, you would watch for interesting packets on various interfaces. You can put matching packets in a queue that is handled by a user-space program. When the user-space program is finished with the packet, it is put back in the chain just after where it was sent to the queue (if I read that right). The packet is then dropped if a certain flag is set, or proceeds through the rest of the filters.

It seems obvious that this user-space program should be able to call the "wakelan" program when appropriate. Holding the packets in a queue may be tedious, but doable.

Another reason for looking into the newer kernel is better hardware support (like full-duplex support for my one 3c509 card). As you know, every feature has a certain space penalty attached to it.

I tried test-compiling the 2.4.37.1 kernel with options similar, but slightly more functional than the Freesco kernel. Even with Bzip compression, my first attempt weighed in at over 800k. I haven't been able to get it under 600k. It is around 2MB before compression. Does including hundreds of modules significantly affect the size of the kernel?

I was using the 4.1.2 gcc compiler which is *NOT* supported (too new), but it only generated warnings, not errors. (I figure close enough for seeing how big the kernel image is)

I was going to attach the .config file I was working with, but that may be disabled in this sub-forum.

[Lightning]

[phillipsjk256]

To stretch an analogy/mix metaphors, I think we are on two sides of the same page.

I see the floppy disk as an efficient, mature and cheap medium that does not yet have a good replacement. I suspect you enjoy the scope limiting and challenge the small format affords. I really don't see the need for such an arbitrary limit, but I have yet to contribute patches, so can't really complain.

I am paranoid and lazy. I just want to be able to "set and forget" my router for the most part. This means I was using a locked floppy before (I found) the "read disk only once" mode. To make changes, I have to restart in setup mode. The idea is I can simply reboot the router if some cracker exploits some unknown vulnerability in the 2.0 kernel the would allow then to write to the filesystem; regardless of permissions. A CD-R in a standard CD-ROM drive would meet the security criteria, but breaks the "lazy" criteria due to the difficulty of making changes. I suspect a CD-ROM would use more power as well: spin-up on demand has been a standard floppy feature for as long as I have been alive. That, and I tried running from a Live CD for about a year. Pros: clean system every boot; I can install flash for one site and not worry about annoying ads the next day. Cons: Slow, performance of moving parts got worse with time, relies on fileserver (or other storage device).

I think the most promising floppy replacement candidate I have seen is the "Secure Digital Card." It is about the size of a postage stamp and has a write-protect tab. However, I have had nothing but problems: either due to faulty card readers or digital rights management; I have not determined which. If you trust Linux (even under duress from buffer overflows or CPU back-doors) to honor read-only mounted filesystems, a CF card installed with an IDE to CF adapter is a much better choice (took me years to find one locally).

I think the whole concept of installing a floppy-based router on a hard disk is a little silly, but enough people use the feature to install large packages to make it worthwhile. Currently, I am using a 486 with 24MB of RAM (expandable to 32) and 3 ISA NICs. If needed for routing between two nets at 100Mbps, IPv6, or QOS, I have an unused Pentium 90 (passive heatsink) with 96MB of RAM and approximately 1GB of disk. If I move to the more power-hungry machine, I will probably start with a minimal install of Debian rather than Freesco. Actually, what would be more useful in the near term is to use it to test how well NICs play together. I could possibly even do a Linux from Scratch distro for that.

Personally I think routers and fileservers should be kept separate, but some disagree:

[Lightning]

[phillipsjk256]

I was not aware of how large "Linux from Scratch" was now. When I was trying to follow it, the instructions included building floppy images with a ramdisk: no partitioning required. I got stuck because I was trying to use a pair of 1.2MB floppies instead of one large 1.44MB floppy (and could not get past a certain point in the lesson).

When I said "Linux from Scratch distro" above, I meant floppy based. I guess my shock and sense of loss really brings your point home.

Edit: After some research, I have determined that even the 1.0 version of the Linux From Scratch guide was hard-disk based. The Guide apparently replaces the Linux Linux From Scratch HOWTO. I was not able to find a copy on Archive.org (only goes back to 2002 for tldp.org). I used Google with to exact title to track down the original Howto: . That document does not look too different from the 1.0 version archived on .

It appears I was mistaken about the name of the document I read. The document I read was probably based on (or vice-versa), but instead focusing on a floppy-based mp3 player as an example.