[clue-tech] Mini-itx and pico-itx

[Jed S. Baer]

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:57:34 -0700
Sean LeBlanc wrote:

> I'd really like to find a system that was fanless, took very little
> wattage to run, and has at least two ether ports

Have you looked at the various SBC vendors? (Single-board Computer)

It's no biggie to get one with a couple ether ports. And a 1 or 2GB flash
drive should be plenty for a firewall appliance.

This page isn't dated, so I don't know how recent it is:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2614444132.html

I haven't looked at these things for quite a while, but here's one vendor:
http://www.soekris.com/ I got that one from an old Linux magazine (which
is in a box someplace, so I can't retrieve the article for more info).

Interesting article:
http://linuxgazette.net/145/john1.html

I did some searching looking for another site I saw a while ago that
looked like a good supplier, but since the field has expanded a lot, I
finally gave up, but not after seeing a lot of web results for "single
board computer linux".

The mini-itx form factor is certainly attractive, and there are lots of
boards available. The PC/104 and EBX form factors are quite small.

Hmmm. http://linuxsbc.com/ looks promising.

FWIW, I think a firewall the size (roughly) of an Altoids tin would be a
fun project. I recall, a while back, coming across a SBC which used an SD
(or some other flash card) as the system drive, with a switch to set
it read-only, thus making it very difficult for a cracker to do any
permanent damage -- it'd be like booting from CD. You have to write your
log messages out via serial port or ethernet, and it means you can't
change settings on the fly, but it'd be pretty secure if you set it up
right.