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SmoothBackup Mod for Smoothwall

July 12th, 2008 | Category: Linux, Open Source

As I’ve previously mentioned, I run a Smoothwall Express 3.0 firewall on my home network. I built this firewall using a crappy old computer I had lying around. Well, the harddrive ate it big time this week and needed to be replaced. Luckily, I had another old harddrive laying around which will get me by for a few more months (they just don’t make harddrives like they used to… the one that died was almost a decade old). As you may know, Smoothwall has a built-in backup feature which will copy your settings over to a floppy disk. It’s limited, but I guess it would work for some people. I knew my old junk hardware would fail eventually so a few months ago I installed the SmoothBackup for SWE 3.0 v.1.4 mod. One can configure this mod to make scheduled, complete drive backups. Since a Smoothwall installation is inherently limited in size (~130 MB for mine), this mod generates a tar file of the entire file system. It can also optionally SCP the file to another computer. I had mine configured to put the tar on my server out of harms way. So today, when I went to replace the crashed drive, I simply reinstalled smoothwall and the SmoothBackup mod, and then restored my previous installation from the tar which I copied back over from my server. BAM! 10 minutes tops and I was back up and running. Smoothwall is a quality application, and community-contributed mods like SmoothBackup are icing on the cake.

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Smoothwall Express 3.0 Open Source Firewall

May 22nd, 2008 | Category: Open Source

As my crappy 802.11b wireless router gasped its last breath, I started looking for a suitable replacement. My home network includes a web/email server, a dedicated MythBox, my standard desktop tower, and a laptop or two. Naturally, I wanted to upgrade from a just a simple router to a more full-featured firewall without spending a whole lot of money. An old AMD Athlon 900MHz computer with 512MB or ram would become an excellent base for a Smoothwall Express 3.0 installation.

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NASA Image of the Day

Snapshot of the International Space Station

On March 13, 2008, the International Space Station passed across the field-of-view of Germany's remote sensing satellite, TerraSAR-X, at a distance of 195 kilometers, or 122 miles, and at a relative speed of 34,540 kilometers per hour, or more than 22,000 mph. In contrast to optical cameras, radar does not 'see' surfaces. Instead, it is much more aware of the edges and corners which bounce back the microwave signal it transmits. Smooth surfaces such as those on the station's solar generators or the radiator panels used to dissipate excess heat, unless directly facing the radar antenna, tend to deflect rather than reflect the radar beam, causing these features to appear on the radar image as dark areas. The radar image of the station therefore looks like a dense collection of bright spots from which the outlines of the space station can be clearly identified. The central element on the station, to which all the modules are docked, has a grid structure that presents a multiplicity of reflecting surfaces to the radar beam, making it readily identifiable. This image has a resolution of about one meter (about 39 inches). In other words, objects can be depicted as discrete units--that is, shown separately--provided that they are at least one meter apart. If they are closer together than that, they tend to merge into a single block on a radar image. Since this image as taken, the station has expanded and is more than 90 percent complete, including a full complement of solar arrays. Image Credit: DLR
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SmoothBackup Mod for Smoothwall

Smoothwall Express 3.0 Open Source Firewall

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