[wellylug] Linux on Linksys WRT54G

[Ewen McNeill]

In message <41D8DFBE.1010000 at cliffp.com>, Cliff Pratt writes:
>Ewen McNeill wrote:
> > My home firewall is now a Linksys WRT54G[0] running Linux 2.4.20 [...]
> >
> > I have 112kB free on the flash.  [No traffic shaping; no space]
>
>How about building the firewall rules somewhere else (using 
>Shorewall or whatever) and just moving the rules? 

Shorewall takes about 80kB on the flash (the flash is compressed, and
Shorewall is basically entirely shell scripts which compress well). 

The traffic shaping modules take 200kB for the set of them.  So I guess 
you're right by removing Shorewall and building the rules elsewhere it'd
probably be possible to squeeze the traffic shaping code on.  

Of course the cost is that you then can't (easily) maintain the firewall
on the system.  (And Shorewall inspects the system it is run on to
determine interfaces, etc, so would need "help" to run on another system
and get things right for the WRT54G.)

The alternative I'll probably go for -- assuming I don't just buy a
WRT54GS at some stage -- is looking more carefully at the files
installed by the various packages I have and seeing if I can remove any
of them.  I suspect I can probably squeeze enough of the relevant bits
in that way.  Or repackage some things with fewer files installed; the
packaging system used by OpenWRT (ipkg) is pretty simple and makes it
fairly easy to repackage something.

Ewen