compaq proliant ml370 as linux firewall

[Bayougoula]

I want to use my old Compaq Proliant ml370 (G1) as linux based hardware firewall. For that I tried to install the smoothwall 3.0 but it always gives me the message that it is not able to find any hard drive. I want you to recommend me any of such linux firewalls which will be able to run on the ml370. I don’t have any experience with the linux therefore I want something which should be easy to follow. Please help.

[Sabastiaan]

I was also having the same issue and I just replaced the new server with my old SW box. The very important thing that should be noted is that SW does not look at the SCSI drives out of the box. For that I simply added a 40g IDE on the CD Drive and installed it finally. I am not saying that this is the only possible way to do that but it worked in my case. You should also try this once to see the result.

[Visala28]

I investigated for the issue and found that that smoothwall does not support scsi at all without modeling the kernel. All ML370s do not allow the booting at all from any IDE HDD. You should download Slackware and Ubuntu and run them on the ML370 to use them as Firewall. If that is not working then you can try Either 2008 Small business Server or 2008 home server. Both are 32bit version.

[Biloxi]

I was also planning to do the same thing with my Dell 667L. I dropped the smoothwall to see how it works. Expectantly we will get some responses from somebody who is running PC-based firewalls. I found that smoothwall is a good choice and if not then please list the other alternatives for it. I am using SUSE 10 at my home as well if that is feasible option.

[teenQ]

You can use Sophos WSA1000 as the alternative to smoothwall. I am using this from last three years and I can say that it is excellent. It is integrated with AD and you cen filter by groups. I have not faced any problem with Proxy sites as Sophos reads the code of the page and cleverly blocks them since I installed that. This is also capable of scanning virus/worms/trojans etc. Sophos also gets updated every hour by this box.

[Candace]

IPCop may be another good alternative for the smoothwall. First release of IPCop was a complete cleave off of Smoothwall. They have changes their logo and renamed it as IPCop and not given any credit to the source. If It comes to me then I will go for Smoothwall over IPCop because I am very familiar with it and I have used it for a ling time.