WRAP
From Fozzee.net
've been on something of a kick lately to save rack space and thermal capacity in my "server closet" (commonly known as a bedroom closet). My firewall for the better part of a year has been Monowall running on a P2/550... Needless to say, this thing is big (4u), loud, and draws more than a little juice... I like the functionality of m0n0 and wasn't quite ready to go back to a Netgear router, and PIXs are a bit out of reach price wise.
I had thought that I was doomed to spending a boatload on a MINI-ITX solution with dual Ethernets to get something somewhat low power that would go in a 1u chassis. I had the fortune to read about the WRAP platform made by PcEngines. These are similar in form to the MINI-ITX boards, about 6" square, and are based on the AMD (National Semiconductor) Geode. The one I ended up with has 3 Fast Ethernet interfaces and a mini-PCI slot for expansion. The processors run about 300mhz and this particular one has 128mb of ram. The OS (monowall in my case) is loaded on a CF card (the slot is right on the board). Needless to say, after a bit of mucking with the serial port settings, the thing came right up and ran. There are 3 things that I'd like to note about such an install, however.
First, to write the image to the CF card, you'll need a way to mount it in a standard (Windows or Unix) PC. The tricky part is that OSs (windows) don't like to see the CF card correctly, if it's mounted in one of those USB-> CF readers. The short of it is anything that mounts the CF card as a non-removable device should work fine. I've got a CF-> IDE adapter as well as a CF-> PCMCIA adapter, both of which work fine.
Second, the WRAP boards could use some better design when it comes to integration. They're really designed to be mounted like a cheapo switch/firewall, IE all the connectors are on the board edge, and lights soldered to the opposite end. This is great if you dont want an internal power supply and don't mind finding a box that fits their exact specifications, but for real custom applications (IE rack mount), some more wizardry will be required.
Third, there are some serial port issues when using M0n0wall. The BIOS on a wrap lets you set the system console speed (serial console) to either 9600, 19200 or 384000 (IIRC)... case in point, when M0n0wall boots, the kernel resets the port speed to 9600 baud, regardless of what the BIOS is set to. I advise that you just set the console to 9600 baud and be done with it, lest you confuse the terminal or lose connection once the OS starts booting.
This is just an overview of my experiences with Monowall and WRAP gear, more to come, including pix of my custom Rack mount WRAP box.
