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                            Amusing Unix installs

The current project at work is to convert a Cobalt RaQ4 into a firewall for
the new office. On the plus side, it's an x86 based system, 450MHz
(megaHertz) with two ethernet ports, 256MB (Megabyte) of memory and a 30G
(Gigabyte) of disk space—more than enough to act as a firewall system.

On the down side, it comes with no CD (Compact Disc) drive, no floppy drive
and no video or keyboard ports.

On the scale of Unix installation difficulty, this rates around a 6 (the
NetBSD install [1] I did rated about an 8, and a Unix install [2] I did on an
old laptop was about a 9). And while there are some instructions on
installing a new distribution of Linux on the Cobalt RaQ4, they all are
somewhat involved.

I was able to get a Linux 2.4 kernel on the system (albeit it's a custom
kernel for the Cobalt systems) so that's good (it also involved an upgrade to
the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) to support the larger Linux 2.4 kernel).
And it seems that all you have to do is put the kernel into a specific
location with a specific name and it will automatically boot that kernel,
which is good, since that means I can put the drive into another Linux system
and do the install of whatever distribution we want on that, and put the
drive back into the Cobalt RaQ—in theory. I'll find out if that works on
Monday.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2000/02/15-16
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:1999/12/13.4

Email author at [email protected]

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