[wplug] How to build a firewall/router?

[harrold at sage.che.pitt.edu]

Sometime in October Elwin Green assaulted keyboard and produced...

| 
|Greetings, all -
|
|I'm finally getting DSL, and expect service to begin next week. For this
|week's miniproject, I wanted to set up a 386 as a firewall/router using
|floppyfw (Brian S., this is the same beast you spent so much time with a
|couple of meetings ago)>
|
|Problems have arisen (of course!)
|
|1) At boot, the 386 now generates an error msg I hadn't seen before: "No
|rom basic. System halted." Does this mean what I think it means, i.e.,
|"This machine's ready for the scrap heap"? Or is it fixable (and would it
|be worth the trouble)?

this means it's looking at the hard disk and there is no operating system
on the boot device. if you tried to install linux on it before and failed
then the hard drive is probably blank or at least the boot sector is. or it
has no disk at all. for whatever reason it is not booting from the floppy,
but i don't believe the computer is scrap just yet. i would 
 * check the bios and make sure it's setup correctly. it's been a while
   since i've looked at a computer that old, but make sure the floppy is
   set to 1.44 and not 1.2. also make sure the boot sequence defaults to
   the floppy
 * check the hardware. reseat the controller cards, and make sure that the
   connections aren't loose . also make sure the last set of floppy
   connectors are used. while the master/slave stuff is normally set with
   jumpers on hard drives. floppies are normally set based on the position
   on the cable. if you look on the cable there is normally a twist  of 4
   wires or so between the two sets of connectors. i believe the connectors
   after the twist are "a" and the ones before the twist are "b".
 * next i would start swapping hardware. (controllers, cables, floppy disk
   drives, etc.)


for some interesting history on the no rom basic message i found this a
while ago. it's pretty neat:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22no+rom+basic%22+history&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&selm=1993Dec1.181136.3325%40vpnet.chi.il.us&rnum=1


|2) I then tried floppfw with a spare 486. It boots, but then fails
|somewhere. I get a string of messages that look like this:
|
|cp: unable to open (filepath): no such file or directory
|
|Then some stuff that looks ok, then:
|
|insmod: not found gi: not found
|
|Then it runs a little further and ends with this sequence
|
|Opening virutal consoles Open: not found Open: not found
|
|"Open: not found" appears 7 times.
|
|My GUESS is that floppfw was not able to fit its operational self into
|this machine's RAM (8MB). What do others here think? Any suggesstions?
|
|Thanks!

i think the other guy was right about needing more ram.

-- 
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john harrold               | "They that can give up essential  
     jmh17 at pitt.edu        |  liberty to obtain a little       
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