From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Aug 7 21:16:21 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 825E237B400 for ; Wed, 7 Aug 2002 21:16:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.mediaodyssey.com (mail.mediaodyssey.com [206.168.47.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4E3C43E6E for ; Wed, 7 Aug 2002 21:16:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jmcatee@mediaodyssey.com) Received: from jim (unverified [206.168.47.39]) by mail.mediaodyssey.com (Rockliffe SMTPRA 4.5.6) with SMTP id for ; Wed, 7 Aug 2002 22:16:16 -0600 Message-ID: <08e401c23e92$677874d0$272fa8ce@jim> From: "Jim McAtee" To: Subject: Configuring a diskless firewall Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 22:16:44 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4910.0300 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I'm considering getting a diskless rackmount "firewall appliance" and setting up a FreeBSD firewall on it. The computer uses a fairly standard Intel PC architecture, with a PIII CPU, ServerWorks chipset and Award BIOS. It's got 3 oboard NICs, and two standard IDE interfaces. No onboard video, nor keyboard or mouse ports - only a serial console port and an unused PCI slot. No CD-ROM or floppy drives, and no floppy port. The system is designed to run the OS and applications from solid state DOM (disk-on-module), which plugs directly into one of the IDE HDD connectors. An optional hard disk can be connected to the other IDE interface to be used for storing logs. Question is: How would I load BSD onto a system like this? I suppose I might temporarily hook up a CD-ROM drive to the unused IDE bus and boot from the CD. Or is it possible to set something up in the BIOS to boot from a drive or TFTP server on the network? Has anybody worked with solid state disks? Is this just something that gets configured within the BIOS and then becomes transparent to the OS, or would there be special drivers to load in FreeBSD? Thanks, Jim To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message