Re: tiny versions of openbsd?

[Chuck Yerkes <chuck+obsd@2003.snew.com>]

Quoting taproot420 (taproot420@myrealbox.com):
> Afternoon Gentlemen / Ladies,
> 
> I am looking for information about how to shrink "crunch" openbsd to a 
> smaller size for a dedicated firewall/vpn server running from a Flash 
> Drive such as the USB drives below @ tigerdirect.

...
> a 128 meg. usb drive that is suppose to be recognized by 
> the bios as a regular hd. ...

> firewall log to a nfs partition so i can lock the usb drive.
No, you use syslog, not NFS.  NFS is not secure.

> There is embsd but i would like to make my own from openbsd 3.3 to take 
> advantage of the new abilities pf has and the pro police compiler 
> extensions.
fine.

>  Also i was thinking of how to move all the compilers and 
> other apps not needed for a firewall to a cd and then just put in the cd 
> and mount it when i need those apps. If anyone has done this or knows of 
> some documentation that might help i would appreciate the info.

Why would you have a compiler on a firewall?  I don't have /usr/include
or /usr/lib/lib*.a on a firewall.  Hell, man pages and lots of *bin/ is
moot on a firewall (like groff and family).

CD's are S*L*O*W and not reliable.

You have a build machine.  It can have whatever you need.  When
you need to update the production machine, then you package up, or
just move, your new stuff over.

You say you don't have a build machine? Wrong view.  You don't have
a production machine.


128MB is huge.                        
I've got BSD running at 5MB, a soekris running 32MB or 256 (depending
on versions and whims).

5MB is minimal and works, but doesn't offer much like shells.
256 is huge.

Hell, I have a Sparc running on a 207 MB drive and a 486 with an 80
MB drive (ok, I never use it cause it's 33MHz, but it runs and I just
upgraded it to 3.3 for no good reason).

You can fit everything but X in 256MB.

This is almost a FAQ.

The soekris lists have archives; and chris cappucino's work and
(FreeBSD) m0n0wall are fine examples of stripping down builds.

I've written (on embsd and soekris lists) and should web-ify my
stuff to make readonly root (and usr and everything else).  I *little*
mfs (4MB) for parts of var and a time mfs (as small as you can make
it) for /dev/ and tweaks to your start scripts (/etc/rc is stock oBSD)
and you've got a firewall.


So look around a little bit.  soekris-tech archives, embsd archives,
capuccino.

This is a wheel, no need to rebuild.