On 9/14/06, George Farris <farrisg at mala dot bc dot ca> wrote:

> > The second statement is why you made the first.  Actually, it IS that hard.
> > m0n0wall runs totally in ram.  It was designed that way because CF can not
> > take continuous writes.  Changing this would be substantially changing the
> > structure of m0n0wall.
>
> Thanks for that.  It's too bad someone didn't say that before.  I didn't
> realize the design was that inflexible.  I've taken a quick look at

I don't have any work invested in m0n0wall, but even so I take a bit
of exception to that statement. m0n0wall is designed to run on very
limited hardware and do it well, and the run-only-from-ram design is a
great feature of it, not something "inflexible".

It allows one to use flash ram to store the boot image on and expect
it to actually remain in working condition over very long periods of
time, whereas continuously writing to the flash disk would break the
flash memory quickly.

It allows one to run without a hard drive entirely, which is also
great because hard drives break down a lot due to all the moving
parts, draw useless power and generate noise and heat.

It allows one to run from a bootable CD and to use a floppy drive to
store the settings to if one doesn't have the flash ram drive to put
in a firewall, too.

That isn't inflexible, that is a great design feature.

> pfsense and it doesn't seem to have that design restriction, it will
> probably be the way forward.

There is also a plethora of Linux-based firewalls out there as well if
you don't mind running off a rotating platter that will be prone to
breaking. Smoothwall springs to mind alongside pfsense etc.

-- 
-{ Kimmo Jaskari }--{ kimmo dot jaskari at gmail dot com }--

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to
find easier ways to do something.
  - Robert Heinlein