Re: [SLUG] Re: CD-Based Firewall

From: Chuck Hast (wchast@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Nov 06 2004 - 13:37:55 EST


With regards to media failure, the amateur radio community has wireless
packet switches all around the state. Some use floppy based media and
others (because it was there) use HD based media, the floppy boxes fail
at a much higher rate than the HD based ones. Indeed we have some HD
based switches which have never lost a HD. The switch located at County
Center here in Tampa finally lost the HD after about 8 years of usage. The
key is in the way the system handles the HD, in the case of a switch or
firewall you load it all in ramdisk from the media device then spin it down.

In the case of the switch devices there is a history file that is generated
periodically, in our case once a day, that process spins the disk up once
a day, records the file and then it spins down. I think that the firewall
devices should be able to do something similar.

Regarding CD/DVD drives, as has already been pointed out the MTBF
is not good. They are a great way to load a OS or some other system
but I do not think I would want to depend on my system running on it.

With regards to FW, floppyfw has a CD version, and I was thinking that
Coyote was bringing one out. There is also a lot of stuff going on with
regards to CF cards, again the key is to load the system from the CF
card as a ramdisk, and only write to the CF card if you have changes or
some file that updates very rarely.

-- 
Chuck Hast 
To paraphrase my flight instructor;
"the only dumb question is the one you DID NOT ask resulting in my going
out and having to identify your bits and pieces in the midst of torn
and twisted metal."
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