floppyfw

Brief Description

floppyfw is a router with the advanced firewall-capabilities in Linux that fits on one single floppy disc.

Features:

• Access lists, IP-masquerading (Network Address Translation), connection tracked packet filtering and (quite) advanced routing. Package for traffic shaping is also available.
• Requires only a 386sx or better with two network interface cards, a 1.44MB floppy drive and 12MByte of RAM ( for less than 12M and no FPU, use the 1.0 series. )
• Very simple packaging system. Is used for editors, PPP, VPN, traffic shaping and whatever comes up. (now this is looking even more like LRP (may it rest in peace) but floppyfw is not a fork.)
• Logging through klogd/syslogd, both local and remote.
• Serial support for console over serial port.
• DHCP server and DNS cache for internal networks.

It will get more features, but only if it is possible to cram it into the one, single diskette. More than one floppy is bloatware..

News

2015-06-21: Just for fun I Googled "floppyfw" and This video from 2013 appeared. I have no clue what he says, but I find it amusing that someone took their time creating it. 174 views aswell.

2014-11-16: Even more is happening! I have created the project ffw4 on Github. I just couldn't see any reason to use svn here, and since I use GitHub for so much more I ended up putting it there.

But what will this be? It's still Buildroot based but this time without a devkit. You just download / clone ffw4 and buildroot, pick the defconfig you want (right now it's ffw4-vm for virtual machines and ffw4-pi for RaspberryPi.) and start making.

I will provide images aswell, and those will of course be found here. Images in a floppy? Sorry, no. I am pretty sure that's practically impossible, just the compiled kernel for vmfw is 1.9MB

2014-01-05: Since the 2.4 kernel is EOL and stuff kinda happens in the network and Linux world, it may be time to move along. Or look at alternatives. And I've made one. Quite a few have been running floppyfw in a virtual machine and that's a pretty neat idea. So, based on buildroot I've made a bootable ext3 image and called it vmfw. The concept will be as usual, a few downloadble images and the possibility to build everything yourself.vmfw.img is the first image I've made and feel free to play around with it.

2012-04-10: The 2.4 kernel is EOL, aka no more updates to the kernel running floppyfw.

I'm still using my floppyfw and with the last update I did, which was the "Keep the DHCP address" I'm a very happy camper and will stay with it for a good while longer. On the other hand, since I've been way too late with a kernel 2.6 version (which is now 3.x) I'm not sure it's even needed any more. A floppy now cost more than a USB key with gigabytes of data so the lean floppyfw isn't really that important with newer hardware.

So, floppyfw ain't dead but it's living very happy as it is and I'm sure I'm not the only user left and if you are still using floppyfw and needs something, like the DHCP save from last year, lemme know and I'll see what I can do.

2011-07-21: A new release, now with a new feature! Probably not the most exciting but for those using writeable media it will now save the DHCP address used so it will attempt to use it again after reboot. floppyfw 3.0.15 anyway. Changelog)

2010-11-28: It does really only deserve to be 3.0.13.1 but I'll call it floppyfw 3.0.14 anyway. Changelog)

2010-11-01: Ok, news server back up again. Finally.

2010-10-31: Seems like we go Ubuntu here, six months between releases. floppyfw 3.0.13 got uploaded today. This time some real changes as I've made (better) VLAN/DMZ support which works quite nicely.Changelog)

2010-10-12: No, It's not dead. INN, the news servr wants to die for me after we moved the server to an 64 bit environment in a hurry. The db does not like that..I'm still working on it but also pondering about a mailing list which can be read on the web through gmane. Just need someone to run it.

2010-04-25: Exactly six months after the last one; floppyfw 3.0.12 got uploaded today. (Changelog)

2009-10-25: Wow, forgotten to announce a few versions. floppyfw 3.0.11 got uploaded today. (Changelog)

2009-10-11: Wow, forgotten to announce a few versions. floppyfw 3.0.10 got uploaded today. (Changelog)

2009-07-14: Wow, forgotten to announce a few versions. floppyfw 3.0.9 got uploaded today. (Changelog)

2008-01-05: Bad start, this is the cure: floppyfw 3.0.5. A maintenance release. (Changelog)

2008-01-01: Happy new year. Celebrating with a new release: floppyfw 3.0.4. A maintenance release. (Changelog)

2007-08-06: We are still news; This article was linked to from Digg.

2007-05-27: floppyfw 3.0.2. A maintenance release. (Changelog)

2006-11-12: Branched out floppyfw-3.0 to it's own subversion tree. The floppyfw tree (development) may be a bit unstable for now since I am implementing buildroot2 (kconfig) and kernel 2.6.

Old news

Current version:

See the download page.

License:

As far as the scripts written by myself (mainly .ini files), feel free to use it. I'd like you to refer to me or these pages if you do.

The software used has it' own licenses.

Author:

Thomas Lundquist, Thomasez@zelow.no