Creating an EigerStein Firewall: Add a Second Floppy to Your Firewall

Add a Second Floppy to Your Firewall

Why would I want a dual floppy firewall?

Running from two floppy disks gives you a total of 2.88Mb of compressed storage, rather than 1.68. This means more room to add cool features.
It has been reported that during a package upgrade, some Windows systems have corrupted the 1.68Mb formatted floppy disk. This is not an issue with upgrades to 1.44 Mb floppies.
Backups of your firewall disks are easy. If you have a DOS or Windows system available, diskcopy will provide you with quick, reliable backups.

Creating a Dual Floopy Set of Firewall Disks

1 Collect the necessary materials:
    Two blank, formatted 3.5" high density disks
    a copy of syslinux.com from the syslinux archive, decompressed into a temporary directory
    a 3.5", high-density floppy disk drive
    A 1.68Mb EigerStein2BETA disk (created in Preparing the Disk section)

2 Install the second floppy disk into the firewall PC. Don't forget to boot into the CMOS to select (or verify the auto selection of) the type of disk, 3.5", 1.44Mb.

3 Boot your PC into DOS (or Windows), place a blank disk in drive A:, and change to the directory where you have copied syslinux.com.

4 Make the floppy disk bootable by typing:
    syslinux a: [ENTER]

5 Label this disk fd0, A:, Disk 1 - what ever you need to insure that you will know that this is the boot disk, and the other disk: fd1, B:, Disk 2 - you get the idea.

6 If it is not already, boot the firewall with the 1.68Mb disk created above.

7 Mount the disk into the file system using the following command:
    mount -t msdos /dev/fd0u1680 /mnt

8 Copy the entire contents of the current disk into the temporary directory:
    cp /mnt/* /tmp

9 Unmount the floppy from the file system:
    umount /mnt

10 Remove the floppy disk, and place the newly bootable disk into the first disk drive (A:, /fd0, etc.), and the blank formatted floppy into the second floppy disk drive.

11 Next, you will need to modify the configuration file to make EigerStein recognize that this will be a dual floppy system. To do so, begin by switching to the temporary directory, and loading the configuration file:
    cd /tmp     ae syslinux.cfg

12 You should see the following screen (or something very similar, depending upon your current configuration):
File "syslinux.cfg" 231 bytes read. Press F1 to toggle help. display syslinux.dpy timeout 0 default linux append=load_ramdisk=1 initrd=root.lrp initrd_archive=minix ramdisk_size=6144 root=/dev/ram0 boot=/dev/fd0u1680,msdos PKGPATH=/dev/fd0u1680 LRP=etc,log,local,modules,dnscache,weblet,sshd
Note that on your screen, the last line (beginning with "append=" will wrap every 80 characters, not on the nearest space as shown here in a published format. When you make changes, do not attempt to put carriage returns in this last line to make it look like the example above.

13 In the bottom portion, beginning with append=, we need to tell EigerStein that the disks it's using are standard high density disks (that is, we need to remove the 1.68Mb designation required for the 1.68Mb disks). To do this, change the following parameters:
    boot=/dev/fd0u1680
and
    PKGPATH=/dev/fd0u1680
to read
    boot=/dev/fd0
and
    PKGPATH=/dev/fd0

14 Next, we need to tell the EigerStein disk that it will load packages off of two disks instead of just one. To do this, change the following parameter:
    PKGPATH=/dev/fd0
to read:
    PKGPATH=/dev/fd0,/dev/fd1
Note that there is no requirement to indicate which package resides on which disk; EigerStein will handle this for you.

15 Press [Alt]-[w] then [Enter] to save the file, then [Alt]-[q] to exit from ae.

16 Mount the first floppy by issuing the following command:
    mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt

17 Copy the files necessary to boot EigerStein to this disk:
    cp linux /mnt     cp syslinux.dpy /mnt     cp syslinux.cfg /mnt     cp root.lrp /mnt

18 Remove these files from your temporary directory:
    rm linux     rm syslinux.dpy     rm syslinux.cfg     rm root.lrp     rm ldlinux.sys (this file will already be on the first disk as a result of making this disk bootable in step 3.)

19 Unmount this disk:
    umount /mnt

20 Mount the disk in /dev/fd0, drive B:, etc:
    mount -t msdos /dev/fd1 /mnt

21 Copy the remaining files out to this disk:
    cp * /mnt

22 Unmount the second floppy disk:
    umount /mnt

23 Reboot the firewall, and watch as it boots to insure that the modules load, and there are no errors.

Contents

Configure Your Firewall to Allow Access to Network Time Servers

Running the Firewall

1	Collect the necessary materials: Two blank, formatted 3.5" high density disks a copy of syslinux.com from the syslinux archive, decompressed into a temporary directory a 3.5", high-density floppy disk drive A 1.68Mb EigerStein2BETA disk (created in Preparing the Disk section)
2	Install the second floppy disk into the firewall PC. Don't forget to boot into the CMOS to select (or verify the auto selection of) the type of disk, 3.5", 1.44Mb.
3	Boot your PC into DOS (or Windows), place a blank disk in drive A:, and change to the directory where you have copied syslinux.com.
4	Make the floppy disk bootable by typing: `syslinux a: [ENTER]`
5	Label this disk fd0, A:, Disk 1 - what ever you need to insure that you will know that this is the boot disk, and the other disk: fd1, B:, Disk 2 - you get the idea.
6	If it is not already, boot the firewall with the 1.68Mb disk created above.
7	Mount the disk into the file system using the following command: `mount -t msdos /dev/fd0u1680 /mnt`
8	Copy the entire contents of the current disk into the temporary directory: `cp /mnt/* /tmp`
9	Unmount the floppy from the file system: `umount /mnt`
10	Remove the floppy disk, and place the newly bootable disk into the first disk drive (A:, /fd0, etc.), and the blank formatted floppy into the second floppy disk drive.
11	Next, you will need to modify the configuration file to make EigerStein recognize that this will be a dual floppy system. To do so, begin by switching to the temporary directory, and loading the configuration file: `cd /tmp ae syslinux.cfg`
12	You should see the following screen (or something very similar, depending upon your current configuration): `File "syslinux.cfg" 231 bytes read. Press F1 to toggle help. display syslinux.dpy timeout 0 default linux append=load_ramdisk=1 initrd=root.lrp initrd_archive=minix ramdisk_size=6144 root=/dev/ram0 boot=/dev/fd0u1680,msdos PKGPATH=/dev/fd0u1680 LRP=etc,log,local,modules,dnscache,weblet,sshd` Note that on your screen, the last line (beginning with "append=" will wrap every 80 characters, not on the nearest space as shown here in a published format. When you make changes, do not attempt to put carriage returns in this last line to make it look like the example above.
13	In the bottom portion, beginning with append=, we need to tell EigerStein that the disks it's using are standard high density disks (that is, we need to remove the 1.68Mb designation required for the 1.68Mb disks). To do this, change the following parameters: `boot=/dev/fd0u1680` and `PKGPATH=/dev/fd0u1680` to read `boot=/dev/fd0` and `PKGPATH=/dev/fd0`
14	Next, we need to tell the EigerStein disk that it will load packages off of two disks instead of just one. To do this, change the following parameter: `PKGPATH=/dev/fd0` to read: `PKGPATH=/dev/fd0,/dev/fd1` Note that there is no requirement to indicate which package resides on which disk; EigerStein will handle this for you.
15	Press [Alt]-[w] then [Enter] to save the file, then [Alt]-[q] to exit from ae.
16	Mount the first floppy by issuing the following command: `mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt`
17	Copy the files necessary to boot EigerStein to this disk: `cp linux /mnt cp syslinux.dpy /mnt cp syslinux.cfg /mnt cp root.lrp /mnt`
18	Remove these files from your temporary directory: `rm linux rm syslinux.dpy rm syslinux.cfg rm root.lrp rm ldlinux.sys` (this file will already be on the first disk as a result of making this disk bootable in step 3.)
19	Unmount this disk: `umount /mnt`
20	Mount the disk in /dev/fd0, drive B:, etc: `mount -t msdos /dev/fd1 /mnt`
21	Copy the remaining files out to this disk: `cp * /mnt`
22	Unmount the second floppy disk: `umount /mnt`
23	Reboot the firewall, and watch as it boots to insure that the modules load, and there are no errors.