47PHA60's Journal: Firewall Appliance pt 2

I installed RedHat 7.2 on my little firewall, to no avail. GRUB is having some sort of memory addressing breakdown, because I have 512MB RAM and it says "Error 28" implying that it cannot figure out how to fit a linux kernel into RAM.

Well, tonight I will give it a go with LILO and see if that is better.

The problem could also be that I am loading the kernel and / from compact flash. Using the RedHat installer I got the system down to 301 MB (I have a 512 MB CF), but I can whittle away at it later. I will also build he tiniest kernel I can for the installation.

Next experiment is to fit the whole thing into a DiskOnChip module (I bought 32MB, why not have some fun?).

The Realtek LAN is set up in the firmware to boot across the network, since this little guy has no floppy or CD.

Added: Power consumption. It consumes 10 watts of power. According to my meter, it costs .09 USD / day. When powered off, it uses 1 watt. The motherboard claims to have a time on/off capability I can set in the BIOS, and I also want to try wake-on-lan so that internal users can wake it up by connecting to the network.