[KLUG Members] Donating time to the open source community.

[Bruce Smith]

> > You won't see CIPE listed, along with a whole bunch of other new
> > packages, because those are in the new release being worked on.
> 
> The CIPE site sounds fascinating. Congrats on your new status, Bruce,
> they're lucky to have you.

Thanks!  It's a great team.  The other developers, who've been working
on Devil Linux a lot longer than myself are really knowledgeable, and a
nice bunch of guys too.  I'm learning a lot.

> Can you make CIPE-enabled Devil Linux CD's available to the group, even
> as beta software, at standard KLUG prices? As I wrote in another email,
> I may have need of CIPE very shortly, 

There are beta ISO's available now for download.  I think they are
recent enough to have CIPE on them.  I can snag them upon request and
sell them for the bandwidth challenged crowd.

My current copy that I'm running is a stripped down version, mainly to
increase compile speed.  The development system has a "make config" type
program that allows you to select which packages to include.  I only
picked the ones I use for my personal firewall.  There is a LOT of other
software available in the full version of Devil Linux.

> and I use tons of beta software anyway. ;-)

It's extremely stable.  We call it beta because we're between versions,
and the only beta stuff is the new features being added.

I'm personally writing a configuration program, so people not familiar
with Linux can configure and use Devil Linux.

One of the other developers is going to add USB support so the
configuration can be saved on a USB memory stick instead of floppy.  
And possibly run the whole thing off USB memory.  On computers that 
can boot from a USB memory stick, this gives the option of a PC
firewall/router/whatever with NO MOVING PARTS.  That should increase 
the hardware dependability by a few notches.  :-)

> > > I've pretty much given up on ipSec - what a cluster *$&@( @#)$(_
> > > @@#$!!.  Did someone sit down and say, "Hmmm, lets make a really hard to
> > > use VPN technology that every firewall will hate, will have road
> > > warriors riping their hair out in fist fulls, and having DNS admins
> > > looking at the modification requests with a `WTF` expression."?
> > 
> > NO KIDDING!!!
> > 
> > I had FreeS/WAN running on Devil Linux & my laptop (back in Redhat 8.0),
> > and besides being hard and confusing, it was UNSTABLE.  The VPN kept
> > going down, requiring manual restarts!
> 
> Good. I'm not the only one turned off by the documentation. ;-)

It's not just the documentation.  I use IPSEC at work on Cisco 
hardware and software, with Cisco documentation.  It's not much
easier there!

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
--------------------------------------------