Cobalt Velociraptor + new distro = Transparent Firewall

[wolfpac181]

sectional updates:

I have a Cobalt Velociraptor that was laying around doing nothing. So as any geek would say "what can I do with what I've got?"..

The raptor in it's day was a pimp firewall. Axent was the people who made it, used the RaQ4i for the body, and a really bad hackup of redhat. Later Axent sold out to Symantec, who now want's lot's of cash per year to keep the updates going. All said, the raptor turned to shit.

It's got an AMD K6-2 at 450mhz, 4 NICS, a 20 gig HDD, and some other things that whoop some ass.

what can I do with what I got?

Cobalts are a little weird when it comes to booting I find out. 2 kernels (not the MIPS version). first is a ROM kernel that points to the *nix kernel. The old style is only able to handle EXT2 file systems, plus has some limitations on boot processing. I want more, and I want better. I want at least ext3 or reiser.
Best thing I found was on Sourceforge. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/cobalt-rom)
The new Cobalt-ROM would let me pop some new file systems in, and had some nice features I could do with.

Updating the ROM is the ugly part. do it wrong and the and you have Sun's new Cobalt RaQ-paperweight. Best things to do are:
use native OS for time being to load up tools.

Check ROM version:
# cmos -c romrev
will spit out like 2.6 or some shit.

Back up ROM version with flashtool.
# ./flashtool -r > backup.rom

Read ROM size (this is important! installing the 2M update on a 1M chip will kill)
# ls -la backup.rom
then get either the 1 or 2M rom.

Input the rom to cobalt and load it up.
this is a nasty part too. depending on cobalts speed, could take up to 5 min. be sure the power doesn't die out.
# ./flashtool -w new-image.rom

Back up the rom once again.
# ./flashtool -r > backup-new.rom

check to see errors.
# cmp backup-new.rom new-image.rom

Any errors... stop and load the old guy back in!


Next up.... what distro?

[wolfpac181]

I picked Gentoo. cause it's the ricer of Linux. Can hack it up, slim it down, get what ya need and also really fuck it up. Least we got the bad part out of the way. I also wanted Gentoo cause of some issues I'll discuss later.

First thing I did was get the minimal Gentoo CD. I don't want to install a GUI, or X, or anyother shit I don't need. I also decided to go with pulling the drive and using a local machine to install. I am way too lazy to network boot it.
Installed the Stage3 and Portage. That's on the Gentoo docs. Edited make.conf with the K6-2 in mind. slimmed down the portage tree. (removed the crap I'll never use)

Next was the 2.6 kernel. for some reason, kernels don't like being above 1800kb on a cobalt. compressed. So it's gotta be really toned down. I had to patch kernel for LCD on cobalt, and the Intel 100 Nics in it. easy really.
#patch ./the-patch.patch > /usr/src/linux/linux-kernel

Let me also go back to disk partitioning. ROM can only read ext2 for /boot. and it's wise to make a /boot2 partition too. Just in case. back up kernel there. It gets nifty later.

Also a good idea to get the LCD utilities installed too. You can do some neat stuff with it later. Gentoo had some other people who made the LCD utilites for the MIPS cobalts like the cobalt2 qubes.

up next..... booting the cobalt.

[wolfpac181]

I forgot to add..... Don't Install a boot loader!!!
no grub or lilo. that's what the ROM is used for. it is the boot loader.

You can either use the LCD to tell where the boot and root are, or go with a DB9 serial connection. I went with serial. 115200 baud, 8 bit, 1 stop.

Terminal was laggy, found that turing on cobalt before turing on terminal was best. 3 second delay:)
press space to get into rom options.
three things to edit....
set_boot_dev hda1 (or your boot)
set_root_dev hda4 (or your /)
set_boot_type disk
quit

pray

If it boots.... great! I got stuck on the init running. will have to fix that. but at least I'm more than halfway there!

[wolfpac181]

INIT was mangled cause I messed up make.conf in initial install. use i386 instead of i468 or i586. why? I don't know.

Now. I've got a nice gentoo distro on my cobalt. been working now for 4 hours uptime, no problems yet:) It's still a clean install with the basics in. I still need to install LCD editing software, and more.

needing to install LCD-utils, iptables, ids and webGUI. then finalized:)

[daonoir]

Its funny when people talk to them selves lol :)

[wolfpac181]

shut up bitch.
yeah. that's my comeback.

It's been a bitch of a time and a ton of hacks to do what I did. Some people truly dig stuff like this.