ALIX.2D13 and pfsense

nitsuj

Hi,

I want to build a firewall and have been looking at a ALIX.2D13 board.

I want to run Squid and Squid Gaurd.

I have about 20 users that would use the proxy, mostly light web use, everything else bypasses the proxy.

We have a internet link of 2048kb/s and are limited to 15GB of data per month.

This board has 256MB of RAM.

I have 2 questions:

1.Is this enough RAM? If not any ideas for a better board?

2.Is a 4GB compact flash card a good size for this setup?

Thanks

Metu69salemi

@nitsuj:

Hi,

I want to build a firewall and have been looking at a ALIX.2D13 board.

I want to run Squid and Squid Gaurd.
2.Is a 4GB compact flash card a good size for this setup?

These two doesn't mix up

nitsuj

From your response, I think my post may be a little unclear.

Are you saying a 4GB flash card for the OS(pfsense) and packages like squid and squid gaurd is to small?

This is over come via a larger card, what Im more worried about is the RAM (256MB). Anyone had any expericne with these boards?

Thanks

Metu69salemi

flash cards have limited amount of writes and squid(+quard) likes to write to disk all the time –> that leads really short cf-lifetime. Thusfore you should use real harddrives, with spinning disks not ssd's or any other flash devices

stephenw10

You can run squid with no cache get around this problem, it then runs entirely from ram.
If you search the forum there are people out there doing exactly that with their Alix boards but I wouldn't recommend it.

Steve

joako

In theory it should work fine with Squid not using a disk cache.

Since you already know exactly what you want, why don't you install an embedded image into VMware with 256mb RAM and test it out?

jms703

@stephenw10:

You can run squid with no cache get around this problem, it then runs entirely from ram.

If the OP is trying to stay under your 15GB a month, they are probably running squid to take advantage of caching. I recommend a hard drive or ssd.

jimp

One way to keep the bandwidth usage low would be to block certain sites, which is possible with squidGuard. Though last I checked, blacklists did not work with embedded, so you would have to manually make a list of 'bad' sites.

I can think of several places that would save a few GB per month or more just by blocking access to youtube :-)

nitsuj

Thanks everyone for your input. Very useful, I think I may ditch the ALIX board for a cheap PC.
Almost the same price and I can repair it with common computer parts if needed.

Thanks