Please disable packages not compatible with embedded distributions !

pagaille · Feb 13, 2013, 11:34 AM

Hi,

Reading the last message in this (locked) thread, http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,50700.0/topicseen.html, I bought a Alix 2D13 with CF card (running pfsense embedded version) and tried to run squid and squidguard.

I turned out that it wasn't possible at all - if I'm not wrong - because of the read-only nature of the file system. Especially the blocklist would need to be downloaded on the ramdisk which is way to small on a Alix.

So my request is the following : please remove any package not compatible with the embedded version of pfsense ! I lost hours to get this running (i was mistakenly adviced to do so) when it wasn't possible at all. Why are those packages and other that obviously will not run on a small ramdisk available on this distribution ?

thanks

Matthieu

stephenw10 · Feb 13, 2013, 2:46 PM

I'm sorry if I mislead you with my comment. :(

The Alix has a particularly small amount of ram. If the package were disabled for embedded installs that would make it impossible (or much more difficult) to install on a system with, say, 4GB of ram.

There are other users running Squidguard on an Alix though. Are you using a particularly large blocklist?

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,42393.msg244661.html#msg244661

Steve

cmb · Feb 13, 2013, 4:07 PM

You definitely can use Squid and Squidguard on embedded, many people do. No caching, but everything but caching works fine to the extent your hardware can handle. With limited RAM on the ALIX and some types of configurations, there just isn't enough space there for some things. There are valid Squid and Squidguard configs that'll run in 256 MB, but it's not hard to come up with ones that require more RAM.

pagaille · Feb 14, 2013, 2:35 PM

@stephenw10:

I'm sorry if I mislead you with my comment. :(

No worries; everybody makes mistakes, no offense intended.

Moreover, it looks like this subject isn't as straightforward as men can expect. Some people on the forum claims that it isn't possible at all, others that it works perfectly.

The Alix has a particularly small amount of ram. If the package were disabled for embedded installs that would make it impossible (or much more difficult) to install on a system with, say, 4GB of ram.

Right. Embedded doesn't imply low ram, true. But it generally means that the filesystem is read-only, which seems (reading some posts on this forum) to leas to a lot of problems and at least in a not supported configuration.

There are other users running Squidguard on an Alix though. Are you using a particularly large blocklist?

I tried the two lists specified on pfsense's website. Both leads to full filesystem. I'll investigate the links provided and will report back after holidays.

Thanks for your help !

Matthieu

pagaille · Feb 14, 2013, 2:38 PM

@cmb:

You definitely can use Squid and Squidguard on embedded, many people do.

Thanks. I'll investigate but it looks like the blocklist itself must be loaded on the ramdisk (modifying the configuration files to access it from the CF wasn't successful according to some forum posts) and the default one are oversized for 512Mo RAM.