This evening Col. Oliver North came to LeTourneau University to speak on behalf of East Texans Against Lawsuit Abuse. (I hadn't heard of them either) Tickets to the event were $40 per person! (Free if you're a LeTourneau student)

Colonel North spoke of the misrepresentation of the current state of Iraq in the mainstream media and other misrepresentations put on by the highly sensational media. He shared some of his experiences as an embedded reporter in Iraq, his thoughts on the current state of affairs here in the US, the importance of the military and the honor our troops deserve. He joked about his employment with Fox News, made sly references to CNN and the liberal press, as well as gave candid wisdom gathered from his experiences. The talk was entertaining and enlightening. Plus I got a picture with him!

So the system hardware is configured and ready to go. It's now time to install the m0n0wall image onto the CF card. Because my main machine is Windows, I used PhyDiskWrite 0.5.1 to unpack the image and write it to the card. It's a handy command line utility written specifically for Windows users who need to write the m0n0wall generic PC image to a CF card. Do be aware of what disk interface you select to write to when running this application; it displays all logical drives on your system so you could potentially write the image to one of your hard drives. That would be bad, m'kay?

Once the image is written, simply plug the card into the adapter and boot the machine. Upon booting the G1, I noticed that the BIOS revision was A06 and having looked at the Dell site I knew A10 was available. Having already removed the floppy drive from the machine, I was not apt to update it unless it was necessary. As it turns out, it was not.

Fire it up and pray you did everything correctly. Prior to installing the CF to IDE adapter and card I did boot the machine and make BIOS edits. I turned off all interfaces not required for operation and ensured that nothing else was amiss. During the initial boot, you will need to connect the machine to a monitor and have a keyboard connected. If you're running it on a virtual machine or have a serial port you can use HyperTerminal through a console. For me, that was a lot more trouble that in it was worth considering that the G1 has a video card built in.

After the boot process completes, m0n0wall is up and running. You're greeted with a list of options that looks much like this. The first thing you'll need to do is assign interfaces. It is interesting to note how m0n0wall sensed the two NICs present in the machine; one integrated and one PCI. The PCI NIC was presented first and thus made into the WAN interface; the integrated NIC was then made into the LAN NIC. For units without integrated NICs, the PCI slot closest to the AGP slot will probably come up as the first interface. After assigning interfaces, I set the LAN IP to my normal networking scheme of 10.0.0.254/24; With the 24 subnet, DHCP clients have 10.0.0.1-253 to use.

Once this is accomplished, I connected cables. One Cat5 to my cable modem; the other to my Dell Powerconnect 2016 10/100 switch. I also have a Netgear FS-104 five port switch for my media center. You can set up an optional third interface for a separate subnet as well as VLAN tagging but all of that is overly complicated for my simple home network. After powercycling the router and the cable modem the network was operational. All of my clients received DHCP leases according to the default settings in m0n0wall; two hours by default and a maximum of two days.

Now that all the interfaces are operational, I can access the web-based GUI for m0n0wall. Much like consumer routers, opening a browser and navigating to the router's LAN IP works for this. The options in m0n0wall are quite extensive and do require some basic networking skills to properly configure and implement things like firewall rules and NAT rules, known in some circles as port forwarding. Because I'm not going into great detail here, you can read the documentation on all of the features by clicking here.

The first thing to do is, of course, set a password and the time zone for logging purposes. The only other really special settings I needed were to enable the PPTP VPN server so that I can create an encrypted tunnel for VNC when I'm at work or away from home. To this point I've been using VNC unencrypted over the commodity Internet because I had neither the hardware nor the time to set up an SSH tunnel for windows or a generic VPN server. m0n0wall comes with both PPTP and IPSec VPN server capabilities; the PPTP flavor works best with Windows XP. It is important to note that when setting up the VPN, all of the options it asks for are internal. That is, the server IP should be an internal address; same with the DHCP leases it gives out on a /28 subnet. Because it requires /28, be sure your private assignable space starts with 192 (ex: 10.0.1.192). After this is done, check the box that adds a firewall rule and save the settings. Create a user and you're good to go.

It is important to note that interface or protocol changes are not implicitly applied to the firewall like they are in most consumer networking routers. When you create something like a PPTP VPN or other interface feature, you must also add a firewall rule to allow that traffic to pass. Most setup screens in the GUI prompt you with a checkbox to create a firewall rule for you. If you choose not to do this, it's ok. Just remember why you can't connect later. =)

To say that m0n0wall is fully featured is an understatement; it has everything you could ever want in an enterprise-grade router with none of the fuss and certainly a lot less expense. As a geek, I was overjoyed when the entire unit worked almost completely out of the box. Minimal problems have been experienced in three days of duty.

For action shots, click here and here.

After some rather interesting deals with FedEx, I finally received all the parts required to build my m0n0wall system. It should be noted that this was among the easiest projects I've ever undertaken which is remarkable given that m0n0wall requires some intermediate level of networking skill and my last experience with *NIX operating systems left me with nothing other than feelings of general hostility.

I was in a quandary as to what type of system to base the firewall off of. Tommy has a lovely MiniITX board that runs completely solid state when booting off the CF card. The only problem is that those all-in-one systems can run upwards of $180 before memory. The embedded PCs that m0n0wall was designed to operate on also suffer from the same types of cost. I'm in agreement with Tommy that most of it is due to lack of demand. I decided that it would be more cost effective as an enterprising young lad living in one of the most expensive places on earth to acquire some old PC; something on the order of 400MHz of processing power and 128MB of RAM or so (the m0n0wall minimum is 64 for swap space).

I ordered a Dell Optiplex G1 from RetroBox.Com. They specialize in reselling old gear that is surpluses by corporations when they upgrade their technology. For $48 shipped I received a 400MHz slot Celeron with 192MB of PC133 RAM. It was nearly perfect for what I'm trying to do. When I received the unit, I promptly stripped out the 4GB hard drive, generic CD-ROM, floppy drive, and PCI sound card. See pics here.

After cleaning everything out, it was time to install the CF to IDE Adapter I purchased. It takes a standard 40-pin IDE cable but with one exception; it has a pin for the dead pin spot just above the center notch. Having no IDE cables that fit this job, on the advice of a buddy I warmed a knife and melted the plastic covering the hole. The pin inserted nicely and everything was fine. Under the CF card are the instructions for jumper settings; it came configured for standard voltage and to be the master drive on the IDE channel so no changes were required. It takes a standard floppy power connecter and the LEDs are very bright. See pics here.

The next thing to do was to add an NIC. The motherboard on the G1 came with a 3COM 10/100 NIC built in. I needed an extra interface for WAN/LAN connectivity. Because m0n0wall is built on FreeBSD 4.x, I felt relatively comfortable pulling an old NIC out of a stack I have in my Cabinet O' Geek™ and slapping it in. As you'll see in the next installment, this was not a problem. It was interesting, however, to see how m0n0wall read the interfaces.

The next (and final) installment will cover loading the m0n0wall image on the CF card and initial setup of the unit. Thanks for reading.

That's right sports fans, Neodux now supports cookies. No longer will you need to login on each visit. Login once, and you're good for a month.

I'll probably rework it in the future, but for now it seems to work decently. Hope you like it. Remember, any other ideas and/or problems you have with neodux, post in the Neodux Sux forum. Enjoy!

Update: Just added the search box. It's very crude and simple, but it'll help if you're trying to find an old post. Just don't try anything fancy.

Update #2: For anyone that has logged in and is using cookies, currently; or if you see "Bad password" in the upper left-hand corner... You need to relogin, which you may have realized if you're reading this. I just encrypted the password stored in your cookie. (Should be a little more secure.)

I've finally got back on the air in the HF bands. After over 6 months of not having my radio reach any further than the local 2 meter repeaters (maybe 20mi away max), I finally have an antenna that lets me talk outside the state.

I bought a used Bilal Isotron 40 meter antenna from W6KIP off eham.net. I received the antenna after over a week-and-a-half long trek through the incredibly slow USPS shipping machine. That was on Friday, February 3. I assembled it and began thinking exactly how I wanted to mount it. I finally decided to mount the short "mast" (if you'd call it that) on one of the 3 vent pipes on the roof. I'll post a picture of it soon.

Part of my reason for using Isotron was the small size (only 22" wide). Looking at the antenna, you wouldn't even know it was an antenna, it looks more like a weather vane or birdfeeder. Being on campus, I didn't really want a very conspicuous antenna if I could help it. I haven't quite finished fine tuning the antenna, but I can do that as soon as I get my hands on one of the local ham's antenna analyzer.

I haven't made any contacts on it tonight due to an overwhelming amount of static on the 40-meter band. I've listened to a couple of nets, one on 7.2335 said that this is the worst noise they've had all month - what luck!

Update: Well, it turns out the noise isn't just on the band, although that particular night was particularly bad. It seems that the high level of noise (aka static) that I'm receiving is due to a local area thing. Most likely due to the power lines nearby. If I can pinpoint the source of the interference, the power company is obligated to resolve the harmful interference.

Update #2: It turns out it must be the power lines, I was able to go to the front of campus, shove the antenna in the ground and it received beautifully (for an antenna shoved in the dirt). Now, to find that pesky power line pole.

Update #3: Wow. So I called the power company and, not surprisingly, the service rep didn't have a clue what I was talking about. She tried to tell me that the power company has "the right of way" and that I just had to accept the interference. As politely as I could, I told her I didn't and that it was the power company's responsability to at least investigate the interference. She asked what kinda of amateur radio antenna I had, as if it mattered. She asked if any of my neighbors were experiencing problems on their radio. (wtf?) I told her I'd like to hear back from someone that understands about radio interference and what causes RFI on power lines. We'll see...

Update #4: The power company did send a guy out today. He called before he visited. I told him I'd be in class. After explaining the issue to him, he said he knew where my apartment was, and that if it's the powerlines I described to him, they belong to the university, and not Swepco. I had to get to class, but he said he'd leave me a note on my door. He came out, and it wasn't their powerlines. (I'm pretty sure he was right about the university being in control of the lines in question...) Now, to find the person in charge of the campus powerlines and go about getting them fixed in a way that won't get me evicted.