Linux Distro For Linksys WRT54G

scubacuda writes "Here is a tiny Linux distro for the Linksys wrt54g (d/l the distro here). In just a few seconds, you can give your access point's ramdisk syslog, telnetd, httpd (with cgi-bin support), vi, snort, mount, insmod, rmmod, top, grep, etc." Interesting -- "The script installs strictly to the ram disk of the box. No permanent changes are made. If you mess something up, power-cycle it."

does it still function as an AP

[Anonymous Coward]

does it still function as an AP properly?

Well this means...

[Nik Picker]

For us that buying a linksys router is even more preferable. For a personal user to any business criteria the advantage over having full source to this hardware is incredible. Certainly its going to ensure that they stay high on our prefered supplier list provising we can access the boxes and code. incidentally we install WiFi in Public spots for the UK which is being kinda slow to take this up.

Re:That's cool.

[garcia]

not terribly practical? Running snort on a wireless router isn't practical?

Slow? 125mhz MIPS is slow?

Might want to better explain what you mean.

Re:What is this for?

[Wumpus]

It's quite useful. You can turn it into a VPN server, have it serve DHCP, put your network's access control mechanism on it, and have a one box solution to a whole range of wireless networking problems.

More constrained by memory

[GGardner]

125 Mhz MIPS CPU is fast enough to do some interesting things, but the box only has 16 Mb of RAM, and no local disk for paging. That's going to be the limiting factor for most of the fun things you'd like to do with this box.

Re:What is this for?

[kevin_conaway]

Isnt that what it already does though anyway?

Re:More constrained by memory

[Anonymous Coward]

It warms my heart to see that people outside of the embedded business still care about and know how to handle low (by today's standards) performance/memory devices.

"Yes grandson, there was once a time where chips weren't able to and didn't need to run Linux and Java."

Re:Sigh

[localghost]

Or just say screw Broadcom and buy a D-Link or a Netgear card. The wlan-ng project supports the Prism GT 802.11g chipset.

wrong wrong wrong

[DrSkwid]

Putting this sort of stuff in that device is a cool hack but totally the wrong thing.

It should run a little file server, serving something like 9p [bell-labs.com] whihc would allow you to read/write settings and stream off the full data packets read for snorting.

fools.

Re:telnetd?

[Dog and Pony]

telnet is horribly insecure

Why yes it is, in the same way as your browser is "horribly insecure" when you login to slashdot.

It sends the data unencrypted, that is all. Granted, your server is probably more important than your /. account, but that was a really strange way of putting it.

If you never would use telnet for anything, then you'd never surf without https either. ;-)

TCP over TCP is fine when payloads are unpacked

[Effugas]

(Full Disclosure: I designed part of OpenSSH's tunnelling subsystem.)

TCP over TCP has issues when both stacks attempt to respond to the same error conditions. This happens very commonly with PPP over SSH. However, TCP port forwards in OpenSSH actually terminate at the daemon, which extracts the payloads, repacks them into completely independent streams, and sends them on their way.

In other words, an error condition on the routerexternal_site link doesn't show up on the clientrouter link.

OpenSSH tunnels have surprisingly high performance (it certainly beats most proxy implementation hands down). Easy to set up, too: Simply SSH into your host of choice with the -D option(say, ssh -D1080 user@host), set the SOCKS4 proxy in your application to 127.0.0.1:1080, and you're done. It's really quite simple.

--Dan

Re:Well this means...

[iabervon]

I prefer vendors who use GPL code and release the source when prompted. Whether they're doing it out of an understanding of the advantages or not, products with source available are just more useful (as this story demonstrates).

If everyone released source happily, the GPL wouldn't be necessary in the first place. The point of the GPL is, in fact, to compel unwilling participants who recognize the value of the available GPL code to participate in Free Software. The instances where the difference between the GPL and the BSD license matter are the ones where it is necessary (and, due to the GPL, possible) to prod a vendor into releasing source. Fortunately, it's not all that hard to catch a vendor red handed. (c.f., "security by obscurity is fine, but things you sell to the public are not obscure")

Of course, I've found LinkSys hardware unreliable in the past, so I'm not that excited about them.

Re:telnetd?

[DarkOx]

Ok, there is nothing but a ram drive this thing writes to. That means you would have to generate keys everytime the system boots. This things are VERY slow in terms of cpu power so you really don't want to be using strong encryption. Telnet is not EVIL it is what it is. It is a clear text protocol. There is nothing insecure about that. Telnet is as secure as its users. On a local *swiched* lan for instance its pretty safe, but it would be bad over shared media, or GOD for bid anytime you don't control all the hosts that will be relaying packet. I personaly would avoid it for wireless myself as well. To never use telnet is just ignorant though. In the right situation telnet does not jepordize security, and its much better then ssh where system and network resources are concerned.

Re:Sigh

[hacker]

Talk to your vendor. This is not our problem.

When there is a "lack" of code, drivers, support, etc. in the Linux community, 99.999% of the time, it is due to lack of vendor support. Talk to them first. Ask them for the documentation. Ask them for the code. For the drivers. If they say buzz off, then you have your answer.

Companies that make it hard or impossible to get their hardware working with Linux, make it hard to want to get it working with Linux. There are other vendors who do support and embrace Linux, and we should support them instead.

The unhelpful companies will take a hint, or they'll go away; either way, problem solved.