Mysterchr

Today I’m working on building out a new Smoothwall box and I thought it would be fun to share with you the experiences I have. This way readers and future Smoothwall installers know what they’re in for. I know in a previous post I said something about how much Smoothwall sucks because when you update it, it removes all of your IP Routing tables. But that not withstanding Smoothwall is still my employers choice of firewall therefore that is what we will be installing today.

1. First download a copy of Smoothwall. It only took me about five minutes to download and my connection here isn’t to great so it shouldn’t take long to get.
2. Now burn the .iso to disc, I personally use Infrarecorder.

Well after my recent Smoothwall disaster I decided to go another route instead of re-installing Smoothwall. My Linux experience is a bit limited and not as vast as my Windows experience, however I do have some Linux background. I’ve used Ubuntu for testing and for play on several occasions. I’ve never had to support it in a real life scenario, but I feel confident that the community will be able to help me with anything I can’t figure out on my own. That’s one of the best parts about Ubuntu, the community. So here’s what I did to replace my Smoothwall.

1. I already had a copy downloaded and on a UNetBootin thumb drive that was good to go so I popped it in the slot. It booted right away unlike Smoothwall which had to be coaxed into it. I went straight for the install button and by the time I poured myself a cup of coffee it was done. Apparently the copy I had was a bit old so I had to download a bunch of updates, but with the way Ubuntu handles updates that wasn’t an issue at all.
2. I followed the simple instructions for enabling ufw, ics, and forwarding on the ufw setup guide.
3. After a bit of IP routing it was simply PnP from there.

For those of you that don’t know when you update Smoothwall it has a habit of deleting all of your settings and then crashing…This SUCKS…Avoid it as best as you can. My only advice is forget updating. Just download the latest version, burn to a cd, and reformat.