Our goal is to have a completely free GNU/Linux operating system installed on small, inexpensive hardware which allows us to use it not only as a fully customizable firewall and server appliance, capable of Advanced Routing & Traffic Control, but also as a general purpose computer.
We would like to set up the distribution so that it allows you to have a simple, easy-to-transport server appliance that provides firewall, DNS, email (SMTP and IMAP), DHCP, VoIP, Jabber, and whatever other services you need; so that when you are in a hotel room somewhere you can still rely on the server infrastructure that you're comfortable with. And you shouldn't have to stop downloading files just because you want to make a quick VoIP call. And maybe you would like to share your wireless with your neighbors but have all of your traffic go first? Why not?
We would like to be able to host all necessary development tools on this system, so that we can bootstrap a new complete linux distribution from it rather than needing to use a cross-toolchain.
At the moment, the Asus WL-700gE seems to have the most features for price and size on the market. So we are focusing on this hardware, at least for now. Should more appropriate hardware become available, we may redirect our efforts accordingly.
All of the software in our server appliance is built from source code, so that we can be completely confident that everything is built in a way that we approve of.
We would like to provide instructions on how to do this to anyone who is interested, so that anyone else with $240 (or so) can roll their own custom GNU/Linux distribution for a WL-700gE (or whatever similar hardware becomes available in the future).
We would like to set up the flash memory of the box so that it only contains a boot loader, implemented in Linux. We would like this boot loader to be approximately as flexible as the Netwinder's "Nettrom" BIOS: we would like the boot loader to present options (perhaps using a serial console or telnet over one of the network ports) that permit the runtime kernel to be loaded from a disk partition or over TFTP; and permit the root filesystem to be mounted from an (internal or USB-external) disk partition, or from an NFS server. (This could be considered similar to LinuxBIOS as well.) See linux boot loader for notes about this.
With just a bootloader in flash, one can easily experiment with new kernel versions without worrying about re-flashing the box, or potentially bricking it. In fact we would probably never have to write to the flash at all, except perhaps to write new default boot options to NVRAM.
Here's our page about how to
add a serial console to the WL-700gE.
Do we have a business plan? No. We aren't in it for the money. However, we plan to provide the custom distribution itself to people who want to use it but who do not want to build it themselves. Maybe there is a small amount of revenue potential there. And who knows? We may even offer to re-sell actual WL-700gE boxes with our custom distribution pre-installed, for people who do not even want to install it; maybe there is some money to be made there. But these are of secondary and tertiary importance, respectively. First and foremost, we want there to be a Free (as in Free Software) and powerful and good server applance. For ourselves, and for you.
|
|