Hardware

Any one tried installing m0n0wall on a D-link DSA-3100 yet? it appears to have an EM551 mainboard with an NS Geode GX1 300MHz CPU...... not sure of the other specs. I would like to try and get m0n0wall up and running on this thing.

Any pointers on where to begin?

More specs here:

http://www.cpuboards.com/cpu-boards/em-551.htm

The memory spec is "Onboard 64MB (32MB optional) SDRAM." Not sure what that means, looks backwards to me, perhaps it's really 32MB standard, 64MB optional? Or is that 64MB standard that can be upgraded another 32MB for 96MB?

The ethernet is RealTek. These seem to have not the best reputation, but I haven't had any problems with them myself.

I have run m0n0wall on machines with only 64MB of RAM, but they could not be upgraded via image upload due to insufficient RAM. It wasn't always this way though. But as m0n0wall grew incrementally over time with new versions, eventually image uploads began to fail here.

I had to backup the configuration file, pull the Flash Drive out, burn the new image file to it, put the Flash Drive back in, do the basic configuration, and finally restore the backed up configuration file.

I know that the m0n0wall web site says "The recommended amount of RAM for m0n0wall is 64 MB." But it has been my experience that this is inadequate if upgrading in place via image upload into the running firewall. 128MB is more than enough though, and using more than that gains you nothing that I am aware of.

Good luck if you try it. Being discontinued, these Dlink DSA-3100 units should be inexpensive on the surplus market if they can be found.