from very early this morning...

[Gary Kline]

I'm enclosing most of what I wrote late last night; essentially a request
for how to restrucure my network so that it is easily to maintain and
uses much less energy.  --I sent a few emails from a different platform
where I have mutt.  Don't know why this did not get out; it was in my
~/Maildir/DOT/[directories on my mailserver. [?]

Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:56:46 -0700
From: Gary Kline <kline at thought.org>
To: Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de>
Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: mayday, mayday
X-Organization: Thought Unlimited. Public service Unix since 1986.
X-Of_Interest: With 22 years  of service to the Unix community.
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.17+20080114 (2008-01-14)
Status: RO

{edited for [hopeful] clarity}


	it was my pfsense firewall.  it took more than 8 hours, an M.E.
	buddy retired from Boeing coming over, three fruitless phone
	calls, then my just-pondering a good 20 minutes.  finally, i
	power-cycled the firewall, and on reboot, fsck cleared
	out a bunch of mismatches and other disc garbage.  upon full reboot,
	i was back in contact with the rest of the world.

	the firewall still isn't working completely, but i doubt it is
	very serious.  no worms ... [?] i just can't ping my local IP's.

	both my main server and firewall are running on extremely old
	hardware.  hp kayaks that i was given years ago and upgraded.
	disks, memory, probably one-new-fan.  still, they are fast
	approaching their end/live.  this brings up some questions that
	i have been meaning to ask this list for several weeks. 

	until my wife interrupted my dreams with: "you've got to get up
	and fix your system; i can't get on my laptop.", i was going to do
	the usual and postpone this for another few days [/weeks/months].  

	anyway, i was ++stumped.  i rebooted everything, Et Cetera.
	nutshell, around 16.40 i collapsed on sofa, then decided that
	this has to be D-day; i.e.:: decision-day.  or maybe Q-Day,
	time to ask the list for advice.

	I have four (4) tower cases here, and between  3 "laptop"
	computers, not all in continuous use.    in short, 
	it is time, or Past-Time, to cut my energy use here.

	First: i will always stick with FreeBSD as my primary server.
	no matter what i wind up using as toys, {music, videos, [...]}
	i'll pony up for at least two new computers.  one to do my
	DNS,mail, and web  [and firewall??], and 

	Second, one to replace this desktop, which has hosted FBSD since 
	version 2.0.5.  I know where stuff lives ... and so on.


	Do i really need something as beefy as a pfsense standalone?
	is there a way i can run it in a jail?  before my dec., '06
	network meltdown i was using ifp quite well on ns1.thought.org.
	After a few weeks of help from jon horne, i had a new/used Dell
	plus the firewall.  My former server was stripped down a
	bit.  

	i got highspeed DSL from Qwest, our telco, a year ago.  jon
	talked the installed thru how things fit.  i had no clue then,
	nor now.  the firewall has two NIC's; the Qwest router is part
	of my network.  from the firewall, the cable goes into my
	16-port switch.  the server also plugs into the switch.  that
	is about the limit of my understanding right now.

	if i've made any sense so far, great!  if not,i'm open for
	questions.  i'm also open for suggestions on how to alter this
	network configuration.  

	thanks for reading this far.

	gary


It might be simplest to replace my firewall and my server with
low-energy-usage i386 computers; is there a better way?


> 
> -- 
> Polytropon
> From Magdeburg, Germany
> Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
> Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...


-- 
  Gary Kline  kline at thought.org   www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
        http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org