# Gentoo router, IPCop frontend?

## Shades3D

The title says a good summary of what I'm after.

-- The situation:

I have a pretty beefy box as my linux router in my house.  It has replaced a linksys router that, even with dd-wrt, could not handle the extreme traffic my roommates and I would send through it, thus the beefy box now in place.

-- The problem:

I am a linux person. I can use command line and am happy with it + webmin. However, my roommate is a Windows guy. He likes GUIs and won't use a command line unless its simplistic. He owns the house, so the network is mostly up to him and thus I needed a GUI frontend for this linux box.

-- What I'm using now and what I'm looking for:

I currently have IPCop on this box as the distro of choice. However, I want to do more with this than just a router/firewall. I'm too lazy to want to install every little thing manually on IPCop. I would rather go with  Gentoo as my OS of choice on the box. However, in my search, I cannot seem to find a decent web based front end for iptables/iproute2. Shorewall is nice and all, and the webmin module helps, but it is missing some things that I need.

In order for the front end to be usable by my roommates, it needs port forwarding, fixed DHCP lease control, and QoS controls. I've yet to find any frontends that'll do that without getting a whole distro dedicated to it (smoothwall, ipcop, etc).

Does anyone know of any IPCop or smoothwall style web frontends that can sit on any (or at least Gentoo) linux distros that have those features? I've been looking for days  with no luck.

----------

## bunder

i wanted to build such a distro, but reneged on it...  smoothwall 3 is pretty snazzy, you might want to give it a try...

cheers

----------

## Shades3D

The problem with smoothwall and ipcop and similar distros, is that they're a pain to add things to outside of their own packages. They have awesome front ends for thsoe who aren't linux command line friendly, but they can't offer the ability to do other things without doing everything manually. I love them, but would love to have their front end style on gentoo since the box is also going to be a gameserver and dev box (yes yes, I know, don't dev on the router/firewall, but its residential, I'm not as concerned about it).

----------

## bunder

 *Shades3D wrote:*   

> The problem with smoothwall and ipcop and similar distros, is that they're a pain to add things to outside of their own packages.

 

i agree, this is partly the reason i wanted to make routoo...  it's a little more complicated than the basic gentoo tree, as i had planned on creating all kinds of special packages for different options and kernel configurations... unfortunately, i never got that far.   :Confused: 

----------

## Shades3D

Yeah, I saw your routoo project when I was doing my search before deciding on IPCop. I liked the idea and was saddened to see you had to put it on pause. However, as great an idea as it was, it was still more than I was looking for. I'm mostly just looking for an iptables and iproute2 front end that'll provide port forwarding, static DHCP leasing, and QoS controls via webpage. Seems noone's picked up a project like that outside of a seperate distro though  :Sad:  I've been debating picking up the project myself.

----------

## Sub Zero

So, if I understand the question correctly, you're just looking for something so he can manage the firewall with some point and click. How about FWBuilder?

----------

## Shades3D

I saw fwbuilder in my search as well. Couple reasons I haven't used that one:

1) We would like to be able to access whatever method we set up from any computer on the network. FWBuilder can only be accessed from computers its installed on.

2) FWBuilder doesn't interact with iproute2, thus it does not provide QoS. If QoS weren't an issue, I'd be using webmin with the iptables module. I just wish there were an iproute2 webmin module.

So, just to summarize what I'm looking for:

-- Needs to be a web front end that can sit on a distro like Gentoo.

-- Needs to interact with both iptables AND iproute2

-- Needs to be able to provide port forwarding, static DHCP leasing, and QoS

Unfortunately, it seems that most any web front end package out there is its own distro, none that sit on top of another distro.

----------

## Sub Zero

Maybe you can try something like vyatta? I don't have any experience with that (yet), but we're developing something vpdc-alike and I need something that can be used as a vrouter. So I'll be watching this thread  :Wink: 

----------

## Hu

You stated that installing extra packages on IPcop was unnecessarily complex.  What about starting with a Gentoo system and just transplanting the packages that make IPcop desirable?  Depending on how invasive they are, you could set them up in a chroot on the main Gentoo machine, so that the files stay nicely segregated.  There might be some hassle getting IPcop to understand how you have Gentoo configuring the network, but it would give you the same front end you are using.

The other option is to fix your roommate.  He needs to learn new things.  Now is a great time to start.  :Wink: 

----------

## Shades3D

Hmm, Smoothwall seems to have something I want. I noticed this after installing it and researching the forums:

http://community.smoothwall.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=175583#175583

Looks like there's a way to put smoothwall on top of another distro. Time to reinstall gentoo on the router!

EDIT: Also:

http://www.smoothwall.org/get/release/build.php

----------

## Sub Zero

That looks like a really nice guide. I'll definetly try this one out. Thanks!

----------

## dewhite

Did anybody ever have any progress with this?

I've always fought with my roommates about whether its better to have a robust router they can't configure, or a feable wireless router they can login to when the "intarweb no worky".

----------

