[CentOS] Using a CentOS 6 Machine as a gateway/router/home server

[m.roth at 5-cent.us]

James B. Byrne wrote:
> On Mon, June 29, 2015 02:14, Sorin Srbu wrote:
> OS 6?
>>
>> Please note: I'm not criticizing, just curious about the argument
>> behind using a regular OS to do firewall-stuff.
>
> Maintenance.
>
> A consistent set of expectations does wonders for debugging odd-ball
> occurrences.  Why learn the idiosyncrasies of two distros when one
> suffices?  Just start with a minimal CentOS install on your
> router/gateway and add only the packages that you know that you need.
> Any critical omission will evidence itself in short order and can be
> added then; or the source of the need removed as circumstance
> warrants.

Yup. For, um, about a dozen years, I ran RH 7.1,7.2, 7.3, and eventually 9
on an old box that was nothing but a firewall router. I was seriously
paranoid - no gcc or any development tools, no X, not much of anything. To
the best of my knowledge, we never had a breakin.

I'm running DD-WRT on an ASUS router these days, and I'm *NOT* wildly
impressed. I mean, it seems ok, but the project is run in what I can only
describe as "amateur", in the worst sense of the word. The several
official developers release a build, and you can choose which one of
who's; people on the mailing list have "favorite builds", which is not a
phrase I have *ever* heard used with an o/s before, and I'm afraid to
update, as some of their "documentation" is out of date, or wrong.

At some point, I may just get a PI, and run CentOS, or some
firewall/router distro, though that would mean not having WiFi for guests.

       mark