[TriLUG] Debian vs Mandrake vs Redhat vs . . .

Jon Carnes jonc at nc.rr.com
Tue Mar 11 08:03:56 EST 2003


I've gotten FreeSwan running on RedHat but it's not a cake walk, and it
certainly isn't done by simply installing an RPM.  You should look up
the HowTo on the FreeSwan site.  It has a step-by-step install for your
favorite versions of RedHat.

You'll find it simpler to use PPTP via SSH if you are hooking together
two RedHat servers.  I used that for a long while back in the early days
(circa RH 4.3 and RH 5.2)

If you are using RedHat the simplest way to gain IPSec capabilities is
to purchase a LinkSys router with built in IPSec and use that as your
firewall.  

I have to point out that RedHat's lack of support for IPSec is what made
me first choose Mandrake as my prefered OS.  

A caveat to using Mandrake is that their hardware support tends to be
less wide and varied, so you need to use relatively popular Hardware to
gain the best robustness and stability.  <I've not experienced any
problems with Mandrake, but others profess to have had problems - so I'm
guessing that it is their HW choices>

Good Luck - Jon Carnes

On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 00:47, Turnpike Man wrote:
> Speaking of freeswan... myself and another have been trying to get freeswan
> running on red hat... which came with rpm even... apparently this is not
> enough??  We had rh 7.3 on each end, basically RR here in NC(me) and in
> TX(friend).  It is obviously not as easy as it appears or we just plain missed
> something.
> 
> David
> 
> --- Tanner Lovelace <lovelace at wayfarer.org> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2003-03-10 at 20:07, Chris Hedemark wrote:
> > 
> > > > I did look at Mandrake, but the 2
> > > > machines I've tested it on so far where less reliable then the Debian 
> > > > and
> > > > redhat ones.
> > > 
> > > Not to diss 'drake but my experience with it has been like what you 
> > > describe.  It's a darned good looking distro in its stock configuration 
> > > but I wouldn't run it on a server.  Or even an important production 
> > > desktop.
> > 
> > Chris and Joshua,
> > 
> > My experience has been exactly the opposite.  I've run Mandrake
> > as my main mail/web server for over 4 years now.  I've never
> > had a problem with it, and I've never been hacked <crosses finger> :-).
> > Mandrake has excellent support for servers.  Urpmi allows easy
> > updating.  Also, Mandrake was one of the very first distributions
> > to integrate security features (first with Bastille, now with msec).
> > They even include a "secure" kernel compiled with lots of things
> > to deter hackers (it used to be the OpenWall patches, but I 
> > think it's something new for 2.4... my favorite from the 7.x series was
> > the patch that set permissions on /proc... it exhibited itself
> > so that if you did a ps aux or a top, all you could see were your
> > own processes, there was no access to someone else's processes).
> > 
> > So, I would strongly suggest you take another look at Mandrake.
> > In addition, as Jon Carnes already mentioned, Mandrake has support
> > for Freeswan out of the box.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Tanner Lovelace
> > -- 
> > Tanner Lovelace <lovelace at wayfarer.org>
> > 
> > 
> 
> > ATTACHMENT part 2 application/pgp-signature name=signature.asc
> 
> 
> 
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