continued from part 1 yesterday i received my soekris engineering net4801-60 in the mail. the unit seems to be in good condition and even came with a compactflash card and vpn1411 card which i won’t end up using. i will most likely end up selling the vpn card as i don’t use my smoothwall to create a vpn and the smoothwall os does not have support built into the kernel for a vpn card such as this anyway....

even though all of my parts have not arrived for my new smoothwall project, i can begin to do some initial setup. first of all, here are all of the items of which i needed to find for the project: soekris engineering net4801-60 soekris engineering 2.5" hdd mounting kit soekris engineering power supply 2.5" ide hard drive 10 foot serial null modem cable since i already have the hard drive, i can do some of the prep work by installing smoothwall....

like many people, i like to tinker with all sorts of different technology including multiple operating systems as well as the different roles they can play. one of the best ways that i can do that is by using a virtualization product. i just happen to use vmware server 2.0 on my debian lenny server. vmware is one of the leaders in virtualization (if not the leader). at home, i have five virtual machines that i rely on heavily for my day-to-day operations....

i’ve decided to look more into power efficiency of my computers at home. while my power bill isn’t horrible, it could most definitely be lower. there are only a few computers that i leave running 24/7. one of them is my smoothwall. while i built that computer with power efficiency in mind, i didn’t take things to the extreme that i could have. now i want to build a solution that is closer in power consumption to your typical home router appliance....

i never thought this day would come. i’m actually going to start a blog. what it is going to be about, i have no clue. it’ll probably be more random than lady gaga’s clothing but this could be an interesting learning experience.