
Revive a Cisco IDS into a Capable OpenBSD Computer - lelf
https://komlositech.wordpress.com/2018/12/30/revive-a-cisco-ids-into-a-capable-openbsd-firewall/
======
tyingq
Love articles like this, and there's lots of good info here but...

 _" So, how do you get around installing an operating system on a computer
which has no video output nor console redirection? For Windows and most Linux
distros, you can’t"_

Uh, no.

~~~
ohithereyou
Fedora: [https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f29/system-
admin...](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f29/system-
administrators-guide/kernel-module-driver-
configuration/Working_with_the_GRUB_2_Boot_Loader/#sec-
GRUB_2_over_a_Serial_Console)

Red Hat Enterprise: [https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-
us/red_hat_enterp...](https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-
us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/system_administrators_guide/sec-
grub_2_over_a_serial_console)

Slackware:
[https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:hardware:serial_installati...](https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:hardware:serial_installation)

Debian:
[https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch05s03.html.en](https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch05s03.html.en)

Ubuntu: [https://clinta.github.io/bionic-on-
apu2/](https://clinta.github.io/bionic-on-apu2/)

So basically every mainstream distro.

~~~
upofadown
The examples listed require the existence of a keyboard and screen. You would
have to make or find a distro that used the serial console at boot. I think
the whole point that the author was trying to make is that OpenBSD supports a
serial console by default with the regular installation image.

~~~
tyingq
They don't generally require anything special though. Maybe a parameter or
two. He installed OpenBSD on a serial console. Here's someone installing
Debian on a serial console: [https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/installing-
debian-over...](https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/installing-debian-over-
serial-console-apu-board/)

------
snazz
I’m impressed that there are no leaking capacitors in the pictures on this
post. I have a few late-90s-to-about-2005-era machines that are leaking
capacitor juice all over their motherboards.

~~~
sebazzz
Is the electrolyte from caps corrosive or can it be cleaned up?

~~~
jdietrich
That depends on the chemistry of the electrolyte and the quality of the
soldermask, but you'll rarely see more than superficial corrosion.

Batteries are a far bigger problem - most computers have a battery on the
motherboard to power the real-time clock, which will do horrendous damage to
the PCB if it leaks.

------
bluedino
We would drive image the old Barracuda mail appliances. The HD's would fail or
the fans would get obscenely loud. You could run them in a whitebox server or
VMware instance. As an added bonus they were much, much faster.

~~~
Aloha
I worked for Fish Networks, the hardware we sold was insanely underpowered,
and cheap.

------
doublepg23
Anyone here use OpenBSD in production?

I've used it off-and-on it always felt prickly, even with the excellent
documentation.

~~~
snazz
It’s the only OS on my primary laptop and desktop machine now! Everything
feels well-engineered and mostly very consistent. Compared to Linux and
FreeBSD, stuff like suspend/resume, brightness/volume hotkeys, etc. not only
work, but work on the console and with a plain window manager (no desktop
environment). The classic example is how Wi-Fi, even autojoining (as of
recently), works without the mess of ifconfig+wpa_supplicant+NetworkManager.
OpenBSD’s ifconfig supports all this without wrappers upon wrappers.

It’s still a very niche market, though, so you have to stick to relatively
well-tested technologies to avoid running into inconsistencies and issues.

~~~
doublepg23
That's great, I do like using `ifconfig` for everything - it just makes more
sense.

------
Damogran6
Did the same thing with a CS-Mars SIEM, many moons ago. The only things that
made it a Cisco appliance was the faceplate and a funky IDE-CF flash disk
adapter

------
peterwwillis
Reminds me of when I replaced Windows NT with Linux on a Dell NAS. Used extra
PCI slot to slap in a SATA controller, then built an external hot swap array
for off-site backups. A NAS and backups for less than $2K! (yeah it's not tape
backup, meh)

------
pnutjam
There are good linux distributions for console only x86 machines. I use voyage
linux, which is a bit dated. Alpine linux is also a good choice, but a bit
more difficult.

~~~
cpach
Why not just Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora?

~~~
pnutjam
None of these have good support for serial port only devices. Fedora and
Ubuntu take some tweaking to get them to pass real text to serial. Debian
would probably work ok.

The biggest issue is they aren't designed for read-only partitions which is
necessary for certain types of flash memory.

