What is ARLinux?
Arlinux its for Advanced Router/Recovery Linux in two 1.44MB floppy disk or usb memory.
You can use it on olds machines with low RAM (+8MB) and cpu (+486) and can be used for router/firewall/nating/proxy or recovery a system or files.
Its based on 2.6 and 2.4 kernels with support for lots of NICs, iptables, filesystems vfat, ntfs, smbfs, solaris, others.., SCSI controllers, IDE, SATA, USB storage, etc, etc...
First i recommend you to try usb version (if your bios support booting from usb) its more easy and fast. If your bios is old and dont support usb boot try with floppy disk.
Some features are:
- ssh/telnet remote access
- httpd sever
- dhcp client, pppoe client
- Filesystem tools (e2fsck, fdisk, mkfs.ext2,mkswap, ... )
- Network tools (telnet,ping,nc,traceroute,ip,tc, tcpdump, ...)
- inadyn client for dinamic dns updates(dyndns, others)
- Links for web surfing
- Others (ntpdate, hexdump, nettoe (multiplayer tic-tac-toe) )
Separate tools and kernel modules:
Also you can download more modules for your hardware(if the kernel dont have support)and install more tools like:
- HONEYD V1.5b
- SQUID Version 2.6.STABLE3
- BIND 9.3.2-P2
- Samba 2.2.8a
- Zebra version 0.95a
- Nmap 4.20
- CentOS 4.6 Base system
- debootstrap
- netkit-routed-0.17
- tcpdump version 3.8.3
- IPTraf 3.0.0
- Bandwidth Monitor NG (bmw-ng) v0.5
- Links 0.99pre9-no-ssl internet Browser
- More tools comming soon....
- Kernel Modules
You have to download two files for floppy: boot and root.
For Kernel 2.6 have two version one for firewall/routing supporting iptables, most nic and network protocols but basic filesystems (ext2, vfat, swap and you have modules).
And the other version is for recovery/rescue
supporting lots of filesystem, scsi, sata, etc and basic network but not iptables for example...
Kernel 2.6 firewall/routing version:
arlinux-firewall-2.0-boot.img.gz
md5sum 1483c39590c64fef2d2ca56963401166
arlinux-firewall-2.0-root.img.gz
md5sum 77980706f119b6fced07c14a4385dec2
Kernel 2.6 recovery/rescue version:
arlinux-recovery-2.0-boot.img.gz
md5sum 1483c39590c64fef2d2ca56963401166
arlinux-recovery-2.0-root.img.gz
md5sum 77980706f119b6fced07c14a4385dec2
kernel 2.4:
arlinux-1.1-boot.tar.gz
md5sum 1483c39590c64fef2d2ca56963401166
arlinux-1.1-root.tar.gz
md5sum 77980706f119b6fced07c14a4385dec2
USB kernel 2.6:
arlinux-2.0-usb.tar.gz
md5sum dfe5cedd5c12d4876e6570512c0c6c74
USB kernel 2.4:
arlinux-usb-1.1.tar.gz
md5sum dfe5cedd5c12d4876e6570512c0c6c74
FLOPPY INSTALLATION
When finish the downloads you need to uncompress the .gz file and then you can create the two disk image to a differents 1.44 floppy disks with dd in linux or rawrite in windows. Example:
» In Linux:
# gunzip arlinux-xxx-boot.img.gz
Insert a blank floppy disk without bad cluster and:
# dd if=arlinux-xxx-boot.disk of=/dev/fd0
Another blank floppy disk and:
# dd if=arlinux-xxx-root.disk of=/dev/fd0
» In windows:
Then insert the boot floppy disk, reboot the computer and boot from the floppy. When ask for the root filesystem insert the root disk and press enter....if you have luck...in a few minutes, you get a working mini-linux system. To login use root user with blank password.
USB INSTALLATION
Untar arlinux-usb-xxx.tar.gz copy all files from arlinux directory to your usb memory then execute syslinux pointing to your vfat partition:
» In linux:
# syslinux /dev/sda
some memory works with
# syslinux /dev/sda1
syslinux runs under windows too....
Boot from your USB (if your bios support it) and login as root with blank password.
Note If arlinux boots fine you can load usb and usb_storage modules in kernel 2.4
(in 2.6 you have support on kernel) and then you can mount the usb memory and install
arlinux external packages or save config files or recovery data to your usb, etc.