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Announce (and question): Masquerading PPP server based on Debian



Since last Saturday, I've designed and implemented a system based on
Debian GNU/Linux that's specialized for one thing: acting as a
masquerading PPP server, with automatic connect and disconnect, for a
small LAN.  The main things I've done are:

	* Heavily modified the boot floppies to make them simpler and
          less flexible; i.e., you aren't given choices about
          partitioning, it does it for you.  Thus the install is
          idiot-proofed enough that even the guys in the local
          computer shop can do it.  It also asks a few pertinent
          questions, like would you like to run a DHCP server, and it
          writes a configuration file for the administration tool (see
          below).

	* Added lots of packages to the base system.  The full list is
	  now apache apache-common bind bind-doc bsdmainutils
	  cracklib2 cron data-dumper dhcp diald dnsutils dwww emacs19
	  emacsen-common fdflush fetchmail groff isapnptools ldso less
	  lftp libc6 libdb2 libident liblockfile0 liblockfile0
	  libmime-base64-perl libnet-perl libpam0g libpam0g-util
	  libpwdb0g libstdc++2.8 libwww-perl lilo lynx man-db manpages
	  mbr mime-support mtools ncurses3.4 perl-suid ppp-pam psmisc
	  qpopper smail smbfs squid sudo syslinux telnetd webmin wget
	  xbase xlib6g xntp3 xntp3-doc zlib1g.

	* Wrote a perl and web-based admin tool for network
          configuration, uncreatively called `webmin' (I'll probably
          change that).  With this, to set up the entire system, you
          just run the install floppy, reboot, type a root password,
          then switch to another machine on the same network, turn on
          DHCP, and enter the URL `webmin' in a web browser (Apache
          has a virtual host bound to webmin.<local.domain>).

	  From this tool you can, currently, change the network
	  configuration, get information on configuring clients, or
	  set up dialup access, but I'm going to add more to it (i.e.,
	  squid configuration, passwords).

	* Wrote a secondary tool to let any user on the LAN tell the
          server manually when they want the modem to connect and
          disconnect, for when the automatic connect and disconnect
          disagree with what users want.

The reason I wrote this is that a local computer company paid me to do
it, but it's all free software based (of course, it's Debian based) so
I'm free to release it publically.

Question: Would this system be useful to others?  If so, how do you
suggest that I release it?  I have a certain amount of ftp space
available to me, enough that I could put up a full binary and source
release.

The main reason I don't just submit it as a package is that its `base
system' is 68 MB, which seems excessive for the main debian servers,
and it's not really a package, it's more like the boot floppies.  Note
also that the `webmin' tool isn't policy compliant: it shamelessly
mangles configuration files at user request, discarding any manual
changes.

Have there been other `Debian-based' systems like this in the past?
What have they done?
-- 
"To the engineer, the world is a toy box full of sub-optimized and
 feature-poor toys." --Scott Adams


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