The Linux Router Project

If you build it, they will come... The following definition can be found at http://www.linuxrouter.org/; however, LRP needs a little more thorough explanation than this:

In my travels for information on building a router with Linux, I could not actually find anyone who made what I had in mind. Either they were using a full distribution on a hard drive, or something on a floppy that was so minimal a second complete machine was needed to configure the disk. I decided to try to make this self-contained “mini-system” myself. I started with a minimal base install of Debian 1.1 which totaled around 35MB and began slashing (and fixing what I had broken) until it was down to around 3.2MB. This was small enough to fit on a 1.68MB floppy as a gzipped initrd image. It was not pretty, but it did the job as a router for my 33.6K line, which eventually progressed to ISDN.

After several months, I wanted to take what I had made and create a more generic system for other people to use. I put out the call on Usenet and a few private lists, then began a mailing list with a handful of interested people. The rest, as they say, is history. That mailing list now exceeds 600 names, and at least 25 new downloads of LRP are done each day. This is all with LRP still remaining mostly unadvertised.

My single-disk hack job has evolved into a modular micro-sized operating system. It makes a capable base platform for just about anything you could want to build for “light”, secure, efficient use: routers to terminal servers, mini web servers to DNS cache and even doorbells. (No, I am not kidding.)

First, Linux Router is quite small. The base root file system is only 2.5MB and compresses down to 830KB. With the addition of a kernel, it easily fits on a 1.44MB floppy with several hundred kilobytes to spare for kernel modules and additional packages. A Zip or LS-120 will provide seemingly limitless space. Flash RAM can also be used and companies like Sandisk and M-Systems make Linux-capable products.

LRP's root file system is contained in a gzipped tar archive. The directories /etc (etc.lrp), /var/log (log.lrp) and /lib/modules (modules.lrp) are broken out into their own archives for easier backup. At boot, the Linux kernel dynamically creates a MINIX file system on /dev/ram0 and mounts it as / (root). It then extracts the root archive (root.lrp), storing it in the / directory, then proceeds to execute linuxrc. linuxrc sets up the base root file system (like creating /dev) and then attempts to mount the boot device and install any remaining packages (such as etc.lrp, log.lrp, and modules.lrp). The remaining bootup is noticeably similar to a typical full-sized Debian Linux install.

The system will be running solid state from the RAM disk. This means all changes you make will have to be backed up to the boot medium. This is not a difficult task, as it is all automated by scripts that can recreate the root and add-on packages from package listing files found in the /var/lib/lrpkg directory. lrcfg is a menuing system that gives you a nice interface to the package backup system as well as configuration files and (minimal) on-line help.

Note that LRP does not have to run from RAM. It is perfectly fine just to dump the root and package archives to a hard drive partition and bypass the “embedded” RAM disk features.

If you should drop to the command line, you will find ash as your default shell. ash supports full Bourne shell scripting, and nearly the entire LRP base is fully customizable shell scripts. Moving around at shell level, it will be hard to tell you are not using a full distribution.

Some of the finer details include complete SysVInit, cron, libc6 (glibc) and sed. The system and binaries are generally kept up to date with the current Debian release. Over 60 commands are available in minimal or emulated form (using ash and sed): cat, cp, dmesg, dd, grep, cut, passwd, gzip, tar, tail, mnc (mini-netcat), et al. Of course, all standard and many extended networking commands and daemons are also available: route, netstat, ipfwadm, ipautofw, ipportfw, inetd, telnetd, tftpd, routed, et al. Anthony's Editor (ae) serves as your editor.

If this is not enough, you can also load Secure Shell, pppd 2.3.5, Portslave RADIUS client, gated, snmpd and others. Add-on packages such as minicom and bash 2.0 are also available. Add-on packages are installed once and merged with the root archive at back-up time, unlike full packages which are kept autonomous.

Slackware users can stuff in almost anything else by hand. Remember that LRP is real Linux—just smaller. It is capable of running anything a full-size distribution can run, given the libraries and space.