The little FreeBSD box that could

      5 Comments on The little FreeBSD box that could

Well boys and girls, I’ve been eBay-ing again.

This time, I picked up a little box.  It’s so little, it’s marketed as a ‘thin client’.  It sports a whopping 4GB of RAM and an astronomical 16GB SSD.  Let me pause so you can “oooh” and “aaah”.

This device also has a 4-port NIC in addition to it’s on-board network interface, so those of you in the know might already be figuring out what the fate of this device is.  Yes, I’m going to be running pfSense.  I’ve been wanting to do this for years, and now I’m embarking on a historic journey (forgive me for channeling Dr. Emmett Brown).

First thing I had to do was wipe the box and install pfSense 2.7.2 on it, which I completed a couple hours ago.  Now I’m just playing with it in sort of a “lab” environment so that I can be certain (or, more to the point, as certain as possible) that it will be prepared to take over for my edge network box provided by my ISP.  Since that soon-to-be-replaced network box also functions as a wireless access-point, however, I’m going to need to acquire a separate replacement for that before I make the cutover to the “new” firewall.

More as we have it, but I will note that this little endeavor has already resulted in the creation of a new “cheatsheet” here – so enjoy all the new “cheatiness”.

5 thoughts on “The little FreeBSD box that could”

  1. Phil

    Well isn’t that just an interesting project! Do keep the updates coming. I have to think this little box was money better spent than the Pi 4 I just got; I’m bored with it already.

    1. Mike Post author

      I will certainly do so. Kind of in a holding pattern at the moment til I figure out the wifi solution but that’ll probably pick up steam early in the new year.

      Google PiKVM; you can use that puppy and your RasPI as an IPMI alternative for one (or more) of your many servers! I might do something like that in the future as well.

      Happy New Year! Oh, and get to updating!!! 🙂

      1. Phil

        Excellent, thanks! That is exactly what I’m lacking; a use for it. I flashed Ubuntu desktop to an external ssd and got it working…. Now what…. I have no need for another desktop.

        Happy New Year to you all!! Yeah yeah, I’m always going to get back to my website. Always next week.

Comments are closed.