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m0n0wall is a project aimed at creating a complete, embedded firewall software package that, when used together with an embedded PC, provides all the important features of commercial firewall boxes (including ease of use) at a fraction of the price (free software). m0n0wall is based on a bare-bones version of FreeBSD, along with a web server (thttpd), PHP and a few other utilities. PHP is not only used for providing a web-based GUI for simple configuration, but also to handle almost the entire boot-time configuration of the system. This made it possible to do without the usual cryptic shell scripts that often contain awkward statements to perform such common things as string operations and loops. Because of this common programming language between the web interface and the configuration scripts, much code can be shared. To make the system even more transparent and easy to maintain, the whole system configuration, including relatively complex arrays like firewall rulesets, is stored in one single file in XML format. Except for the contents of that file, there are no other variables in a m0n0wall system. |
 Manuel Kasper is a 19-year-old student from Switzerland, currently in the last semester of his four-year apprenticeship in information science. The Internet, its implications on security, and especially the applications of dynamic web pages have been fascinating him for several years, coupled with a steadily increasing interest in alternative operating systems like BSD and Linux. He also likes to invent new things, and programming is his favorite tool to make that possible. His other not directly computer-related interests include photography, electronics and reading. |
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