Untangle

A good friend of mine, Hussain, brought up an issue at one of his sites. The users were using up all the bandwidth, and he wanted an option where could control bandwidth and traffic. He basically listed a few requirements :
1. Bandwidth control
2. Content Filtering
3. Central user control

Having worked with Microsoft technologies for sometime, I was tempted to suggest Forefront 2010. But he had mentioned that this was just an internet-sharing, non-domain enviroment. So I started looking elsewhere,and after a bit of googling, I came across Untangle (www.untangle.com). It's an open-source firewall/router with a few nice plugins that come for free, and some awesome plugins that you have to pay for.

I downloaded the ISO (450Megs for the 32-bit version) , and burnt a CD. Once we setup a PC for use, I popped in the CD and started the install. Untangle comes in a few versions ,(1.Standalone OS - based on Debian, 2. Windows based.,etc). Since this PC was not going to be used for anything else, I started the Standalone OS install. The installation was pretty simple with a few prompts for hard disk partitioning and some features. After I rebooted into the OS, then the setup wizard started, asking about network settings.

I entered the required settings, then the base OS came into view. The base OS is nicely designed with a dock at the bottom,showing the client icon and icons for terminal, reboot and shutdown.
You will be using the client mainly, which is a web-based client that opens up in Iceweasel.
After the first login, you will be asked to select the app packages that you want to install. They have a few questions as to what your installation will be used for, and then selects that packages based on your answers. You can customize the final selection , and start the download. There are a few big plugins, so be prepared to wait for the download to complete. I discovered this the hard way. While downloading the packages, I started playing the ADSL router settings, and in between I had to reset the router. I expected the download to resume on it's own. But it didn't :). So the package installation came up with an error message stating that apt-get exited with a code of 1! I tried restarting the package installation, but the error message came up again. So I was back on google, trying to find a solution. The untangle forums were very helpful, and the package installation procedure is properly logged in the log directory. I opened terminal and ran a command mentioned in the forums tail -n 100 -f /var/log/uvm/apt.log. This showed that one of the packages was not finishing it's installation. So I deleted the package, and restarted the download manually, using the apt-get command.Once the download completed properly, I could download apps using the GUI.
The interface is well designed and easy to navigate.
We've put up the rules,and the firewall was responding properly. The installation is still under testing, let's see how the response is.

In the beginning, there was a blog!

4+ years of being a system admin takes its toll on the mind. It's always been in the back of my mind to put down atleast some of the experiences I've had, with regards to IT that is. Bahrain, being a small island in the Arabian Gulf, and my home for the most of my life, doesn't really provide a HUGE amount of opportunities to experience IT in it's entirety. You could pin it on the laid-back attitude of people in embracing new forms of technology, or just the lack of resources for support and encouragement. This is just my opinion btw. I'm definitely interested in hearing an argument on this subject.

So as of now, I'm going to start penning down my IT experiences , and maybe I'll look back at it after a few years and smile!

To infinity and beyond!!!....