Subject: First impression of T.Rex

From: Bill Kocik <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 19:39:46 -0800

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Hi all,

I've spent the last three days fiddling with a copy of the T.Rex
source code. Just a quick first impression:

It won't compile on Solaris 7 x86, so unless you're really good
at trouble-shooting compile problems and fixing code, I wouldn't
try it on that platform. Of course, noone ever told me it
*would*, but I tried it anyways since it's reported to compile on
2.6. (HINT: Modifying 100/src/include/firewall.h will get you
past step 1). If anyone does get it to run on Sol7 x86, I'd love
to hear your story.

It will build on Red Hat Linux 6.1. A friend of mine reports to
have built it with virtually no problems. I had to tweak a few
things, but nothing major.

The documentation has some errors. If you plan to run this, plan
on reading Makefiles, and plan on working past a lot of errors in
the documentation. A couple of hints: Four of the keys you're
told to change are *not* random alphanumeric strings as the
documentation says (two of the six keys you need to change are,
four are not), they're 4-byte hex values and must be treated as
such unless you really have a thing for compiler errors like
"numeric constant contains digits beyond the radix". Also, when
you try to create your first user or group and you can't figure
out why "gwuser.dir" doesn't exist or where it's supposed to come
from, the answer is "gwuser -c". If following the included
README.build file actually works, consider it a stroke of luck.

There is typically a fine line firewalls must walk between having
an ultra-secure network, and having a usable network. In my
opinion (read that carefully: this is just my opinion) T.Rex
crosses over that line in a couple of ways. For example, if you
want to do authenticated FTP you're going to have to get a
CryptoCard (or one of a couple of other similar products which
are also supported). I can see this being an option...but with
T.Rex you *can't* authenticate to the FTP proxy without one. Same
goes for ptelnet (their encrypted telnet proxy). 

In all, though, it seems to be quite a feature-rich package,
especially when you consider it's free if you don't mind
compiling it yourself. The documentation could sure use some
fixing, though.

Just my $.02. Anyone else have anything to contribute? (By the
way, I know this is the FWTK mailing list, but I saw a few other
posts about T.Rex so I figured I'd go ahead and share my
experience with you all...sorry if you think I shouldn't have.)

Also, if anyone's really interested in it, I might see if I have
time over the coming days/weeks to put together a comprehensive
how-to for building and installing the thing on Red Hat Linux
6.1. Lemme know if you'd like a copy. If there's enough interest
it might inspire me to get the thing done (anyone from Freemont
Avenue listening? It's okay for me to do that, right?).

-- 
Bill Kocik
Taos Mountain - "The Sys Admin Company"
Santa Clara, California
http://www.taos.com

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 15:15:55 +0300

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nuqneH,

Bill Kocik <[email-masked]> said :

> experience with you all...sorry if you think I shouldn't have.)

I just tried to get rpcproxy from there and compile it standalone on BSD
system. Only a few patches and it works ;)
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