Puneet Varma (Editor)

IPFire

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Developer
  
IPFire Team

Working state
  
Current

OS family
  
Linux

Source model
  
Open source

IPFire

Latest release
  
2.19 Core Update 107 / November 8, 2016; 3 months ago (2016-11-08)

Available in
  
Multilingual (i.e. English and German)

IPFire is a free Linux distribution which acts as a router and firewall in the first instance. It can be maintained via a web interface. The distribution furthermore offers selected server daemons and can easily be expanded to a SOHO server.

Contents

IPFire is based on Linux From Scratch and is, like the Endian Firewall, originally a fork from IPCop. Since Version 2, only IPCop's web interface is used.

System requirements

The modular design enables the user to create a tailor-made system fitting their needs. This can either be a very small system, which can be run on old hardware like a first-generation Intel Pentium, or a SOHO system with an up-to-date multi-core processor.

The required computer performance therefore depends on the scope of application.

At least a 333 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM and two network interfaces - one for the internet connection and one for the LAN - are required to run IPFire.

System details

IPFire caters to users not overly familiar with networking and server services. IPFire ships with an extensive package management utility (Pakfire) which allows the base system to be extended by various addons. The package manager also enables updates to address security issues.

The base system provides the following features:

  • Proxy server with content filter and caching functionality for updates (i.e. Microsoft Windows updates and anti-virus)
  • Intrusion detection system (Snort) with intrusion prevention guardian
  • VPN via IPsec and OpenVPN
  • DHCP server
  • Caching name server
  • Time server
  • Wake-on-LAN (WOL)
  • Dynamic DNS
  • Quality of Service
  • Outgoing firewall
  • System monitoring and log analysis

    • Addons

    IPFire offers addons which are maintained by the development team.

    Some available Addons:

  • File and Print server (Samba and CUPS, vsftpd)
  • Asterisk and TeamSpeak
  • Video Disk Recorder (VDR)
  • Mail server - Postfix, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Amavis (amavisd-new)
  • WLAN Access-Point (HostAPD)
  • Streaming server (MPD a.o.)
  • Tor - Routing the traffic to the Tor network or running a relay
  • Monitoring services like Nagio or NRPE

    • Ports

    IPFire has been ported to the ARM architecture in 2011. It currently runs on Pandaboard, Raspberry Pi and Marvell Kirkwood-based platforms like DreamPlug.

    Miscellaneous

  • IPFire is part of the c't Debian server version 4, which was released in August 2009.
  • The IPFire team is working on a version 3, rewrote from scratch, since 2009. The new version has been created to be user-friendly for system administrators.

    • References

    IPFire Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA