I'm always looking for cool Linux Tools and this weekend ,
I was looking at Trinux Linux when I needed to deploy an network sniffer.

While setting up my sniffer I found this very cool web browser called links...
Here is how some screenshots of sites viewed using links from the console...

• PCCS-Linux.com
• cthorn.com
• Linux.com
• slashdot.org
• Linuxtoday.com
• hlug.org
• microsoft.com
• securityfocus.com
• php.net
• apache.org
• freshmeat.net
• mysql.com
• hlug.net
• phpnuke.org
• freebsd.org

ANYWAY ... More about Trinux (+:

Creating network sniffers...
If you're a network administrator you may need a cost effective method of deploying network sniffers where ever needed. This can be costly if you use some of the commerical versions. However, I've found an extremely powerful set of tools that function very well, when set up to function as network sniffer... The core of this set of tools is Trinux a :

Trinux is a ramdisk-based Linux distribution that boots from a single floppy disk, loads it packages from an HTTP/FTP server, a FAT/EXT2/NTFS filesystem, or additional floppies and contains precompiled versions versions of popularSource network security tools for port scanning, packet sniffing, vulnerability scanning, sniffer detection, packet construction, active/passive OS fingerprinting, network monitoring, session hijacking, intrusion detection, and more. Trinux also provides support for Perl, PHP, and Python scripting languages.

I downloaded boot080pre1.flp from: ftp://download.sourceforge.net/pub/sourceforge/trinux/

executed the following command:
$ sudo dd if=boot080pre1.flp of=/dev/fd0

I also downloaded the entire distribution
from: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/trinux/latest/pkg/

Put the files on an server on my local lan and

$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
$ vi /mnt/floppy/tux/config/server

NOTE: I cut everything and just put my local server here...
setup dhcpd and was up and running... (+:

to install additional software while logged in just type;
# getpkg winscan.tgz
# nbtscan -r /24

Starting the applications you can use to trouble shoot your lan.

• ntop Network TOP
• Console Ethereal
• trafshow
• iptraf
• nmap

There are a large array of network and security auditing tools available to the Trinux distribution...

Putting a copy of the distribution on my local lan helped alot, prevents you from having to go over the wan link to download everytime you want to implement a sniffer...

To test Trinux on my LAN at home I setup another cool Linux technology

Linux Floppy FireWall

I'm using the Linux floppyfw with a linksys cable router.

Layout

---[cablemodem]---[linksys Cable/DSL NAT Router]
                        _  
                        |
                        |
                        |
                        |
                        |
  |------------|--------|-----------[4 port hub]
 [computer1]   [computer2]              | |  |  
                                      | |  |  
  |-----------------------------------| |  |  Network
 [computer 3: Linux Server]              |  |  Router
                                        |  | 
  |-------------------------------------|  |---------| 
  |                                                  [computer 4: Trinux Network Sniffer]        
  |----[eth0] computer FloppyFW [eth1] -------|    
  eth0 =   eth1 =   |
                                              |
 [ 24 port Hub ] -----------------------------|              
        |                Network
        |                Router
        |
        |
        | -----[computer 1: Trinux Network Sniffer] 
        |
        |
   [ This goes to my internal network ] 

  I have a number of PC on my LAN, systems ranging from

• MP3 Server (working on icecast)
• DHCP server, File
• and more ...