Re: A seed for the concept of a network router

[Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com>]

Hi Marek,

Marek Paśnikowski <marek@marekpasnikowski.pl> writes:

> Dear All
>
> I am struggling to identify the most basic information to take the first
> step towards building a Guix-based network router.  I would like to ask
> for a minimal service configuration to meet the following goal:

I think you'd be best served by the "bare-bones.tmpl" template which can
be found in the Guix sources under gnu/system/examples/bare-bones.tmpl.

Be aware that it is not exactly light in terms of disk space: the last
time I generated a disk image from this configuration, it weighed more
than a GiB!

> I have a fanless mini-computer with two ETH interfaces.  It currently
> sits under a proper router device like all the other devices in my LAN.
> I wish to be able to physically hook it up between the router and the
> WAN modem in such a way, that all incoming traffic (except one SSH port)
> gets immediately forwarded to the router, as if there was nothing else
> between the modem and the router.  Bonus points if it is possible to
> fake the MAC address.
>
> The underlying idea is that I would then be able to experiment with all
> the available options and concepts without fear of bricking my learning
> process.  Thanks to the machine being an actual computer, I have the
> ability to connect a display and a keyboard to really break the concept
> of routing down to its atoms and come back safely to a previously
> working configuration.

Your other questions appear to be more related to networking than to
Guix itself; there are many resources out there detailing how to do this
kind of thing in various ways -- your would probably use some command
line interface such as 'ip' to setup route and networks.

Once the required command line is known, a one shot Shepherd service can
run it at boot to persist the network configuration.

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim