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Just Getting Started with Sophos XG Home

Aoresteen

Hello Sophos experts!

 

I'm a retired CIO with 30 years in the technology field and I decided to add a firewall device to my home network.  Currently:

 

AT&T Uverse Modem ----DMZ----> Linksys WiFi Router --------> 24 port hub -------> desktops, printers

(192.168.1.255)                           (192.168.83.1)                                                      192.168.83.xxx

 

What I would like to do is:

AT&T Uverse Modem ----DMZ----> Sophos XG ------> Linksys WiFi Router --------> 24 port hub -------> desktops, printers, servers

(192.168.1.255)                                 |                     (192.168.83.1)                                                      192.168.83.xxx

                                                           |-------------> 8 port hub ---------------> Linux development, Raspberry Pi, sandbox

                                                                                                                        (192.168.143.xxx)

The network currently has two people on it: me & my wife.  We both have desktops, phones & tablets.  Very little load on it.

 

Digging through my junk bins I've come up with this hardware to cobble together a box to run Sophos XG Firewall Home:

MOBO: Intel D101GGC Socket LGA475, micro ATX form
   CPU: Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz 828

   RAM: 2GB (max the board can take)

Storage: SATA 160GB Hard Drive

Optical Drive: IDE Samsung DVD Writer SH-S222 ver. A
NIC on MOBO:  Realtek 8101L LAN adapter
NIC2 PCI: Linksys PCI EtherFast 10/100 LAN Card  LNE100TX Ver 4.1

NIC3 PCI: Linksys PCI EtherFast 10/100 LAN Card  LNE100TX Ver 4.1

The Linksys PCI NICs use the Linux Tulip driver that's been in the Linux  kernel since at least 2001 IIRC.

 

My normal practice is to make the first partition 2GB FAT & install PC DOS 7 in it, then HIDE it so the next OS should leave it alone.  I use it mostly for sorting out hardware issues.  The remaining space I make a primary partition NTFS, FAT32, or Linux as needed.

 

Will Sophos leave my 1st primary partition alone and use the 2nd partition or will it trash the MBR and organize the drive they way it wants it?

 

I ordered a cheap micro ATX case to hold everything.

 

Any other issues I might run into?

 

Thank you for your help!

 

 



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  • +1

    Aoresteen,

    Sophos XG will destroy all partitions on the HDD and use of all them. Dedicate a HDD to Sophos XG in order to avoid any issue on MBR.

    Thanks

  • 0 in reply to lferrara

    Thank Luk!

     

    I will let Sophos have the entire drive & forgo any maintenance partition. 

     

    ----------- Begin Rant -----------

    Now, from a theoretical standpoint, that is bad behavior by an application and if it was developed by one of my teams it would never leave development.  Applications need to be well behaved and co-exist with other applications.

     

    Taking over the entire drive when it needs only 60GB goes back to the DOS days when applications thought they were the only one playing in the sandbox & could do what they wanted to.

     

    However, Sophos XG Home is provided for free and it mimics a stand-alone firewall appliance that owns the "appliance" so it gets the entire sandbox. And Sophos is clear on this.

     

    -------END RANT --------------

     

    What is the best way to image the Sophos computer & restore it should I suffer a hard drive failure?  I'd like to be able to just replace the drive & image it with the latest Sophos XG back-up and take off running.

  • +1 in reply to Aoresteen

    Aoresteen,

    make sure to backup the configuration at least once (ore scheduled it under Backup & Firmware menu). You can restore the config. on the same or different system. Make sure that the destination system has the same number of NICs or greater.

    Regards

  • 0 in reply to lferrara

    Thanks! Will heed your advice.

    I am making progress. Had a weird issue that took a couple of days to sort out. Sophos would hang after I told it yes go ahead and wipe the drive and install. No error msg, just hang.

    Swapped install sata hard drive. No help. Swapped sata cable. No help.  Finally tried to boot Partition Magic 8 from a floppy.  Critical error.  Tried to Fdisk from  a DOS boot floppy. Failed. Boots fine to DOS 7.  Removed USB floppy drive, tried another usb floppy drive, all is fine.  Turns out that the 1st usb floopy drive was going bad. Ugh!

    I decided to install two PCI dual NIC cards giving me 5 NICs. Install went ok tonight. UI reminds me of 1984 DOS installs.  Not a lot of info on the screen. It found all 5 NICs, hd, and RAM. Got to where it asks for the password. What the heck? Spent 30 minutes looking for the password to no availl . Finaly found a clue in a thread that it is "admin".  Where is it listed in the documentation?

    I reset the IP to 192.168.xxx.xxx. Since I have 5 NICs, which one is the new IP set to?