On 26/08/2020 13:12, Greg Troxel wrote:
I'll second this recomendation. I'm also using one as my gateway firewall. Currently running NetBSD 8.2-STABLE as an npf firewall.My recommendation to the broader question of "router box to run NetBSD" is the PC Engines apu2. This is a fanless system with a 4-core amd64-compatible processor:
I've successfully rewritten the BIOS on mine using flashrom on linux and the brief test I did of the NetBSD version of flashrom suggests it ought to work. It does correctly identify the BIOS flash chip successfully.
Didn't realise that but I got mine from linitx.com in the UK and then just added an off the shelf mSATA SSD from Amazon as the ones sold with the devices are tiny ;)In addition to the technical stuff, PC Engines has been great to deal with. The ordering process is slightly unusual: you basically submit a list of what you want and they email you an invoice with actual shipping (because international shipping is hard to figure out, but it's totally reasonable). You then pay and they ship; delivery to the US was fast enough I wasn't bothered by it (1-2 weeks?). (In EU you have to buy from an in-country distributor due to recyling rules, but in non-EU you can order from them direct.)
One other thing to note is that the apu2 case is part of the heatsink so its not a good idea to put other kit directly on top of it. I found this out the hard way as it caused my VDSL modem (which was sitting on top) to occasionally disconnect and reconnect when the ambient temperature reached 30degC.
Mike