[Soekris] 5501 is OK with pfSense embedded firewall image

[Martin Johnson]

Just a quick note to report that the 5501 seems happy running the
current (1.2-BETA-1) embedded firewall image from pfSense.org, which is
based on FreeBSD 6.2.  So for a quick firewall setup (with or without
VPN) you can just cat the .gz image to the CompactFlash card device,
stuff the card into the 5501, then boot up.  You'll need the serial port
set to 9600 for initial config. Thereafter, pfSense config uses a web
browser.

Navigating around the PHP-based web config interface in pfSense seems a
lot faster on the 5501 than on the 4801 :-)

I'm not using this setup in anger, so I can't positively confirm whether
its stable enough for production use. As a quick test it looks fine, but
Poul-Henning Kamp made some fixes to the FreeBSD VR Ethernet drivers,
and those fixes might take time to reach pfSense. (I don't know whether
the pfSense guys have a 5501 yet.)

Poul: how important are the VR Ethernet fixes?  Do they affect
stability, or are they performance tweaks only?  In other words, will a
standard FreeBSD 6.2 RELENG install suffice for a server with modest
performance requirements, or do I need to take -CURRENT for stability on
the 5501 hardware?

Cheers,

- Martin.