How to Install Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP2 and Review on VMware

Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP2 Installation and Review on VMware

Easy tutorial on how to install and review Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP2 on VMware Workstation/Player step by step. We'll also look at installing VMware Tools on Smoothwall Express Firewall for better VM performance and usability. This tutorial is also helpful for installing Smoothwall Express on physical computer or bare-metal server.

Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP2 Installation Steps:

1. Download Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP2 ISO
2. Create Virtual Machine on VMware Workstation/Player
3. Start Installation
4. Initial Configuration and Enable SSH Remote Access to Smoothwall Express
5. Download and Install VMware Tools
6. Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP2 Review

Installing Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP2 and Review on VMware

What is Smoothwall Express?

Smoothwall Express is a Linux base firewall and designed to defend your users and your network from external attacks. It's a Free Firewall that includes its own security-hardened GNU/Linux operating system and an easy-to-use web interface. It does not require knowledge of Linux to install or use.
Smoothwall Express Website: http://www.smoothwall.org/
VMware Tools for Smoothwall Express 3.1: https://goo.gl/wgYJ0B

What is VMware Tools?

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine's guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. VMware Tools Services handle communication between the guest and host operating systems. VMware Device Drivers replace many of the guest operating system drivers for physical hardware to ensure network connectivity and prevent drive compatibility issues. A memory control driver provides increased efficiency in memory allocation. Guest OS can be nicely shutdown or reboot without even logging onto the VM.

Smoothwall Express 3.1 New Features and Improvements

This release is a refresh of the Smoothwall Express 3.0 foundation and a culmination of five years of effort. he build system has been thoroughly worked over, and the user interface has been freshened with several presentation improvements. Here are just a few of the software upgrades: Linux 3.4.104, glibc 2.18, gcc 4.7.3, perl 5.14.4, squid 3.3.13, httpd 2.2.27, iptables 1.4.14, and openswan 2.6.41. Some of these updates are ready to enable new features such as HTTPS proxying in squid. In addition to these updates, numerous bugs present in v3.0 that caused hard-to-reproduce system problems and minor errors in the user interface were squashed.

1. The build system is vastly improved. It is now re-entrant (a build will continue where it left off when an error is encountered and fixed), and compiles will use all CPU cores present). It should produce correct i586 or x86_64 code for all packages
2. Grub Legacy is now used to boot all drives: ISO images, flash installers, and the installed target
3. SMP is standard for 32- and 64-bit installations. Smoothwall Express will now use those extra CPU cores
4. Installation on KVM, Xen, VMWare, Hyper-V and other virtual systems is supported. Operation on KVM was used extensively during development; operation on other hypervisor systems is known to work but hasn't been tested as thoroughly. Virtio disk and network devices are supported; they work well with KVM
5. The kernel now provides /dev entries for all devices it knows about; udev handles the rest
6. The latest firmware blob from kernel.org has been included to make more hardware usable with Smoothwall Express
7. The collection of manufacturer drivers for NICs and NADs has been moved into a separate package to make it easier to provide updates

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