On Wed, 8 Oct 1997, Anton J Aylward wrote:
> At 07:11 PM 08/10/97 +0100, Phil Cracknell wrote:
> ## Reply Start ##
> >
> > I need a little advice on the spec of a laptop for penetration testing.
> >
> > Originally I wanted a Sparcbook, but this is not possible now (for lots
> > of reasons) so I thought about a high-powered pentium laptop and
> > loading Solaris X86 and I can then also install NT.
> >
> > Does X86 support most PCM/CIA network cards?
> >
> > Would I be best advised to choose a SCSI-based disk/CD for ease of
> > install? (X86 again!)
>
> Why make it complicated.
> There are plenty of tools written in C which will compile to run under DOS.
> If you really want to be fancy and run UNIX, try a lightweight LINUX.
> You could probably make do with an old 386 or 486 discard, 8Meg or RAM
> and just a few hundred meg of disk. Cost is asymptotic zero.
> It certainly saved my old laptop from being a boat anchor.
>
I don't agree (that is: for me potential boat anchors don't do the job)
My penetration laptop is a Pentium 120. You definitely will go for fast
machines. To me it proves to be a time saver as I keep my kernel as small
as possible, and sometimes I need Token Ring, then I need Ethernet or
radio or other drivers (I don't like using loading modules, but maybe
that's a matter of preference), so I recompile my kernel a lot. Also
sometimes you need specific drivers/software you need to compile on the
fly...
Also lot's of memory is really convenient (8 meg is out of the question):
Most of the time I have several windows opened: one for giving commands,
one for tailing log files, one for tailing a tcpdump during the test,
etc.. When using tools such as ISS or Ballista, log-analysing tools or
when connecting to 100 MB/s networks, lot's of memory is very nice to
have. And that brings us to of disk space: megabytes of tcpdump output is
no exception for me, so I would go for big disks.
I use Linux and FreeBSD on my laptops. I also have Windows NT (go for
fast!!!). I don't have any experience with SPARCbooks. I use 3Com PCMCIA
Ethernet/Token Ring cards and Angia PCMCIA modems and don't have any
problems with these.
Gr. Arjan
--
Eat hard
Sleep hard
Wear glasses if you need them
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