first of all, thanks for this magnificent B3 product which I just own for less than four weeks now, but already totally fell in love with. Not being a person who needs superior and easy-to-use web UIs to be happy, I perceive most fascinating that the Bubba3 server basically is "just a plain squeeze distrib installation" with only a very limited number of adjustments to the original Debian shipment.
Due to a somewhat strange setup, I have the special requirement that a VPN system must be available to allow internet access. Previously, I had running a huge x86_64 system taking more than 220 Watts just to allow access public websites for my local network. Having replaced this electricity hog with the Bubba box I had to solve the VPN issue as well. Especially the wiki page concerning Strongswan made things quite easy to me, but it was a bit cumbersome to compile the Linux kernel modules again on the B3. Though it has a quite high-speed CPU for its size, it's not a favorite thing that you like to do. As I think it's worthless that everyone that needs IPSEC on the B3 should repeat this action, I have compiled a Debian installer package which can be downloaded. You may find further details in my blog post. Out of this I would like to have two request to the community here:
- As I have only one B3 box here and that is necessary for my internet connection, I am not able to thoroughly test my Debian package and verify that it is running fine under all conditions. Can anyone test it and provide feedback to find additional issues and bugs which shall be fixed?
- Generally speaking I perceive it a strange state that we need an additional package for ipsec kernel modules which are natively shipped with the standard upstream kernel since ages. Also apparently the only reason for not shipping them by standard is the fact that they are switched off in the kernel's configuration file. Wouldn't it make sense to ship them along with the next Bubba3 kernel release? For me in many cases these are "just 30kb" to ship more which normally will not cause any impact to the rest of users not using them. Is there another reason for not shipping them which I have overlooked?