Cauldron Project

^{Give that a stir, would ya?}

About

The Cauldron Project (formally bsd-appliance) is derived from work done at Collaborative Fusion, Inc. with the goal of developing a scalable and manageable enterprise-class BSD-based appliance platform. Much of the work was originally based on Gray Watson 's Soekris on OpenBSD Diskless Project . The work was the topic for a paper and associated presentation at EuroBSDCon 2006 and NYCBSDCon 2006.

The current framework is ideal for bona-fide network appliances: Routers, Firewalls (Policy Routers), Set Top Boxes, Console Servers, RAS Terminal Concentrators, Wireless Access Points (APs), Load Balancers / Application Switches, IDS Sensors, Network Cameras, Environmental Sensors , as well as other heavyweight appliances NAS Storage, Proxy Servers, E-mail SPAM Filters, DNS Slaves.

ISVs, Small-Medium size businesses, OEMs, and Individuals alike will also find the system useful for systems such as Set Top Boxes, Point of Sale (POS) Terminals,

In theory the framework could also be used in embedded applications such as micro-firmware for Printers, Scientific Instruments, Phones and other mobile communications and multimedia devices.

Supported Platforms:

Status / News

• 11/09/2008: Chris Maverick provided us with a new logo; playful and whimsical, like the world we live in.
• 10/15/2008: There's a great article in BSDMag about loading NetBSD onto the Linksys NSLU2 using the EVBArm port. Unfortunately, it's not really a practical cauldron application because the OS appears to install directly onto the underlying RAID partition!
• 10/13/2008: A new snapshot for the Soekris 5501 is available. Details soon, as well as potential automated daily/weekly builds.
• 10/11/2008: Preliminary FreeBSD support development has begun Notes
• 10/01/2008: Project has been renamed to 'Cauldron'; a logo is imminent.
• 04/25/2007: Revision 81 reflects much of the work accomplished on OpenBSD. I encourage everyone to check out a snapshot via a VMWare Image I've released.
• 04/20/2007: Revision 78 reflects significan work on issue #1, #3, #4, #5, #7, #8, #9
• 03/28/2007: I opened 'Issue #7'. I'll probably start working on it this afternoon. Sorry for the delay all; I've been busy with some regional non-profit work and submitting and trying to stir up support a Google SoC application.
• 03/11/2007: Added info on the Axiomtek NA-1041 featured at NYCBSDCon and EuroBSDCon `06 . Also updated and resampled the images properly on on the ARInfotek Teak3011
• 03/06/2007: Adding some info about the ARInfotek Teak 3011. Need to thumbnail the images.
• 03/05/2007: I've added some info about the ARInfotek Teak3011
• 03/04/2007: I've started working on a Tutorial / Walk-Through for using the Framework. Use revision 48 of trunk/.
• Old New Archive

Project & Goals

The project is composed of:

• A Framework for adapting and optimizing BSD for use on network appliances and embedded environments.
• Resources (Tools and Docs) for Profiling BSD systems.
• A centralized location for coordinating development efforts for improving the embedded viability of BSD distributions.
• A clearinghouse for BSD-compatible appliances and other hardware as well as BSD-friendly OEM vendors
• Development for a NAND/NOR Flash MTD style file system for BSD (a la, JFFS2)
• Adaptation of true serial console BIOS solutions for SBCs (a la, ComBIOS (Soekris) or BIOSBoot (Routerboard) )

Present Status:

• Seeking active involvement from the community (please join the MailingList)
• Organizing the Wiki in a somewhat logical format

The current to-do list:

• Make a ticket/bug report for every item on this list
• cf.conf(5) should be cf.conf.example
• User-interface to scripts is inconsistent
• Packages are broken on OpenBSD