best OS for VPN server on old PC

[VJ]

Hello,

I would like to have access to my parents' network, mainly for troubleshooting and helping them out. But at the same time, I don't want to open too much on the router (so no port forwarding to allow remote desktop or VNC).

I thought of installing some linux distribution with a VPN server on an old computer. Then, when my father has a problem, I can just tell him to power up that computer, connect to the VPN and remote desktop or VNC to his computer.

The catch is: the old computer is a Pentium II-450 with 384 MB ram. It would not have to run anything else. I was thinking along the lines of Lubuntu with OpenPVN or FreeBSD. Perhaps a more lightweight solution would be to install Turnkey linux OpenVPN ( http://www.turnkeylinux.org/openvpn ).

Any thoughts?


Jörg

[UtwigMU]

If going with Linux, go with a server distro such as Debian, Ubuntu LTS or Centos as you'll have updates for quite long time.

[Nicram]

My suggestion is CentOS 6 and SoftEther ( https://www.softether.org/ ).

[VJ]

I had never heard of SoftEther, but it looks great!

CentOS 6 may be tight, the system only has 386 MB, but the others have even higher requirements. Of course, it would not be used for applications, and just for 1 VPN connection, so it might manage... If not, I'll have to see if I manage to install it on Turnkey Linux... It does not seem to have a webinterface, but I could install the remote management for it on my father's computer.

Thanks!

[VJ]

It looks like it was a moot point... My parents router is dying (often losing connections, bad wifi performance; but it is an 15 year old Linksys). So I got them a new router which will have built-in vpn server... Problem solved...