The "Linux mavens" followed by the "black box" stuff sparked an idea...
package. To make it as easy as possible, I'd use the UMSDOS filesystem so that Linux could be installed on a DOS machine without any reformatting repartitioning, or similar headaches.
distribution already has) and some boot options, you'd have an "instant remailer" software package, able to transform any 386SX/4MB RAM DOS macine or better into a Linux-based remailer site, complete with aliases, loggng
So, am I dreaming, or does this sound viable to y'all?
OK, let's ponder the minimum hardware necessary, possible minimal configuration (Intel/clone based):
(1) Case. (2) Power supply. (3) Motherboard/CPU and 4mb RAM. (4) Hard drive w/ controller. (5) modem card.
Add "standard serial port" here, for reasons I'll get into in a moment...
(5) No monitor, keyboard, floppy, or video card. (a) would require some "umbilical cord" connection to initially set up from another PC. (b) need to operate on "umbilical", direct and uucp modes.
The "umbilical cord" here could be a standard serial port; this could be used in several ways. In addition, Linux has the ability to do TCP/IP through the parallel ports (using a LapLink-style protocol), so that could possibly work as well. There are a few options here: Reuse the monitor, keyboard, etc. for each installation. Go ahead and throw in the floppy, and set up the Linux kernel on the floppy to use the serial port as the console instead of the monitor/keyboard. Connect your second PC using the PLIP (that's the parallel port IP stuff) protocol. On the second PC, one would run a program that wouls telnet to the first PC and run the install program, which would run via NFS on the PLIP line.
I am just thinking out loud here, but the hardware could be damn cheap (sub $500). You can find old 386 boards with 4mb right on the board (no SIMMs) for next to nothing (the decreasing popularity of 30-pin SIMMs makes this a surplus store reality, as nobody wants to bother to strip out the RAM chips anymore).
As far as price, I've seen 386SX motherboards run for $99. At a going rate of $50 per MB of RAM, buying a used MFM disk and controller for, say, $40 (I had the option of buying a junk box full of stuff, including two 20MB drives and a 10MB, for $100), some cheap $10 everything-board, a $70 14.4 modem, and a power supply at $50 (here I may be way off), that adds up to... $470. Not a bad guess! And this assumes you pay new prices for the motherboard, RAM, multiport, modem, and power supply... Also, if you wanted to splurge, you could opt for a few more MB of RAM and a CD-ROM drive. With our recently pressed "Cypherpunk Toolkit" CD-ROMs :-) and a boot floppy, you wouldn't necessarily need to install anything at all; the Linux kernel could store site-specific info (entered the first time you booted up via a cute user-friendly interface) on the floppy and load it to a RAMdisk, mounting the CD-ROM for all the rest of the interesting stuff. On multipurpose systems (you only use the computer a few hours per day and run the remailer using some store-and-forward system the rest of the time), this wouldn't take up any hard disk space, and your remailer could conveniently disappear with a simple Ctrl-Alt-Del and the slam of a safe door. ("But officer, all I have on my hard drive is DOS and Windows. See for yourself! I don't even have PGP here...") You know, the more I think about this, the more ideas pop into my head. I'd better quit before I get dizzy... What if the site-specific stuff on the floppy were encrypted... or the kernel... ? Could we use Matt Blaze's CFS...? Store the site-specifics on a data haven for backup... with auto-download on bootup... notebook remailers in car trunks using RadioMail or POP3 that have no single physical location... dynamic remailer configuration (download your IP address and alias info, etc. from the Remailer Server)...? STOP THE WORLD, I WANT TO GET OFF!!! There; that's better. Maybe I'll play around this weekend and try building a minimal Linux distribution (on what hard disk space :-). Then again, maybe I won't, so don't be bashful to play around on your own!