Firewall

[Dark Ninja]

I noticed in a very recent post, the mention of Firestarter being an "easy to use, almost like ZoneAlarm" firewall program for Linux.

I don't use Gnome, so, I'm thinking that this program will not work. However, is there another firewalling program that comes recommended? I am not looking for something that is incredibly difficult to setup. Maybe a little more control than something like ZoneAlarm...but nothing too crazy.

Thanks for any input.


Dark Ninja

[subnet_rx]

I installed it in Gnome just to be safe, but it works fine in KDE.

[LittleGreenGecko]

I have heard that ipchains is working out just fine as a firewall program. What advantage do these gui programs give you?

:cool:

[Dark Ninja]

Graphical interface = Ease of Use (most of the time)

Firestarter runs off iptables, so, it just is a GUI for that. But...that's basically what I want. Ease of use. I have turned off all my daemons, and, according to NMap, I only have two other ports open, so, I want a simple way of closing them down. That's what I'm hoping Firestarter can do.


Dark Ninja

[X_console]

You can try gShield. It's pretty easy to configure, no GUI configurations though. Instead you edit a text file and write either "OPEN" or "NO" and such. Really easy. Actually, there is a GUI frontend for it, but I haven't tried that: http://muse.linuxmafia.org

[Choozo]

.... or if you have a redundant 486 machine gathering dust somewhere: SmoothWall (http://www.smoothwall.org) :D

[mychl]

Here's my question though, A 486 would neeed 16 bit NICs right, well would that not slow down the entire internet connection to 10MB/sec, since I don't think there are any faster nics for a 486.

I'm not sure about any of this though. But the reason I'm asking is that I have an old 485 and last week at a yard sale, I found 2 16 bit 3com NICs to use in it.

[albertfuller]

Originally posted by Choozo:
<STRONG>.... or if you have a redundant 486 machine gathering dust somewhere: SmoothWall</STRONG>

an old computer (486) as firewall: in a home setting, consider the energy consumption, annually, and then consider firewall, hub units that are around $100.00 (USD) which will consume much less power.

[subnet_rx]

Originally posted by albertfuller:
<STRONG>an old computer (486) as firewall: in a home setting, consider the energy consumption, annually, and then consider firewall, hub units that are around $100.00 (USD) which will consume much less power.</STRONG>

Finally, a voice of reason on this whole Linux firewall thing. Sure, this is great for a company, even a small/home business, but telling home desktop users to do it is rather illogical. I'm not just speaking to the above poster. I've seen it in many doc's.