Fedora 11: Firewall – Using the Wizard
Firewalls need to be simple and firewalls need to be complex….yes, this is a dilemma of huge consequence. However, Fedora has accomplished both in one firewall. This new option in System/Administration/Firewall provides two layers of set up for the firewall. First there is the Wizard, which is an extremely simple solution for those who know nothing except the fact that they need to protect their system
By selecting the Wizard option in the Menu you can start the set up for a firewall without knowing much at all. This is a key for those who struggle with understanding ports, services, and how bad guys get into your system. Of course by now everyone knows what bad things can happen to computers after using the “other” operating systems. Users who come to Linux are looking for secure solutions to their problems, hence the Wizard.
A “clean firewall” means that if you have messed it all up and you need to rebuild it, it will do exactly that.
You will want to select “System With Network Access” as you want to protect your system against connections that will come from the network.
Now you can select the user level you see yourself at. Here “Beginner” is selected so that you can easily configure a firewall that will work for you in about 3 minutes.
Here you need to select if this is a Desktop or a Server. So what is the difference? Desktops are machines that typically do not allow anyone else to connect to them using file sharing (Samba or NFS) and they do not provide any services to any other clients like printing access, VNC, time server, DHCP, etc. In other words, a Desktop is a machine used to work with documents, listen to music, cruise the Internet, and read email…the typical home computer. A Server on the other hand provides services to other machines. These services could be printing, file storage, remote network connections, etc. So if your machine is used only for one user and personal data, choose Desktop. If other people connect to the machine use Server.
Once you select this option the work is done. The firewall resets and you are ready to go. If you are using this firewall and your machine is a server, then you should really not use the wizard but work throught the firewall step-by-step. Our next tutorial will do just that.
