Hi!
As we stand now, FC doesn't have a firewall configuration tool worthy of
that name. There is system-config-securitylevel which is fine for a
workstation or desktop machine, but for a server or gateway box there is
no way to build a good firewall short of diving into iptables directly.
There are a bunch of iptables frontends (GUI or otherwise) out there,
but I would rather have something more high-level. So, my preference
would go to something I have been using in my home gateway, and some
servers at work, for some time now. That something is FireHOL
(
http://firehol.sourceforge.net).
I think this would be a nice addition fo FC because is is not only a
simple iptables frontend. It is a language to describe firewalls, which
generates them using iptables rules. It is very straigthforward and
powerful. The config script even accepts the use of bash constructs -
FireHOL is itself bash based - which makes it a tool which "makes simple
things simple and hard things possible".
I'm not the author of FireHOL, so this isn't gratuitous publicity. It's
just a great tool (which successfully passed my "first hours
excitement") that would make a good addition to FC (and it's small, so
no problems there).
What do you people thing about this: good, bad, alternatives?
Carlos Rodrigues