Looking for a Firewall

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Mon, 07 May 2007, Bruce Anderson wrote:

> I did end up going with Firestarter, but I am having trouble configuring
> it.  I don't understand any of the preference selections, and it has made it
> so I am unable to connect with the other computer in my house. 

You might want to try the tutorials and docs on this page:

http://www.fs-security.com/docs.php

If by "connect to" you mean see windows machines in network neighbourhood,
I think you may need to allow connections to and from your computer on tcp
ports 137,138,139 and 445 (the windows SMB ports) from the other ip
addresses on your network.  If you need to connect by some other means, let
us know and we may be able to give you a hint.

Alternatively, I'm sure the firestarter will have all the answers.

http://www.fs-security.com/list.php

> If I want to get docs off the other machine I have to disable
> Firestarter, and retrieve the docs and re-start Firestarter.  I have
> never had this trouble with my Windows based firewalls.

Some Windows firewalls allow SMB connections by default in order not to
break things.  In doing so they fail to protect those ports.  A firewall
policy is very much a balance of risk against functionality.

It's definitely doable -- my parents home server runs iptables and I mount
there computer shares from it.

Gavin