Firewall with Ubuntu

[Derek Broughton]

Joseph wrote:

> I suppose this gives me another questions.  There are three options
> here, in apparently two types, which are:
> 
>         IPTables
>                 Firestarter (for gnome) or Guarddog ( for KDE)

Those aren't really three options.  There is ONLY one firewall on Ubuntu -
iptables (OK, that's not really true - but you don't want to know
yet :-) ).  All the other options are just ways to configure iptables.

> What's the difference in them?  How are Firestarter and Guarddog (a
> simple GUI front end) similar 

Most of the firewall GUIs just ask you for the specific values to stick into
the iptables rules, and don't help you much.

Guarddog is very nice for simple firewalls, because it asks you to permit
specific services (eg "Mail" or "Web") but I found myself writing so many
exclusions for services it didn't know about that I gave up on it.
-- 
derek