I have a Dell Inspiron 3050 Micro (NUC sized box) running CentOS 7.3 and serving as a DHCP server for my home LAN and as a central connection through which I route all traffic to a VPN using OpenVPN. At the moment my setup looks like this:

DSL modem <-Ehternet-> Netgear Router <-WiFi-> Inspiron <-Ehernet-> LAN (switch)

I am running through the Netgear as the Inspiron has only one wired NIC. I just obtained a USB to NIC adapter so I can eliminate the Netgear. But first I would like to build a reasonably comprehensive firewall on the Inspiron.

Does anyone have a canned recipe to serve as a starting point to build a home firewall?

TIA,

Ken

Linux comes with firewall capability in the kernel. It's called iptables.

You can either configure iptables from the command line or get a frontend for it. Ufw is in the repos. There is a gui frontend for ufw called gufw, which I quite like, but it doesn't appear to be in the CentOS repos.

A search for "firewall CentOS" will turn up more options.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you frankbell,

The page you reference looks like a great stating point. I have used gufw in the past - perhaps on Ubutu. At least now I have a starting list of WHAT to block/allow etc. I can figure out the HOW.

Ken

CentOS 7 uses firewalld which has a GUI tool firewall-config. I have not tried to configure a NAT/router using firewalld yet. You can always disable it and go back to using iptables since you might find more information with the old style rule sets.

2 members found this post helpful.

Thanks michaelk,

I have played with the GUI tool but I do not really understand how something there relates to something in iptables. A good opportunity for me to do some learning.

Ken

LHN?

2 members found this post helpful.

Thanks Habitual,

Looks to be an EXCELLENT resource!

Ken

de nachos. Glad you like it.

michaelk, thanks for pointing me to system-config-firewall. I just set it up in this here VM and learned something.

I might be tempted to run Untangle linux on it instead of Centos. You might be able to manage a VM with a firewall distro on it too if you have DSL.

I was going to put a small nuc type like that in my system but still looking at buying a pfsense arm box. Still on the fence if it can run snort.

I looked up firewalld. A few searches said that it's in the repos for most distributions.

Did firewalld come with a fresh installation of CentOS 7?

Yes, it is automatically installed on Centos 7

Thanks fo the confirmation.