Hi guys and thanks for the replies.
Sorry I've taken soo long to reply but it's been rather hectic of late.
Ok, here is where I am at. I printed out a how-to on the shorewall site and read through it a few times to familarise myself. I have just started to make changes a few minutes and have a couple of questions on the setup of it, I am not too sure what they mean.
1) In the firewall rules file, the default I have is
Quote:
ACCEPT masq fw tcp domain,bootps,http,https,631,imap,pop3,smtp,nntp,ntp,3128 -
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and
Quote:
ACCEPT masq fw udp domain,bootps,http,https,631,imap,pop3,smtp,nntp,ntp,3128 -
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I am not too sure about the
Quote:
ACCEPT fw masq tcp 631,137,138,139 -
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or
Quote:
ACCEPT fw masq ucp 631,137,138,139 -
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either, it's just the fw and masq part that appears to be confusing me.
Now I understand what the domain, bootps etc means but I don't understand what the
is. Looking in the how-to it simply explains masquerading as the case where you let your firewall system automatically detect the external interface address. Is this simply my IP which my ISP assigns me through a DHCP server? Is it wise to have all of the above in place?
I think I am getting somewhere slowly but a few more questions.
Since I don't want to be spoonfed where possible here is what I am thinking is going on, if I am way off target could someone please correct me
Basically the
means external traffic (internet) coming in goes through the firewall and it then checks the rules to see whether it's allowed and lets it through.
all local traffic ie lan traffic is allowed to connect to whatever ports I setup ie ftp, http, ssh etc.
By the way just thought I would let you know I have much more confidence now, before reading the how-to I was dumbfounded and was scared out of my wits but now I have jumped in the deepend and there is no turning back.
Thanks again for all your help.