I just built a new box so now I can freely toss linux as my full time OS on my old computer. Its just a p4 1.7 512mb ram with a mx440.

When I'm at my apartment I would like to use it as a firewall so I don't have to have to have zone alarm (I hate that thing) running on my main box.

Is there a particluar distro that is really good for security and fairly easy to hook up on a network with a windows box? I've used slack, LFS, deb, gentoo and all the rest but I've never really had to do any networking on them and don't know how great it would be.

And what firewalls would you guys recommend that are 'easy' to set up and run?

Well, if you've used Gentoo before, then setting it up for a firewall should be trivial.

Smoothwall is a distro specifically for use as a firewall. Slackware and rest should be usable too.

Yes well I'm lazy. I hate installing gentoo.

It made me go insane.

But yeah besides that I liked it

And I'll check out smoothwall to see what its like.

I love Gentoo, and I'm lazy. But I'm a computer geek too.

Well it took me like a day to figure out which ISO's to download and burn and install etc etc.

I did it when I hardly knew any unix commands

IPCop

There is a site that will build a firewall script from the info you provide. http://easyfwgen.morizot.net/gen/

You read up on Iptables here. There are many tools you can use to build a firewall. http://www.linuxguruz.com/iptables/

As far as a distro I use FC3 and as it install it ask if you want any open ports. Note I would not use SELinux security here. A pain to keep going.

Brian1

...d@mn, my message got nuked during editing.


oh well, it really doesn't matter, basically i was just saying that the advantage of dedicated firewall distros like smoothwall and ipcop is that they don't have compiling tools, etc. which is obviously much safer than running a full-blown distro as a firewall, because if any hackers do manage to break in, they can't use your box as easily for all kinds of nasty stuff.

so on the one hand, your box is way overkill for a dedicated firewall distro, but on the other, it's arguably a better setup to have the firewall be dedicated. so you kind of have to decide which will be the most secure and still fulfill your needs.

also, i guess i'll just point out the reminder that you'll need 2 nics on the fw, in case that didn't enter into your planning yet.

gl

Note: If any decently prepared cracker gets in to your system, he will have prepared binaries of his own. At a minimum, he could download a gcc binary. I'm not saying there's no virtue in not having that software, I'm just trying to make sure everyone realizes its not an absolute.

absolutely (), i agree 100%. it's merely one more level of deterrence (for the casual hacker, at least).

otoh, for ease of installation and use, you really can't beat the dedicated fw distros. they install in about 5 minutes, are easy to set up and configure, and have a lot of the useful tools you'd want to have on a fw built in and ready to access with an easy web interface (port forwarding, sshd, web proxy, dns, network and system charts and graphs, etc.). not that gentoo or other distros *wouldn't* have those tools, but it would take a lot more work to set things up so they were as easy to access as they are on swall/ipcop. then again, on the dedicated fws you have to get 3rd party modules for some other useful things, like rookit checkers, etc. so again, it's a bit of a tradeoff.

Yeah. I generally (though it may not be ideal) use my firewall for other purposes as well, but I feel I know enough about the risks and the technology to do this reasonably well. Crackers will probably not bother unless they really think your system has something for them. There are much easier targets out there for them. (I.e., unpatched Windows boxes)

no shortage of those.

LOL. Well, that's what script kiddies go for. Much easier, lower chance of detection. It's like robbing a 7-11 or robbing a bank.

If you are looking for a firewall that will run on its own, then I would strongly recommend SmoothWall. I installed the version 2.0 in about 15 min. and works like a clock.
If you are looking for a firewall to run in your personal computer I would recommend FireStarter. Its reliable, stable, and easy to install and maintain.

Hope this helps.

Rick