Hi,
I've done an online checking of my firewall using mandrake9.1.
It appeared ok (only port 80 and 443 where open , using it run run a webserver).

However I can still ping my computer from the internet.
I though a good firewall would block that also.

So my question is really:
1) Does Mandrake have a professional firewall
2) what are IPtables? I heared they had something to do also with firewalls. I looked in this forum, but I seems to technically for me to understand yet, (hence newbie)
3) does it matter if someone can ping tyour computer from the internet? (before I had a firewall in Windows where you couldnt ping the computer from internet)

Kind regards
Patrick

1) any available professional firewalls will work with mandrake
2) iptables is the linux version of ipsec. Its firewalling built into the kernel
3) Not at all. but it is best to limit the amount of pings people can do onto your box.

There is no other firewall than netfilter (= iptables). Other firewalls are just wrappers around it. I hand-code my firewall without any wrapper around!I'm sorry but this is totally bullshit. IPSEC has nothing to do with netfilter.Ping is the smallest problem. You should check for port scans, etc. If you want to take a look at my pretty nailed down firewall check this thread!

If you would like to get more information about firewalling maybe it's time to check the netfilter homepage!

maybe this isn't the right place, but i have mandrake 9.0 and i did setup my dialup stuff as was needed, i can dialup and establish an connection but that is it, i can't surf, do emails, chat nothing. not even ping any form of site or ip. can anyone help please.

Get something like Guarddog, for a nice and easy yet powerful firewall frontend to help setup your iptable rules.