Greetings,
The only "Tutorial" I can seem to find that is really of any help on iptables is really no help at all. It was a huge, complicated tutorial on the background of iptables, not actually how to use it.

Anyway, I need to find a way to configure a firewall on my local box, to filter incoming traffic on that local box. If somebody has some good, easy to use tutorials on how to do this, or maybe point me in the direction of some good software that helps a user do this for them if it's too complicated, I would appreciate it very much.

Thanks =)

The best bet would be to use a GUI frontend like "Guarddog", if your new to the linux scene. You can use Guarddog to set iptables rules, block P2P networks (if you want that...i dont), Chat protocols and a bunch of other stuff.

I am still learning how to set up a firewall via CLI so guarddog came in handy.

A Slacker

also, Firestarter is a very simple and easy to use firewall app.

have you seen this great thread?

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=45261

Don't let the name fool you, but the book "Red Hat Linux Firewalls" is an excellent resourse for learning iptables. Even though I now use SuSE on several of my machines, the instructions in that book are 99% compatible with any iptables installation. The only major differences I have found are things like commands to start and stop iptables (service iptables stop in RH).

Learning iptables is a little tough until you get used to it (from the CLI), but once you figure out the basics it gets a lot easier. I tried Guarddog and the like early on but ended up spending more time learning its quirks than learning iptables.