Ubuntu firewall setup for home fileserver
 

Hi,

I have a computer I use as a fileserver to share legal music, movies and photos across my home network.

It consists of:

1x wireless router, wireless-n, firewall
1x HEADLESS SERVER, ethernet, UBUNTU SERVER LINUX, no firewall
1x desktop computer, ethernet, Fedora Linux, software firewall
1x laptop computer, wireless, Win XP, software firewall
1x desktop computer, wireless, Win XP, software firewall
1x desktop computer, wireless, Win XP, software firewall

Now the router has an SPI firewall on it already, it was a Linksys WRT150N but that died and I'm buying a different one from TP-LINK. But regardless, it will have a firewall on it.

So, should I put a firewall on the Ubuntu server? Is it just doubling up and not really adding any protection? I do use BitTorrent to download Linux distros using it as a downloading machine and may open up ports on it for DHT.

If so, using IPTABLES? Just putting a script in /etc/rc.d and allowing

SSH 22
SAMBA ??
BITTORRENT ??

Thanks for any thoughts or comments

If you don't trust all of the users and potential users of the internal machines, then firewalling the server makes sense.

If you are using wireless and someone else can physically get within range, then it also makes sense.

If you are paranoid, you'll probably do it anyway, because it isn't that hard.

Thanks, I'll do some research on setting it up and get it working

Firewall is a usefull thing anyway, to protect server machine from the attacks in case of compromising some of the users' machines.
Open just a minimal set of really used external ports and only for addresses who are allowed to connect server.