The Sysadmin's Daily Grind: FireHOL
Off the Wall
If you don't have time to tinker with complicated firewall rules, you might want to check out the clever FireHOL approach.
There's no place like home. I can hear a quiet humming sound from the broom cupboard next to the kitchen. At least it's quiet until I open the door. When I do, I'm treated to a noise like a jet with engine trouble. Between lamp fuel, shoe polish, and miscellaneous jars stands the technology that connects me to the outside world. Beside the modems provided by my telco and an asthmatic Cisco – which is to blame for most of the noise – resides a PC old-timer, my firewall.
Originally, my manual iptables rules just handled masquerading for outgoing connections from the LAN, with a couple of custom rules for individual servers. Over time, the rules have become increasingly complex, and as they did, I found myself searching even harder for a management tool.
Finally, I found FireHOL [1]. In contrast to Firewall Builder [2], the FireHOL tool does not have a graphical user interface. Instead, you just add simple directives to a configuration file and FireHOL translates them into iptables commands.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.