SliTaz Forum

Thunderbird

Member

Registered: 2012-07-12

Posts: 10

Firewall

Still pretty new (one week or so into Slitaz) so please continue to be gentle with me.

Got Slitaz running beautifully now with the apps I need (thanks again Trixar) on my 10 year old Dell Inspiron 2650. It flies, 2 minutes from a cold boot (on USB 1.1) to fully functional against about 15 minutes with XP which is fully installed with as much bloat as possible removed.

Now for Firewalls.

Read loads of threads but I am confused. Many appear to be saying that there is a Firewall built in but some say its not live and others say it is. On boot up as the script scrolls down I can see the word "firewall" but it scrolls too fast to read what it says.

My experience of Linux Firewalls is with UFW (on Xubuntu and Mint) which I guess is of no use in SliTaz. However, on one thread I found a reference to the command "tazhw setup firewall", tried it on the live CD and it appeared to load up something but is it what I need and does it need further fine tuning. Or is there a better way?

Thanks again.

Paul

mojo

Administrator

Registered: 2011-03-29

Posts: 2,174

Re: Firewall

Connect to the internet.

Open terminal login root password root

hwsetup firewall

hwsetup script should install iptables change IPTABLES=no to IPTABLES=yes in /etc/firewall.conf

and start firewall with /etc/init.d/firewall start

Read this:  http://doc.slitaz.org/en:handbook:networkconf ==> Manage the Firewall (firewall) using Iptables

Thunderbird

Member

Registered: 2012-07-12

Posts: 10

Re: Firewall

Thanks for the reply mojo. 4 quick questions, as I said I am very new to this.

What is the difference between "tazhw setup firewall" and "hwsetup firewall".

I log in as su then password root, is that the same as logging in as root password root.

Once done does it start the firewall every time I start the computer.

Having looked at the link I am still none the wiser, does the firewall require any further setting up to be really effective.

Thanks.

Paul

Trixar_za

Administrator

Registered: 2011-03-29

Posts: 1,506

Re: Firewall

Probably not. The default Iptables configuration in firewall.conf was written so it would be good enough for most standard situations.

Here is a more in depth post about it: http://vanilla.slitaz.org/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/12319#Comment_12319

Thunderbird

Member

Registered: 2012-07-12

Posts: 10

Re: Firewall

Thanks for that Trixar, think I am a "standard situation".

Any clues on my first 3 points please?

Paul

Trixar_za

Administrator

Registered: 2011-03-29

Posts: 1,506

Re: Firewall

1. tazhw is how you do hardware setup and detection in SliTaz.

2. Using su is the recommended way to use root priviledges without having to login as root. Logging in as root is pretty unsecure for a number of reasons.

3. Yes, the firewall gets loaded at boot.

Thunderbird

Member

Registered: 2012-07-12

Posts: 10

Re: Firewall

Thanks Trixar.

With the firewall loaded I should be sorted and able to use SliTaz with confidence.

Your comment about logging in as root is what made me nervous about Puppy, it worked great out of the box but I felt insecure since working as root was the only option. The extra work it has taken to set up SliTaz has been worth while IMHO.

One last question, with UFW there is a simple command to check firewall status, is there an equivalent in SliTaz.

Thanks all for a great operating system that has rescued my old laptop from the dump.

Paul

Trixar_za

Administrator

Registered: 2011-03-29

Posts: 1,506

Re: Firewall

Either [c]/etc/init.d/firewall status[/c] or [c]iptables -nL[/c] in the terminal should show the status of the firewall, but I agree, this isn't exactly the ideal way to check

Btw, you can also setup a passwordless sudo command in SliTaz (which is what I use), so switching to root is as simple as [c]sudo su[/c] for me.

Thunderbird

Member

Registered: 2012-07-12

Posts: 10

Re: Firewall

Excellent, thanks.