I was thinking of setting up a Linux system as a firewall but I don't know too much about it. Does anybody know where I can locate information on how to.
Linux is an excellent firewall (trust me i speak from experience.) Despite it being much harder to get past the linux firewall you can enable dynamic i.p.'s so if anyone portscans you, buy the time they even think about trying to get in your server your i.p. will have changed.
I support your move to linux and am sick and tired of windows poor security and horendously overcharged prices.
If you like linux then please buy a copy (if you have the cash of course and are impressed with the service you get from it) as they are extremely cheap.
regards Net_buster
This may be of interest to you, I was in the same situation a while ago and chose to install Smoothwall - for someone like yourself I could not reccommend a better product - and its feee!
The evilsmiley.org firewalling box is a ghetto server (p2 220 with 64 megs of ram ) that i simply automated and completely stopped all network accessible services from working on it.
Add a basic firewalling and port forwarding IPTABLES script and you got yourself something that would cost you a bunch of money in a commercial product, that only cost me the price of the ghetto server ( which i found in the trash).
go linux.
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when someone asks for your username and password, and much *clickely clickely* is happening in the background, know enough that you should be worried.
There is a wide range of Linux firewalls available (as packages for standard distributions or special firewall distributions)
If you are new to Linux you better choose a firewall distribution like... ipcop, astaro secure linux, trustix, or - werewolf from the makers of coyote linux. Werewolf has stateful firewall, VPN capabilities (interoperates with Windows vpn, it is very small...)
I have used it for some time now. I am currently using v2 on :
166Mhz Pentium
48Mb RAM
2Gb HDD
2 x NE2000 NICs
All scrap kit thrown out by my employer. It lives up in the attic and I never go near it.
I have been using this linux based firewall and it works great. I used to use IPCop but i got tired of having to always edit the Scripts because the WebGui was kinda iffy. This software is all written in PHP and saves all its config files as XML's. You can run it on all sorts of embedded systems as well as an old Pentium class PC. You can even run it with just a bootable cd-rom version of it and a floppy disk, no hd required. No scripts to edit, just create all your firewall rules over the web gui. It has PPTP, IPSEC, all sorts of advanced NAT, wireles support, multiple interfaces. I am telling you this is probably the best software I have seen yet. I have used IPCop, Smoothwall, Mandrake security firwall, and I think monowall beats them all. Take a look at the link and see for yourselfs. If you have any questions let me know I am running this both at the office and at my home.
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