are there default firewall settings?

[bazzaman]

I in Mint 13 KDE trying to configure a VPN connection. The person helping me asked if I had any firewall up. I did not configure any firewall settings on installation. I have not been able to find a firewall setup page. I checked Mint 13 manual, and KDE manual without finding anything.
So, this is a bit embarrassing, since it might be staring me in the face; but can someone please tell me where to find the firewall setup? Are there default settings already activated upon installation?

[midas]

The easiest thing could be installing a little package called 'gufw' from synaptic. With this little package you can manage simple firewall settings.

[xenopeek]

You have a firewall, though it is not enabled by default (it is built into the Linux kernel). To understand why it isn't enabled by default, have a look here: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=103992#p599112

You can either activate and configure it from the terminal, or you can install a graphical front-end. To activate and configure it from the terminal you would use ufw. To enable it and disallow incoming connections by default (another machine trying to reach your machine, while you have not requested anything from that machine), you would run:

Code: Select all

sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw default deny

Anyway, probably you will find the graphical front-end for that easier. As shared above, you can install gufw for this. Open Software Manager and search for "gufw", install it. After installation you will find it as Firewall Configuration in the System section of the menu. Click the Unlock button to make changes, then drag the OFF button to ON. Close the application. Remember that this is just the configuration front-end, so you don't need to run this for your firewall to be active. To allow other machines to connect to your machine, you would go to the Edit menu and add a rule to allow certain services on your machine to be reached by others. Note that depending on how you connect to the Internet, you will also have to enable your machine to be reachable from the Internet in your broadband modem's configuration.

With the changes done here, or with the commands above, your firewall will be active upon each boot.

[bazzaman]

Thanks fot the informative replies. I will look into configuring the firewall after getting the VPN to work; but, for now, I am happy to know that there is no firewall configured by default.

[midas]

The whole story is actually a bit more complex. In all Debian-based systems (like Ubuntu/Mint) it is IP-tables what is the real firewall....UFW (in the terminal) and GUFW (graphical front-end) are more or less simple front-ends for accomplishing simple-tasks and changing simple firewall-rules. But out-of-the-box IP-tables is always running...you might say that IP-tables is pre-configured. It is preconfigured in such a (safe) way that ports are always closed and there is never a service listening behind a port. I don't know if the basic IP-tables rules can have already an effect in succeeding VPN-connections (?)

Using the command 'sudo ufw enable' will bring the ports from a closed to a stealthed state. There are discussions if bringing the ports to stealthed mode is necessarilly safer. Setting IP-table rules is really complicated stuff. Most of the things you could and should do with GUFW....see enclosed article:

http://www.howtogeek.com/115116/how-to-configure-ubuntus-built-in-firewall/

[bazzaman]

Thank you midas, I will check out that link. As it turns out I got the VPN client working; so firewall not an issue.

[mylinux]

Hi there,

I installed Linux Mint Maya with Cinamon and when starting Firefox the firewall is blocking all trafic.

I had never such Problems with any Ubuntu version or Opensuse - the firewall was working out of the box.
Is there any standard konfiguration which can be importet or a file which could be save to special location?

They did very well with gnome 2 or cinamon desktop - I do not like KDE 4 and also Gnome 3. Since the day the support end of my Opensuse 11.0 (with KDE3) I was looking for an easy and comfortable desktop like this. It seems the Mint is not ready yet....

Thank you for answers.

Best regards
Michael alias mylinux