freebsd stable - Nov 2004 - Newbie Port Filter Question on 4.10stable

Hi All

Very new to FreeBSD and google has not proved helpful for once.  Running
4.10Stable and I would like to allow traffic on port 20 on my server and I
assumed /etc/rc.firewall was the place to do so. I added a line in the file
in the same format as the rule allowing port 21 traffic but was not sure how
to restart the firewall. #sh /etc/rc.firewall was a bad idea and totally
shutdown all traffic.

Can anyone point me to a clear resource on what I should do to start, stop
and flush the port filter rules and whether or not I was working in the
correct place to begin with.

Thanks in advance
Simon

:: Can anyone point me to a clear resource on what I should do to start, stop
:: and flush the port filter rules and whether or not I was working in the
:: correct place to begin with.

Always start with the Handbook:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/firewalls.html

Then, the list archives (specifically this thread that started on the 20th 
on -security):

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=56843+0+archive/2004/freebsd-security/20041121.freebsd-security

Best practice would be to take what you want out of /etc/rc.firewall and 
build your own ruleset in another file.  That way you can't accidentally 
overwrite it the next time you run mergemaster.

Cheers - Erick

Hi,

I think if your firewall is normally working fine. You can use

#sh /etc/rc.firewall &

(notice the & for putting it background)

Because if you have last default rule to deny everything, the 
rc.firewall script first flushes every rule and if you are connected via 
ssh etc. you would get disconnected immediately and execution of 
rc.firewall stops, so it is not able to load the new rules. If it is on 
background then it will continue working till the end and put the new 
rules into action.

Please let me know if you find any better solution :) I always use
#sh rc.firewall &
but there is always a better way :p

Evren

Simon Fishley wrote:
> Hi All
> 
> Very new to FreeBSD and google has not proved helpful for once.  Running
> 4.10Stable and I would like to allow traffic on port 20 on my server and I
> assumed /etc/rc.firewall was the place to do so. I added a line in the file
> in the same format as the rule allowing port 21 traffic but was not sure
how
> to restart the firewall. #sh /etc/rc.firewall was a bad idea and totally
> shutdown all traffic.
> 
> Can anyone point me to a clear resource on what I should do to start, stop
> and flush the port filter rules and whether or not I was working in the
> correct place to begin with.
> 
> Thanks in advance
> Simon
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