Using Fedora as firewall.

[John Lagrue]

Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:

> At 03:56 4/17/2004, you wrote:
>
>> Now I have two networking cards, one buildin in the motherboard 
>> (eth0) and one in a PCI slot (eth1). When I tried to do the same to 
>> give my WinXP box access to the internet I couldn't get it right. 
>> When I connect to internet using eth0 everything is fine. When I 
>> start eth1 to the WinXP box it works, but then I have no contact with 
>> the internet thru eth0.
>> To get contact with the internet again I have to stop eth1 and 
>> restart eth0. Does anyone have a clue?
>
>
> First you need to solve your networking problems, so that you can have 
> both network interfaces up and running and so that the Fedora box 
> (which will be the firewall and gateway) can access both the Internet 
> via eth0 and the internal network (your XP box) via eth1.
>
> Then my best suggestion is to go to http://www.shorewall.net and read 
> the "two-interface quick guide" there. Download the software and it 
> will show you how to set up the configuration files (simple text 
> files) to get the result you want. Shorewall will configure 
> everything: gateway service, routing, masquerading, firewall rules, 
> and allowing some ports access from the Internet to your firewall or 
> to an internal machine if you so desire.
>
I can confirm that this setup works like a charm, as it is exactly what 
I am running at home. My elderly Dell Dimension not only runs Shorewall 
(which is a great and easy to configure firewall), but also runs 
fetchmail/postfix/spamassassin/procmail along with dovecot to handle all 
incoming email into the family's half dozen email accounts and supplies 
the email via IMAP to whichever machines are connected to our internal 
network.

I think Fedora is wonderful.

John

PS Recently I have also come to the conclusion that Enlightenment rocks :)