Firewall

[J. Erik Hemdal]

>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 12
> Date: Wed, 05 May 2004 20:31:02 -0500
> From: Jason M Evans <jasonevans9 at cox.net>
>
>   We've been having virus trouble on our network, so I set my computer
> as the host and I've been staying on the Fedora side of my partition.  I
> downloaded and printed some firewall tutorials, but it's hard to
> understand (I'm new to Linux).  Can someone help me set up a good
> firewall?  Also, is it possible to set up a Linux firewall that will
> work even when my Windows side of the partition is booted instead?
>

Hi Jason, and welcome.  Hope you enjoy the ride.

It sounds as though you have a dual-boot system with Fedora on one side and
Windows on the other.  I'm not sure what you mean by setting your computer
as the host, but I'll try to help.

You won't be able to run a Linux firewall when you are running Windows, at
least without a lot of grief.  You might get a Linux firewall to run if you
build it under Cygwin and leave that running, or possibly with VMware or
some other sort of virtualization software.  These are guesses on my part,
because I've not tried it.  Even if one of these methods would work, I'd
expect you'd find it to be slow and fragile.  That's precisely what you
don't want in a firewall.

If you are running Windows XP, you have a Windows firewall out of the box,
just click the checkbox to turn it on.  If you don't have XP, you can obtain
a good firewall for Windows.  My favorite is ZoneAlarm, from Zone Labs, and
there are others.  Your antivirus software might also provide a firewall
depending on what you bought.

For the other questions, try posting separately.  Anyone who knows Evolution
and GNOME, but who doesn't know firewalls will possibly never read your
other questions, especially if they use a threaded reader.

When I get to my Fedora box I will try to help, but that won't be for a
while today.  But there are lots of people who can also help.

Erik