Firewall management
Getting to Know firewalld

© Lead Image © Gino Santa Maria, Fotolia.com
Managing a firewall can be a hassle, but it's worse to manage a breach because you didn't have one.
Afirewall is an important part of a security strategy. However, it is only one component and not a security panacea for reasons that will become clear later in this article. A host-based firewall protects the local system just as a network firewall protects an entire network or part of a network, such as a DMZ.
On CentOS 7 and newer, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and newer, and Fedora 18 and newer, the default firewall is firewalld (see the "Features" box for more information.) If you use a Red Hat-based distribution, then you probably have it already. If you use other distributions, firewalld is available via git
and as a tarball [1]. Firewalld uses zones to define trust levels of network connections or interfaces. (Zones are an advanced topic not covered in this article; look for a future article covering firewalld zones).
Troubleshooting Firewalls
Sys admins of all skill levels have wasted countless hours troubleshooting a problem that ended up pointing to a firewall that has prevented remote access to a service. The term "remote" is important. Firewalls don't prevent access to local services; firewalls prevent access from remote systems across the network but not access from the local system itself. The point of a firewall is to deny everything from the outside except what you specifically allow in. Unfortunately, frustration with firewall rules often ends in the firewall being disabled by an otherwise well-meaning sys admin.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.