Comments for Firestarter
A fine piece of software
I was having all sorts of problems with getting my IPtables firewall to work. After about a week of frustration, I gave up and since I desperately needed NAT running, turned to the closest GUI firewall config tool that I could find.
Fortunately, this was Firestarter - a firewall config tool that I heartily recomment. It is simple to use, works well, has a nice set of features and also looks good.
My only suggestions for improvement are:
** mention that if you are using IPtables it expects modules. Firestarter doesn't work if IPtables is integrated into your kernel.
** An easy means of viewing the firewall script that it generates. I want to be able to use Firestarter to easily get my firewall up and running, but once it is, I want to learn how the firewall works
** Possibly provide a way to see how the firewall is configured. At the moment, if I want to confirm that I have blocked the http port, I have to rerun the config wizard. (Maybe there is a way, but I haven't found it).
** Possibly also provide some sort of statistical analysis of the results. ie I would like to know that in the last 24 hours, [ip address] conducted the highest number of probes etc. Maybe even provide a daily report which can be emailed ...
However these are only minor improvements. Altogether, Firestarter is a fantastic tool.
One of my favourites
the only thing I would include would be a text
widget or a little editor in order to be able to edit
the script, as a feature for advanced users which
uses FS because of being able to set up a
reasonably complete firewall in a few minutes.
Next update?
Good job thus far. When do you expect to release the next version of FireStarter? Do you think you could enable right-clickable menus in the log window with options to ignore the IP addresses? Thanks.
Great Stuff
I am a checkpoint certified security admin and engineer. I have used Astaro (also great) for years. I also create IPTables based firewalls by hand regularly, and edit previously made IPTables every day as part of my job and also for fun. I downloaded Firestarter and set it up on my new Fedora Core 3 machine, and it worked. No problems. Great install, great initial configuration Wizard, and great editing capabilities. I especially like the floating app for monitoring and configuring on the fly. Very nice!!