0 FAQ   1 First steps with the LiveCD     1.1 Making the LiveCD     1.2 Booting the LiveCD       1.2.1 List of cheat codes     1.3 Setting up the network       1.3.1 Using the network setup tool       1.3.2 Configuring your firewall       1.3.3 Using the WLAN setup script   2 Installation     2.1 Pre-installation steps       2.1.2 Partitioning and formatting         2.1.2.1 Using Gparted         2.1.2.2 Using cfdisk and mkfs     2.2 Installing BeaFanatIX     2.3 Post-installation steps   3 HowTos (Tips and Tricks)     HowTo: Samba share in nautilus   5 Old docs (for BeatrIX and BFX 2006.1r1)     5.1 Preparing your computer for Bea*

Now that you have made your network connection, we need to protect your computer.  Included in BeaFanatIX is Firestarter, a tool to help you configure your firewall to protect your computer.

This tutorial will help you set your firewall to the most secure settings.  You may need to adjust these setting to allow access to your machine for bittorrenting or file and print sharing later.

Click Applications - Internet - Firestarter

Click Forward

Select your network interface and IP address options and then click Forward

Select whether you want to use Internet Connection Sharing and click Forward.

Click Save and then click Quit.  Your firewall is now configured and running. 

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NOTE: At this point you can close the dialog box and the firewall will remain in place protecting your computer.  For Windows users, this may seem a foreign concept, but in Linux, once configured, your firewall is always running - without taxing your computer's performance. You do not need to keep Firestarter open to keep the firewall running and protecting your computer.

Once configured on hard drive installation, you do not need to run Firestarter again unless you want to change the settings of your firewall.

When running  from the LiveCD, you will need to make use of the Save Settings Tool (in the Applications : System Tools menu) which will remember your firewall settings for future sessions or you will need to run Firestarter each time you reboot to configure and activate your firewall.

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The Status tab will give you an overview of traffic occuring at your computer's network interface

The Events tab will show you blocked connection attempts.

The Policy tab is where you can add rules to allow access to different services/ports on your computer. These rules can be configured for either incoming or outgoing connections.

Notice: If you do not understand the implications of opening up services/ports on your firewall, do NOT open the services/ports! Once opened, you have compromised the protection of the firewall. Learning to configure a firewall to allow services/ports without significantly compromise your system's security is a science. Incorrectly configuring your firewall can make your computer vunerable!

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