FireHOL

FireHOL is a language (and a program to run it) to build secure, stateful firewalls from easy to understand, human-readable configuration files. The configuration stays readable even for very complex setups. In the background it interfaces with iptables (IPv4/IPv6).

Installation

Install the firehol^AUR package.

Configuration

Initial Auto Configuration

Firehol comes with its own firewall wizard. All traffic is allowed by default. Using the wizard is the first step to get a basic firewall configuration which automatically detects all open port and interfaces running on the system.

# firehol wizard > /tmp/firehol.conf

The configuration is well documented. After finishing editing move it to /etc/firehol/firehol.conf. Then test run it with the command

# firehol try

You have 30 seconds before those changes are undone and if everything works as expected, you can make it permanent by starting and enabling firehol.service

A good way to start learning its scripting declarations is by copying an Firehol example configuration.

The configuration file is bash file and has 3 parts:

• helper
• interface
• router

Usage

You can test the configuration file's correctness by issuing:

# firehol try

or

# firehol nofast try

If the configuration is working, start/enable the firehol.service.

Tip

• The package also includes FireQOS, a helper for Advanced traffic control. It is packaged with its own fireqos.service.
• The netdata application for traffic monitoring, created by the same project authors, also is available. See Netdata for more information.