Newbie Question - about newbie user support

[Marian Hettwer]

Hi there,

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:19:55 -0700 (PDT), Passive PROFITS
<passiveprofits at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> FWIW, I am only experienced with putting together
> firewalls in Ubuntu using a GUI (Firestarter).  I do
> not seem to have come across problems using that combo
> (IPtables? + Firestarter GUI).
>
I'm actually not aware wether there is a gui to plug together a firewall
ruleset based on pf(4).
That said, I suggest to use pf as the packet filter of choice. It's a great
one.
Get a first impression about pf(4) by reading the handbook
(http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/firewalls-pf.html)
or by reading man pfctl.
As a newbie, you should start with the handbook :)

Obviously you should have an idea what a packet filter (buzzword is
firewall) does. A good understanding on how tcp and networking works is
preferred for a good configuration.

Another way of just having a FreeBSD + pf based firewall would be using
pfsense (http://www.pfsense.org/) which is in my understanding a FreeBSD
live CD with a nice webfrontend to configure your router/firewall.

It really depends on what you want to do... wanna learn how to setup a
packet filter in a unix environment? Go with FreeBSD. Wanna have a nearly
out of the box firewall, go with pfsense.

I'd prefer the FreeBSD way, because it's always good to understand what the
heck is going on under the hood :)

Anyway, welcome on board and happy experimenting.

regards,
Marian