Firewall

[Tracer]

How is the default firewall for linux handled? Is it all a bunch of iptabels rules or is there some kind of firewall.conf file??
Thx in advance...

O, and while your here :), is fedora the only linux that supports free package updating? or can any os version use some tool to auto-update?

[Ned]

Yes, it uses iptables the same as any firewall under linux does these days.

/etc/init.d/iptables is the iptables startup script and rules are saved in the /etc/sysconfig/iptables configuration file.

Ned

[crackers]

is fedora the only linux that supports free package updating? or can any os version use some tool to auto-update?
Nope. SUSE has "yast", Mandrake uses/can use "yum/apt-rpm", Debian created "apt", *BSD has "ports", YellowDog created "yum", Lindows uses "yum" under the covers (I think), ... The point to keep in mind is that these updaters and the repositories only work with the system they were designed or built for. There are "generic" RPMs that you can download that'll work on any RPM-based system (e.g. Fedora/RH/Mandrake), but they're not typically available through repositories.

[Jman]

Linspire is Debian based (http://info.linspire.com/publish/developers.html) and therefore deb format, probably updated via apt.

The Fedora Configure Security Level firewall tool is actually a frontend to lokkit, a tool to configure iptables firewalls.

Basically most distros have a package format for their software and a way to update them, and most have a tool to configure the iptables firewall.