Should I turn the firewall off?

Support for security such as Firewalls and securing linux
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Stornoway
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Joined: 2017/12/24 16:07:21

Should I turn the firewall off?

Post by Stornoway » 2018/06/20 15:41:41

I've installed CentOS on a virtual machine to see if I'm smart enough to use it. I'll want to use it as a server for email, web etc and as a file server for a small office with a handful of users.

The first thing I noticed is that firewalld seems to be running by default with all ports closed.

I'm behind a router with all its ports closed other than those I've opened to port forward to my CentOS server (currently just ports 80 and 443).
So I could either spend a few days learning how to set up firewalld or just leave it off and let my router take the strain.

That would be okay - wouldn't it?

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TrevorH
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Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

Re: Should I turn the firewall off?

Post by TrevorH » 2018/06/20 15:57:21

You should always have a firewall even if you have a hardware one in place. For example, what happens if one of your other devices/machines is infected by a virus or trojan? Now they have access to everything behind the hardware firewall...
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

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