Services & firewall configuration

[Ian Pilcher]

Reading the discussion about Taroon, portmapper, ports, etc., reminded
me of one of the shortcomings of Red Hat Linux (and all other
distributions AFAIK).

It seems to me that the fundamental problem is the lack of "linkage"
(for lack of a better word) between service configuration and firewall
configuration.  In an ideal world, the network access required by a
service would be easy to determine -- perhaps with chkconfig-like meta-
data in the init script.  The firewall configuration program could then
be enhanced to prompt accordingly.

Even better, to my mind, would be to actually combine the services and
firewall configuration programs.  Instead of a single checkbox for each
service, each service would have a checkbox for each interface.  The
network configuration program should probably prompt the user to run the
firewall configuration when an interface is added.

Just some thoughts on future directions.  Flame away!
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Ian Pilcher                                        i.pilcher at comcast.net
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