If you want a secure (ish) system first turn off every service that you do
not need to have running. If there is anything left that you are not willing
to have publicly visible you need a firewall, if everything left is OK for
public consumption you don't.

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b> I read a few posts about FreeBSD being "mostly" secure
b> out-of-the-box, so I was wondering if I didn't need my hardware
b> firewall, and also didn't need scripts to set-up ipchains (or the
b> newer iptables).

FBSD comes with a set of firewall rules designed for a
single-system. To activate them you have to rebuild your kernel to
include the firewall code (if you haven't done that before its not
nearly as frightening as it sounds) then turn them on in the system
wide config file.

I can't see any reason not to do that.

If you aren't fed up of books by now, I reccoment The Complete FreBSD,
lots of other things besides the stuff on firewalls.

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Actually, it's much simpler than this: you just edit /etc/rc.conf and put in the
following:

firewall_enable="YES"
firewall_type="client"

Then edit /etc/rc.firewall under the section which starts
"[Cc][Ll][Ii][Ee][Nn][Tt]", and change the parameters for "net", "mask" and "ip"
as necessary.

This will automatically load in the ipfw kernel module if it isn't already
there, and the apply the relevant rules from /etc/rc.firewall.

Nick

nh> This will automatically load in the ipfw kernel module if it isn't already
nh> there, and the apply the relevant rules from /etc/rc.firewall.

{*filter*}, I'm living in the past again aren't I...

Nurse!

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Mail me as rjc not s...@cstr.ed.ac.uk         _O_
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Yeah, I get caught out like this regularly too.  Irritating, isn't it :-)

Nick