Shorewall isn't a daemon it's designed to setup a firewall based on the policies and rules you put in the config files. If you later decide to change something then you need to execute the rc script and setup the firewall again.pwatk wrote:Interesting that you should mention Shorewall and "interactive firewall"...
The firewall in PCLinuxOS uses Shorewall. But the PCLOS firewall also has an "interactive" option as well one to be alerted of intrusion attempts. (This was exactly the same in the just-released fork of Mandriva called Mageia, from where I think the whole "Control Center" that this firewall setup is part of originates)
What's strange to me is that I have used PCLOS with this firewall many times and I always checked the "interactive" and alert options when setting it up. Yet, I never once got a single warning or prompt of any kind.
(Same ISPs and hardware as when I ran Ubuntu with Firestarter and got the constant intrusion attempt notices)
Firestarter and (g)ufw on the other hand are designed to set polices and rules on the fly based on your current situation, a bit like most Windows firewalls. This is great if you want to monitor connections in both directions (e.g. preventing a trojan calling home on a Windows system) but personally I find this really annoying.
That said, there is nothing stopping you running Shorewall on start up and running a daemon to alter polices and rules on the fly e.g. using fwknop to open and close a port to sshd.
At the end of the day it's up to you how you go about this but an evening learning the basics of Shorewall is quite enlightening and if all you want to do is set up a default DROP firewall you'll find it's very easy to do.
