How to : Installing and compiling APF firewall

[ewdi]

Here is how to install and configure APF firewall (My Favorite firewall and popular among server admins) :p

Website : http://www.rfxnetworks.com/apf.php

1. Grab latest APF package

wget http://www.rfxnetworks.com/downloads/apf-current.tar.gz

2. Extract It

tar -xvzf apf-current.tar.gz

3. Go to the extracted folder

cd apf-version/ (replace version with the version number - try to ls if you dont know)

4. Installing it

./install.sh

You should see these

APF installed
Install path: /etc/apf
Config path: /etc/apf/conf.apf
Executable path: /usr/local/sbin/apf

5. Configure your firewall settings, this case i use pico (my fav) you can use others such as vi or nano.

pico /etc/apf/conf.apf

follow the instructions on config files.

Sample port config from our server

Common ingress (inbound) ports
# Common ingress (inbound) TCP ports -3000_3500 = passive port range for Pure FTPD
IG_TCP_CPORTS="21,22,25,53,80,110,143,443"
#
# Common ingress (inbound) UDP ports
IG_UDP_CPORTS="53"

Common egress (outbound) ports
# Common egress (outbound) TCP ports
EG_TCP_CPORTS="21,25,80,443,43"
#
# Common egress (outbound) UDP ports
EG_UDP_CPORTS="20,21,53"

Remember to disable DEVM="1" to 0 if your firewall is working. If you set to 1 it will flush your firewall rules so you wont get lock up from outside (if this is remote server)

Start your firewall with
/usr/local/sbin/apf -s

To autostart apf on reboot, run this:

chkconfig --level 2345 apf on

To autostart apf on reboot, run this:

chkconfig --level 2345 apf on


Hope this how to helps :)

[ewdi]

also there is rpm available from freshrpm, but you still need to edit /etc/apf/conf.apf before starting it