Setting up a firewall in Hardy

Well, Hardy Heron has been released, and I've already installed it. If you've installed it, hope it went well for you and you aren't having any issues with it. If you have yet to install it, you're in for a treat! It's a great release and a real step forward for Ubuntu.

You may recall that I advised you a while ago how to set up a firewall using Firestarter. Well, that's no longer necessary because Hardy introduces uFW, short for Uncomplicated Firewall. Despite the fact that uFW is a command-line only application, it really is as uncomplicated as the name sounds. To look at the documentation for uFW, enter the following:

man ufw

Now, the default policy will be OK for most people, so all you need to know about is enable and disable. If you want to start up your firewall, enter the following:

sudo ufw enable

Now, when you restart your system, uFW will be working. If you want to disable it, just enter the following:

sudo ufw disable

Couldn't be simpler!