FirewallD quickstart guide

FirewallD, or Dynamic Firewall Manager, is the replacement for the IPTables firewall in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The main improvement over IPTables is the capacity to make changes without the need to restart the whole firewall service.

FirewallD was first introduced in Fedora 18 and has been the default firewall mechanism for Fedora since then. Finally this year Red Hat decided to include it in RHEL 7, and of course it also made its way to the different RHEL clones like CentOS 7 and Scientific Linux 7.

Checking FirewallD service status

To get the basic status of the service simply use firewall-cmd --state.

[root@centos7 ~]# firewall-cmd --state
running
[root@centos7 ~]#

If you need to get a more detailed state of the service you can always use systemctl command.

[root@centos7 ~]# systemctl status firewalld.service
firewalld.service - firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/firewalld.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2014-11-19 06:47:42 EST; 32min ago
 Main PID: 873 (firewalld)
   CGroup: /system.slice/firewalld.service
           └─873 /usr/bin/python -Es /usr/sbin/firewalld --nofork --nopid

Nov 19 06:47:41 centos7.vlab.local systemd[1]: Starting firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon...
Nov 19 06:47:42 centos7.vlab.local systemd[1]: Started firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon.
[root@centos7 ~]#

To enable or disable FirewallD again use systemctl commands.

systemctl enable firewalld.service
systemctl disable firewalld.service

Managing firewall zones

FirewallD introduces the zones concept, a zone is no more than a way to define the level of trust for a set of connections. A connection definition can only be part of one zone at the same time but zones can be grouped. There is a set of predefined zones:

• Public - For use in public areas. Only selected incoming connections are accepted.
• Drop - Any incoming network packets are dropped, there is no reply. Only outgoing network connections are possible.
• Block - Any incoming network connections are rejected with an icmp-host-prohibited message for IPv4 and icmp6-adm-prohibited for IPv6. Only network connections initiated within this system are possible.
• External - For use on external networks with masquerading enabled especially for routers. Only selected incoming connections are accepted.
• DMZ - For computers DMZ network, with limited access to the internal network. Only selected incoming connections are accepted.
• Work - For use in work areas. Only selected incoming connections are accepted.
• Home - For use in home areas. Only selected incoming connections are accepted.
• Trusted - All network connections are accepted.
• Internal - For use on internal networks. Only selected incoming connections are accepted.

By default all interfaces are assigned to the public zone. Each zone is defined in its own XML file stored in /usr/lib/firewalld/zones. For example the public zone XML file looks like this.

root@centos7 zones]# cat public.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<zone>
  <short>Public</short>
  <description>For use in public areas. You do not trust the other computers on networks to not harm your computer. Only selected incoming connections are accepted.</description>
  <service name="ssh"/>
  <service name="dhcpv6-client"/>
</zone>
[root@centos7 zones]#

Retrieve a simple list of the existing zones.

[root@centos7 ~]# firewall-cmd --get-zones
block dmz drop external home internal public trusted work
[root@centos7 ~]#

Get a detailed list of the same zones.

firewall-cmd --list-all-zones

Get the default zone.

[root@centos7 ~]# firewall-cmd --get-default-zone
public
[root@centos7 ~]#

Get the active zones.

[root@centos7 ~]# firewall-cmd --get-active-zones
public
  interfaces: eno16777736 virbr0
[root@centos7 ~]#

Get the details of a specific zone.

[root@centos7 zones]# firewall-cmd --zone=public --list-all
public (default, active)
  interfaces: eno16777736 virbr0
  sources:
  services: dhcpv6-client ssh
  ports:
  masquerade: no
  forward-ports:
  icmp-blocks:
  rich rules:

[root@centos7 zones]#

Change the default zone.

firewall-cmd --set-default-zone=home

Interfaces and sources

Zones can be bound to a network interface and to a specific network addressing or source.

Assign an interface to a different zone, the first command assigns it temporarily and the second makes it permanently.

firewall-cmd --zone=home --change-interface=eth0
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=home --change-interface=eth0

Retrieve the zone an interface is assigned to.

[root@centos7 zones]# firewall-cmd --get-zone-of-interface=eno16777736
public
[root@centos7 zones]#

Bound the zone work to a source.

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=work --add-source=192.168.100.0/27

List the sources assigned to a zone, in this case work.

[root@centos7 ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=work --list-sources
172.16.10.0/24 192.168.100.0/27
[root@centos7 ~]#

Services

FirewallD can assign services permanently to a zone, for example to assign http service to the dmz zone. A service can be also assigned to multiple zones.

[root@centos7 ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=dmz --add-service=http
success
[root@centos7 ~]# firewall-cmd --reload
success
[root@centos7 ~]#

List the services assigned to a given zone.

[root@centos7 ~]# firewall-cmd --list-services --zone=dmz
http ssh
[root@centos7 ~]#

Other operations

Besides of Zones, interfaces and Services management FirewallD like other firewalls can perform several network related operations like masquerading, set direct rules and manage ports.

Masquerading and port forwarding

Add masquerading to a zone.

firewall-cmd --zone=external --add-masquerade

Query if masquerading is enabled in a zone.

[root@centos7 ~]# firewall-cmd --zone=external --query-masquerade
yes
[root@centos7 ~]#

You can also set port redirection. For example to forward traffic originally intended for port 80/tcp to port 8080/tcp.

firewall-cmd --zone=external --add-forward-port=port=80:proto=tcp:toport=8080

A destination address can also bee added to the above command.

firewall-cmd --zone=external --add-forward-port=port=80:proto=tcp:toport=8080:toaddr=172.16.10.21

Set direct rules

Create a firewall rule for 8080/tcp port.

firewall-cmd --direct --add-rule ipv4 filter INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport 8080 -j ACCEPT

Port management

Allow a port temporary in a zone.

firewall-cmd --zone=dmz --add-port=8080/tcp

Hopefully you found the post useful to start working with FirewallD. Comments are welcome.

Juanma.