Overview

Isba-1.1 User's Guide

1. Overview

Presentation

Contents

Presentation
Hardware configuration
Preferences
Disclaimer

Isba is an object-oriented Perl/Tk graphical ruleset editor dedicated to IP-Filter. The two main problems it wants to address are: rulesets maintainability and secure remote management.

It is made intended for system/network administrators that are already familiar with IP-Filter: it is not a replacement for IP-Filter knowledge.

Isba "sticks" to ipfilter syntax. Rules appear on screen like them would appear in the ipf.conf and ipnat.conf files (with some exceptions). Under isba, some items of ipfilter rules are actually objects: hosts, nets, services (port + protocol) and interfaces.

Isba is launched on the command line in an xterm window (or equivalent). Isba uses this window as a console: you should keep an eye on it. Informations, warnings and errors are printed in it (errors and important warnings are also displayed in popups).

This guide will show you how to use isba to create your objects and rules, and how to manage your firewall(s).

Hardware configuration

Isba runs ok on a K6-III 400Mhz/128MB under OpenBSD 2.9 and on a 200 MHz/128MB SparcStation 5/Solaris 2.6. For a good GUI reactivity, a fast video card is probably more important than a fast processor.

Preferences

Each user of isba has personal preferences saved in the $HOME/.isbarc file. They include: command paths, various fonts, colors, objects and miscelleanous options.

The Preferences window

Disclaimer

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.