-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tuesday, 2009-05-05 at 22:47 -0500, Rajko M. wrote:
It seems that you never used personal firewall in that other OS, at least not paid for version. User is asked would he let application [name] to access Internet, with offer to give more details if user wants. So, if you see some application attempting to access Internet, and you are not sure, you click link to more information and read what firewall creators have to say.
That situation is impossible in Linux, as the firewall can not track to which application belongs a network packet. The only info available is "this packet on that port was rejected" (past tense), but the application responsible is unknown. Further, the firewall closes ports to incoming packets from the outside, not to outgoing packets, and there is no info to link this to whatever application might have opened that port for listening. The two things, opened port by and app and firewall are disconnected in Linux. Therefore, it is not possible to pop up a window saying that a certain app requests a port to be opened. The port has in fact already being opened, but packets are rejected by the firewall, who has no information about which program might or might not need that rejected packed, and thus can not give that info on the popup window to help in the decision. That's why an informed administrator is needed to make the configuration changes. If the user doesn't know, he/she will have to pay for support, in person or via help desk, or ask a forum or other free help. And yes, the application should clearly document which (fixed) ports it needs to be opened in advance, if it is an application designed for Linux. Else, report a bug against that application. But I recogn that this info is sometimes difficult to locate or interpret. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkoB3toACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XakwCcDLCHgb26O0tKmeBMwxGwA4eV KuUAnjpksQJc4lHEt3M43DhBg1AdkjFW =2Tsp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org