Questions that arrive in the mail.

No. KMyFirewall uses iptables to implement the ruleset, so you cannot define different rules for different applications. The whole firewalling process runs in kernel space and is independent from other software. IPTables does not know which applications use the network. It only decides whether a port is reachable for each packet.

No. The main difference between KMyFirewall and tools from the Microsoft world is that KMyFirewall generates an iptables script and installs it into the boot scripts. The generated configuration is static, which means the ruleset does not change once generated, and you will not get messages such as a prompt asking whether a host should be banned.

That does not mean the firewall configured by KMyFirewall is less secure. Static configurations are often preferred to firewalls that react to specific events, such as blocking a host that made a port scan, because they are easier to maintain and debug.

Yes and no. KMyFirewall deletes all existing iptables rules before setting up its own, so you cannot use it together with other iptables based tools such as Guard Dog or Firestarter. There is no problem with TCP wrappers through /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny, or with an application level firewall.

You need KDE for configuration because KMyFirewall uses a lot of KDE specific parts. The script generated by KMyFirewall should run on any Linux box using a kernel 2.4.x or later.

If the generated scripts have problems on a machine other than the one where KMyFirewall runs, correct some paths at the beginning of the kmyfirewall.sh file, such as the path to the iptables binary.

I hope so, but there is quite a lot to do before reaching that goal. Currently it is part of the KDE Extra Gear module, so there is a good chance that distributions will package it before it enters KDE itself.

Not in the near future. KMyFirewall was designed to be as flexible as possible so it can use almost every feature provided by iptables, and its design is strongly influenced by the way iptables works. Adding support for another operating system is not easy.

Work on BSD support may start once 1.0 is finished, but it should not be expected soon because the author is busy with work, university and other commitments.

KMyFirewall uses the iptables LOG target. IPTables uses the system logging daemon, so the location depends on your system configuration. The most common place for those messages is /var/log/messages.

You have most likely run ./configure with the wrong arguments or with no arguments, so KMyFirewall did not install properly.

Look at the source packages your distribution provides for KDE applications. On RPM platforms the .spec file, and on Debian the debian subdirectory, contains the right list of arguments for your distribution.

Please go ahead. The author does most of the work alone, so every kind of help is welcome: coding, testing, packaging, documentation, and even beer.

Contact the project by email at chubinger@irrsinnig.org. The credits page lists the people involved.