[Discuss] Trying to connect to internet in Fedora

[rrose at pobox.com (Randall Rose)]

On Fedora 42, there is a firewalld installed, but I don't know how to set it 
up to make it as strict as "ufw enable" so I can't connect.

On Thu, Jan 15, 2026, at 7:40 PM, Randall Rose wrote:
> Unfortunately I am in a situation where I need to rebuild some machines 
> with only a Debian and a Fedora install disk to work from.  With 
> Debian, it's hard to connect to the internet since Debian doesn't like 
> to provide a firewall in the initial install.
>
> Here's what I tried with Debian 13:
> 1. install from DVD
> 2. go back to DVD, pull iptables .deb file (which the default install 
> didn't set up) off DVD 
> 3. install iptables (version number is 1.8.11, using nf_tables)
> 4. fix sources.list so it points back to debian.org repositories
> 5. go to out-of-date Ubuntu machine that can't safely connect to 
> internet since it's no longer supported, 
> run ufw enable, dump output of iptables-save and ip6tables-save in text 
> files (same version of iptables)
> 6. use those text files on Debian machine as input to iptables-restore 
> and ip6tables-restore
> 7. turn on wifi connection
> 8. Result: on Debian machine, Firefox can't connect to any site, 
> although the Software app claims it is can see that all updates are up 
> to date.
>
> Alternatively, starting at step 5, I can simply run "iptables -A INPUT 
> -j DROP" and "ip6tables -A INPUT -j DROP" but I get the same result.
>
> What am I doing wrong?  Looks like the firewall is too strict so that 
> Firefox can't connect.