Mandrake MNF

[Brian Kelsay]

Jeffrey Cady wrote:

> "Mandrake is famous for the hidden (non-standard) config files.  What you 
> may want to look into is where webmin or linuxconf store their files. 
> Mandrake may have just written a fancy frontend to either of those 
> utilities.  Red Hat and Mandrake both have had problems in the past with 
> Gui-based tools not actually altering the standard .conf or config file. 
>   You would have a choice of editing by hand (as you did) or by Gui, but 
> not both.  MNF is based on Mandrake 7.3 if I recall correctly.  I 
> checked it out, but I went for IPCop instead."
> 
> 
> So how would I go about finding where webmin and linuxconf store their
> files? It seems like if I can find where the GUI is getting its settings I
> can just manually configure them and get the GUI and the text files in sync
> with each other.

I found this info usefull for install of a current version of MNF, since 
you didn't say which version you have and I thought they only had the 
one: http://people.mandrakesoft.com/~amaury/mnf/9.0.php
At the end there is info on where to get further help, and it informs 
the user that they use shorewall for the firewalling 
(http://www.shorewall.net/)

 From the Webmin FAQ (http://www.webmin.com/faq.html) I ferreted out 
that they are stored in /etc/webmin/*.conf .  If it actually uses Webmin 
then I suggest selected readings from the Book of Webmin: 
http://www.swelltech.com/support/webminguide-1.0/index.html

After looking at the Shorewall webpage (http://www.shorewall.net/) and 
going to "QuickStart Guides" and the specific docs on a "Basic 
Two-Interface Firewall" (they put the page in HTML frames so I can't 
give the exact link) we find that shorewall puts its config files in 
/etc/shorewall/rules, ./policy, ./zones, ./common.  They also mention 
something about the Mandrake distro:

"Note however, that the Shorewall configuration produced by Mandrake 
Internet Connection Sharing is strange and is apt to confuse you if you 
use the rest of this documentation (it has two local zones; "loc" and 
"masq" where "loc" is empty; this conflicts with this documentation 
which assumes a single local zone "loc"). We therefore recommend that 
once you have set up this sharing that you uninstall the Mandrake 
Shorewall RPM and install the one from the download page then follow the 
instructions in this Guide."

Hey, they said it.  I love Mandrake and what it does for the new user. 
I used it, but after a while I got confused w/ the differences between 
standard docs and how I had to do stuff on Mandrake.  So  you may have 
to get specific help from the mandrake guys on some stuff.  Depends how 
deep you want to go.  Now that we know they use Shorewall you could use 
it with any base distro, including an up-to-date Mandrake 9.1 or Cooker, 
w/ that Mandrake link I put in above, looks like the current one uses 
8.2 but I heard you can't download the .iso.

I just thought of something as I ran all this through my CPU (noggin) 
again.  Did you restart the firewall after the change in rules.  Issue 
"shorewall restart" from the CLI. then refresh the webpage and see if 
that fixes it.
Hope some of this helps.  Gives you a start anyway.

I checked one other thing and found exactly what I was talking about. 
Read the entire post and see if you catch it (could only get the google 
copyto work):
http://216.239.33.104/search?q=cache:eD_ekpNtpRwJ:archives.mandrakelinux.com/firewall/2003-02/msg000
11.php+MNF+config+files&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Again, good luck.
Brian
-- 
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