BrickHouse Quick FAQ

Q. Can I use BrickHouse to apply a firewall to my Airport card?
A. Yes and no. While the default Quick Configuration Ethernet screen only affects the built-in ethernet card, you can add or alter the generated rules in the Expert screen. For example, you could duplicate each rule that ends with 'en0' and replace it with 'en1' (these represent your ethernet connections).

This is not satisfactory to me, and I will be adding increased support for multiple ethernet cards and more flexible rule creation (via a GUI) in a future version.

Q. What are all those arcane acronyms on the Quick Configuration screen?
A. They are various network protocols more often used in corporate/university LAN settings than in the home. For the most part, if you don't know what they are, you don't need to turn them on, especially if you have 'Allow All Outgoing Connections' selected (as recommended for home use).

But in case you're interested: SSH is Secure Shell, SNMP is Simple Network Management Protocol, RPC is Remote Procedure Call, DNS is Domain Name Server, SMB/Samba is the Windows filesharing protocol, Netinfo/NFS are the distributed network configuration system on OSX, and Network File System, respectively.

Q. How do I uninstall the startup firewall created by BrickHouse?
A. Select 'Remove Startup Script' in the BrickHouse application, or throw out the Firewall folder at /Library/StartupItems/Firewall, and reboot your Macintosh. You could also use the BrickHouse application and 'Clear All Rules' instead of rebooting to uninstall the firewall temporarily.

Q. Can I use BrickHouse to create an internal network like IPNetRouter?
A. Not quite yet. You can use BrickHouse (via the Expert screen) to set up the firewall rules needed to use the system's natd daemon (Network Address Translation). You still need to issue the appropriate command to launch the natd daemon, however. 

I'm considering adding NAT configuration to a future version of BrickHouse.

Q. Can BrickHouse alert me with a popup dialog with someone attempts to get through my firewall?
A. No. That is a task better suited to a Network Intrusion Detection system (such as snort - http://www.snort.org/), since there are some network exploits than may get past even conservative firewall rules.  

I'm working on an additional application suite for Mac OS X that will provide all aspects of locking down an internet-connected network with both a firewall and an NIDS. Stay tuned.

Q. Something's gone wrong! I can't connect with .... 
A. To be sure that the firewall is the culprit, you should open BrickHouse and choose the 'Clear All Rules' option. This effectively makes your firewall go away (until the next time you boot or apply new rules), and should clear up any connectivity problems that may have been caused by the firewall.

If you run into a situation like this, and you don't understand why it happened, please send a message describing the problem and you network configfuration to me at <brianhill@mac.com>.