The UFW Guide - A 5-Part Series Understanding Firewalls

Uncomplicated Firewall, or UFW, is a simple and easy to use Firewall interface written in Python. It is quite popular in Ubuntu and Debian based systems although you can technically use on any Linux distro. On Ubuntu-based distros it is available by default.

Just because it is easy to use, doesn't mean that it is not production worthy or inferior. In fact, budding sysadmins can learn a lot about networking and firewalls just by using UFW. It's simple syntax allows you to think about the firewall rules and the networking setup, instead of getting distracted by flags and other obscurities.

Here are a few key commands of UFW discussed at the beginner levels, they are all Independent of each other. So think of it as a reference rather than a step-by-step guide.These should help you secure your VPS from the hostile and dark corners of the Internet.

1. UFW status - Inspecting the state of UFW itself
2. UFW allow - Allowing Incoming and outbound traffic
3. UFW enable/disable - Use these carefully or risk locking yourself out of your own system
4. UFW list rules - Making sense of all the various rules and their implications
5. UFW remove rules - Editing rules to make your system a bit more pervious
6. Firewalls Best Practices for Security