Installing Firewall Utility in CentOS 7

Installing Firewall Utility in CentOS 7

Since CentOS 7, the mechanism for filtering incoming and outgoing packet data has been replaced. The previous version of CentOS has been utilizing iptables as the default utility to perform firewall function up to CentOS 6. But since CentOS 7, the function which is previously handled by iptables has been replaced with firewalld. It is actually a dynamic daemon responsible managing firewall tasks.

But those who prefer iptables as their utilities to administer the firewall rules can still prefer this utility by installing it with yum package manager which is used in CentOS. Although iptables still can be installed by using yum utility,it is strongly suggested to migrate by using firewalld since there are highly chance that iptables itself will be discontinued. Below is the process on installing firewalld in CentOS 7 :

1. Since you will install firewalld through the help of yum, first of all, you need to make sure that you have the repository of yum needed to install firewalld. Make sure you have an internet connection available to install it online.

2. Run the following command to check your repository list of yum :

yum repolist

Below is the image of the command executed in CentOS 7 :

3. After executing ‘yum repolist’ and the output is presenting list of available repository which can be accessed normally and it is the default repository of CentOS 7, we can start installing firewalld. Below is the command for the installation of firewalld :

yum install firewalld -y

yum is the utility which is known as package manager for CentOS Linux distribution and also the main command.

install is the attribute of the command which is implying the yum utilities to install programs or utilities specified after.

firewalld is the name of the program or utility which is going to be installed

-y is a parameter value which is given as default answer for the installation process. It is stands for yes which means when the installation process will prompt a question whether to proceed with the installation or not, it will directly give y for yes to proceed through the installation process. So, without having to really care about the summarization list of file installation,  the process will continue on.

4. If the above command is executed successfully, it will then displays the following output :

If the process of installation is shown as the above image, then overall the installation of firewalld  has already completed.