Firewall

The Firewall tab manages the server's rules. It is the one screen in CloudPilot that can make a machine unreachable, so it behaves differently from the rest.

Why it asks you to confirm#

A firewall is the only part of a server that can lock you out of the server itself. Get a rule wrong and the machine is fine — running, serving traffic, and completely unreachable, including to the agent that would have fixed it.

A warning does not help, because you cannot tell a good rule from a bad one until it is too late to find out. So CloudPilot uses two defences instead:

1. Some rules are refused outright. Anything that would cut SSH or the agent's own connection is rejected rather than warned about. There is no legitimate reason to ask the panel to sever its own link to the machine.

2. Everything else is applied on a deadline. A new rule goes live immediately, and the panel then has 60 seconds to confirm it. If the confirmation does not arrive, the agent puts the rule back.

Losing contact is precisely what happens when a rule locks you out, so silence is treated as failure rather than as consent. If the change broke your access, you do nothing and it undoes itself.

Applying a rule#

1. Open the server → Firewall.
2. Add the rule — allow or deny, a port, and optionally a source address.
3. The rule applies and a countdown appears.
4. If the page still works, click Confirm. If it does not, wait. After the window closes the rule is reverted and you are back where you started.

Sensible defaults#

• Allow 80 and 443 if the server serves websites.
• Allow 22 from your own IP rather than from everywhere, if your IP is stable.
• Do not open database ports to the world. If an application on another machine needs the database, allow that machine's IP specifically. See Databases.