Being a computer nerd makes you write ridiculous things like “headless fedora”. If you look up those words in the dictionary, you would think I was talking about hats for people with no head. Anyway, it seems like a lot of system admin tasks on Fedora, if you look them up on google, refer to the graphical utilities included with it. Many times it is advantageous to forgo the use of the graphical stuff (like in a headless setup). Here are a few tips for how to do some things without the gui tools:
Configure the network
The gui tool system-config-network will recognize the lack of an X display, and present you with a nice curses (no, not like evil curses, another dumb computer word) based interface.
Change firewall rules
Run the command system-config-securitylevel. The curses version of this program is a little confusing, but you have to go to the Customize button to change firewall rules. Reloading them remotely is trickier, and I haven’t found a great way.
Change startup services
There is a command which has come with Redhat for a long time called ntsysv. Just run that and check the boxes for the ones you want. You can also use the chkconfig command to do it in a more laborious process.
Update: you can reload the firewall rules without disrupting your ssh session by running /etc/init.d/iptables restart…awesome
Al's Blog 