I've been searching around for a basic iptables howto, but haven't really found anything that has helped me out...

I just want to set up a basic firewall that will block all ports excepts those it is specified to leave open, such as 80, 143, etc. I want to be able to use iptable -save and iptable -restore to save and load the set of rules. Also, any list of ports that should be left open would be helpful. Currently I have in mind the following ports as being open:

22,80,1090,1091,19284,143
I especially need help figuring out which port nautilus uses, as I can't find it)

I would like to learn the basic commands and sytax, because the docs I have looked through are either very specific to a certain need or very vague and hard to read. I need the following quesitons addressed:

-How to start iptables automatically on boot
-Basic command for blocking and unblocking ports and their syntax
-Starting/Stopping the firewall
-Saving/Restoring a configuration

Any help would be appreciated!

http://www.linuxguruz.com/

Check out that site.

Also - this site will create a script for you, but they comment the code well enough you can learn it through their script:
http://easyfwgen.morizot.net/gen/

http://www.netfilter.org/documentation/index.html
http://lfs.osuosl.org/blfs/view/stab.../firewall.html

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginne...tml/index.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

In general, www.tldp.org has a guide/howto for just about anything you'd ever want to do in Linux.