[NTLUG:Discuss] ipchains versus netfilter

[Will Senn]

Hi again ntluggers,

I have Redhat 7.1 with the 2.4.2 kernel
on a Pentium MMX 200 mhz
128 MB SDRAM 66mhz
Diamond Viper V550 16 MB SDRAM
etc...

As some of you may have read, I recently attempted to build a 2.4.3 kernel
and one of the issues that I came across was that after I built the kernel
and rebooted - I didn't have the necessary processes for ipchains
apparently.
This was not surprising in and of itself because I didn't select any options
related to ipchains in 'make xconfig'.  I didn't select any because to my
knowledge there aren't any.  The only ipchains entry that I saw was in the
netfilter options and the help said this was not advisable?

My questions are:
What is netfilter versus ipchains?
What's up with the dearth of help on setting up netfilter?
I used the ipchains HOWTO and the - Red Hat Linux 6.X as an Internet Gateway
for a Home Network HOWTO to set up ipchains, but I couldn't find anything
comparable for netfilter, which is more current?
What is a good source of information for learning about the configuration
options in the kernel? (You would think that Redhat would document at
least a bit of the configuration)

Thanks,

Will Senn
Lead Engineer
Postfuture, Inc.
voice: 972.889.2226
fax: 972.235.4162
mailto:wsenn at postfuture.com
http://postfuture.com

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