Hey guys..i have a pickle of a problem..i have ubuntu 6.06 installed..and i finally decided to compile a new kernel today. Everything went well...everything works....exept..i try to start firestarter gui..to see if iptables is ok..and it says " your kernel does not support iptables" . now i have the iptables instaled that came with ubuntu originally. so now...do i uninstal that..and compile iptables from scratch..and reinstall firestarter for that? is there another firewall i can use instead of iptables? my kernel is 2.6.17.3 . Pentium M 1.7gh 1gig ram sony laptop nvidia 128mb vid card.

You can go back to your old kernel (assuming you kept it), or recompile your 2.6.17.3 kernel with iptables support. It is possible (not sure on this) that it can be made as a module, which would save a bit of effort.

How did you configure your new kernel?
If you use:
make oldconfig
you can reuse your previous configuration (though this might not work now, because your oldconfig is your current configuration).
Else, if supported in the old kernel, you can get the configuration from /proc/config.gz (but only when the earlier kernel is running)
zcat /proc/config.gz > somefile
Then
make menuconfig
and load that somefile as your configuration.

This all a bit generic, and bypasses a lot of Ubuntu magic, so might get messy. Try the Ubuntu forums for different advice than here.

When you compiled your kernel did you make sure you enabled IPTables support?

When I do kernel upgrades I don't reinstall IPTables, just to let you know.

Hope this helps.

::EDIT:: Looks like I was a little late on the post. Sorryb