I have a nat box with a k6 w/32 mb ram and 2mb video. Ive been trying to slim down the generic kernel. Ive been able to ssh into it and then bring up xconfig so i have a gui tool for the job. The problem has been that i have been missing something(s) in my network section. I have pppoe and all of the perameters which explicitly state "required for masq" . All interfaces come up upon boot the nat script runs but the clents get no translation. Pinging of course is okay as is smb, nfs, etc.
An easy solution whould be to locate the .config script that is currently being used on my system and simply omit the obviously extraneous. From what i can tell the GENERIC config does not include nat capabilities. This is odd beceuse this box is running an ftp'd RH9 kernel.
Id really appreciate some help with this one
thanks

#
# Networking options
#
CONFIG_PACKET=y
CONFIG_PACKET_MMAP=y
# CONFIG_NETLINK_DEV is not set
CONFIG_NETFILTER=y
CONFIG_NETFILTER_DEBUG=y
CONFIG_FILTER=y
CONFIG_UNIX=y
CONFIG_INET=y
CONFIG_TUX=y
CONFIG_TUX_EXTCGI=y
CONFIG_TUX_EXTENDED_LOG=y
CONFIG_TUX_DEBUG=y
CONFIG_IP_MULTICAST=y
CONFIG_IP_ADVANCED_ROUTER=y
CONFIG_IP_MULTIPLE_TABLES=y
CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_FWMARK=y
CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_NAT=y
# CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_MULTIPATH is not set
# CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_TOS is not set
CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_VERBOSE=y
CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_LARGE_TABLES=y
CONFIG_IP_PNP=y
CONFIG_IP_PNP_DHCP=y
CONFIG_IP_PNP_BOOTP=y
CONFIG_IP_PNP_RARP=y
CONFIG_NET_IPIP=y
CONFIG_NET_IPGRE=y
CONFIG_NET_IPGRE_BROADCAST=y
CONFIG_IP_MROUTE=y
CONFIG_IP_PIMSM_V1=y
CONFIG_IP_PIMSM_V2=y
CONFIG_ARPD=y
# CONFIG_INET_ECN is not set
CONFIG_SYN_COOKIES=y

#
# IP: Netfilter Configuration
#
CONFIG_IP_NF_CONNTRACK=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_FTP=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_AMANDA=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TFTP=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_IRC=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_QUEUE=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_IPTABLES=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_LIMIT=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MAC=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_PKTTYPE=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MARK=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MULTIPORT=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_TOS=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_ECN=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_DSCP=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_AH_ESP=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_LENGTH=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_TTL=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_TCPMSS=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_HELPER=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_STATE=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_CONNTRACK=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_UNCLEAN=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_OWNER=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_FILTER=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_REJECT=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_MIRROR=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_NEEDED=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_MASQUERADE=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_REDIRECT=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_AMANDA=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_LOCAL=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_SNMP_BASIC=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_IRC=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_FTP=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_TFTP=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_MANGLE=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_TOS=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_ECN=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_DSCP=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_MARK=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_LOG=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_ULOG=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_TCPMSS=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_ARPTABLES=y

If I were you I'd look at my rules-set
rather than the kernel ... also, on a box
with 32 MB RAM you should give the
xserver a miss, specially if it's a version
higher than 3.36 ;)

Cheers,
Tink

thanks tink. this box sits quietly in a dark cloest remembering the days of m$ 3.1, wisock, and floppy floppys. It has no monitor or keyboard (sob sob). X is rararely used and only with a remote host for certain light adminstrative guis then killed.
So about these rules... I see a script called make.rules but not much to modify here.
The linux kernel is new to me. Its necissarily quite meaty compared to bsd.
How can i modify my rules to suit my needs.
thanks Tink

The rules that I refer to is how
you set up your iptables ... has
hardly anything to do with the
kernel, except for the fact that
the underlying code that runs
your rules is a part of the kernel.

How did you set your firewall up?

I'd also recommend having a glance
at the pre-fabed rule-sets at
http://www.linuxguruz.com/iptables/

Cheers,
Tink