Hey I just installed my slackware distro and I have manage to get a few things working thus far, but I seem to be running into a few firewall problems. First off I went into google to see if slackware has a preconfigured firewall as part of the distro. I didn't seem to find a heck of alot. I tryed looking for a slackware webpage, but the only thing I found was www.slackware-linux.org and it's down. I read in another post that they are getting DOSed right now. So this just left me to assume that it has no preconfigured firewall (because what I have read about slackware is that is it not a bloted distro)


So I read the firewall how-to and based on my kernel (2.4) it told me I needed to use ipchains. So I do a locate ipchains and found it the command in my /sbin directory. So I do an ipchains -L to see if there is anything set up yet and I get the error :

ipchains: Incompatible with this kernel

I do a kernelversion and I get: 2.4

I'm not too sure where I am going wrong here. I am thinking I may not have ipchains comipled with the kernel, but if that was the case why would I have ipchains in my /sbin.

well any suggestions or even ideas at this point would be great. I am sort of a standstill right now and don't want to recompile my kernel unless I really have to. Mainly because of the fact I have never done it before and the idea sort of spooks me out.

Thanks

Well, 2.4 kernel have ipTables as far as i know...
You will most probably have to recompile the kernel, since you need all the nice IPtables and netfilter options, NAT, etc....
Don't worry, on Slack it's really easy!
http://p-two.net/modules.php?op=modl...catid=&topic=3
has some easy instructions on kernel compilation in slack.
Also you can download a firewall setup utility, firestarter. I have never used it, but you might want to give it a try.
HTH
-NSKL

Penguin Dropout:

Just doa search for Netfilter, or iptables, or ipmasquerade, and or nat, here in LQ or in the google.com/linux.
Basically netfilter is the program that implements ip masquearding in linux or iptables. In the earlier versions of the kernel, it was ipchains the one used, but I believe that since the 2.4 kernel they are using iptables.
If you install Slackware 8.1, iptables is configured as modules out of the box. Basically look or do a search here in linuxquestions and youll find many scripts that you can use. I do suggest that before doing anything do what I did; read and read, specially look for the ipmasq how-tos in the netfilter webpage, here .
Anyways just keep trying and if any questions Im sure somebody will help you here.


Figa

Anyways, this is a site that you might like, see if you find anything good here:
http://www.linuxguruz.org/iptables/

Thanks alot for the links guys. This gave me a whole new avenue to look into. I'll work with it some tomorrow and see what I come up with.

I'll visit those sites as well, when I have the time. But _maybe_ someone has seen or found a script that would convert a ipchains firewall to iptables...

I have a firewall / gateway configuration based on ipchains, ipfwadm and such, I'd pretty much like it if I can keep that config and use a nice magic wand to convert the most of it. I know one usually has to look closely at what the wand has done, but it saves quite some typing

In the masquerading how-to, there is a section that talks about ipchains and how they relate to iptable. Im not sure in which how-to though. There are basically two great documents on this masq stuff that are really ecellent, one is the masq-how-to from the linux documentation project and the other one is the tutorial or how to in the netfilter page. I don't know about any scripts that can do that, but againg Im not even a expert on this matter, just triying help.

Figa

In slackware you just need a script called rc.firewall in /etc/rc.d which is called by rc.inet2.
You can download my rc.firewall script here if your interested, it's a statefull firewall written for a cable connection, feel free to modify and use it how you see fit.

Hi there

I've often downloaded firewall scripts and tools and ended up ripping bits and pieces out, reinventing the wheel in making a customised script. I found a script called "Firewall By Jim" which removed the need for that. I've been using version 1.20 of this script for a while now, but I notice there's a 1.30 (http://www.jg555.com/projects/firewall/ftp.php). If ever there was a candidate for an official Slack firewall package, then I think it would be this one.