routing modules

[bateman23]

I want to use my linux-computer as a router. But I just can't get things work.
Now I think, perhaps I don't have the needed kernel-modules. Is it right that you need the modules ip_tables, ip_conntrack,..... ?
How can I determine whether these modules are installed?
and if they aren't, how can I just install the modules without compile a new kernel?

Anyway... is that my problem?
I have SuSE 7.0 Prof. Does anybody know what else could be wrong?

thanks for helping
bateman

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

I don't think Suse 7.0 had the new 2.4 kernel and, if not, you would not have the modules you mention anyway. Iptables was new with the 2.4 kernel series. (Suse 7.1 onwards has 2.4 for definite).

If you do have kernel 2.4, to tell what netfilter modules you have for a given kernel simply do a 'ls /lib/modules/2.4.6/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter' where 2.4.6 is your kernel. You can get the active kernel identity by doing 'uname -r'. For the older 2.2 kernel series you would use 'ipchains' instead of 'iptables'. For example, 'ipchains -L' will list the active chains.

It really depends how sophisticated you want to get. Iptables has extra functionality such as stateful filtering and, in some ways, the implementation of aspects like forwarding is easier to understand. You almost certainly can already use ipchains without loading any extra modules. If you want to move to iptables you'll need to install a 2.4 series kernel and load all the relevant modules - if in doubt do :

/sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.4.6/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter/*

That will load all the modules in the netfilter directory. For iptables see -->

http://netfilter.samba.org/unreliable-guides/

. For ipchains see -->

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/IPCHAINS-HOWTO.html

.

Hope this helps