Make sure that packet forwarding is enabled (in recent kernels it is disabled by default, meaning that packets never even try to traverse the `forward' chain). You can override this (as root) by typing
# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
#
If this works for you, you can put this somewhere in your bootup scripts so it is enabled every time; you'll want to set up your firewalling before this command runs though, otherwise there's an opportunity for packets to slip through.
There was a bug in versions 2.1.102 and 2.1.103 of the kernel (and
some old patches I produced) which made ipchains commands which
specified a wildcard interface (such as -i ppp+) fail.
This is fixed in recent kernels, and in the 2.0.34 patch on the web site. You can also fix it by hand in the kernel source by changing line 63 or so in include/linux/ip_fw.h:
#define IP_FW_F_MASK 0x002F /* All possible flag bits mask */
This should read ``0x003F''. Fix this and recompile the kernel.
This was my mistake: setting the Type of Service field did not actually set the Type of Service in kernel versions 2.1.102 through 2.1.111. This problem was fixed in 2.1.112.
ipautofw and ipportfw don't work!
For 2.0.x, this is true; I haven't time to create and maintain a jumbo patch for ipchains and ipautofw/ipportfw.
For 2.1.x, download ipmasqadm from
<url url="http://juanjox.home.ml.org/"
name="http://juanjox.home.ml.org/">
and use it exactly as you would have used ipautofw or
ipportfw, except instead of ipportfw you type ipmasqadm
portfw, and instead of ipautofw you type ipmasqadm autofw.
Upgrade to version 1.6.0 or above, which doesn't require any firewall rules at all for 2.1.x kernels. This seems to have broken again in the 1.6.1 release; please bug the author (it's not my fault!).
-j REDIRECT!
This was a bug in ipchains version 1.3.3. Please upgrade.
True (for 2.1.x kernels) up to 2.1.123. In 2.1.124, trying to set the
masquerading timeouts causes a kernel lockup (change return
to ret = on line 1328 of net/ipv4/ip_fw.c). In 2.1.125, it
works fine.
So do a number of others, it seems. My code only covers IP, unfortunately. On the good side, all the hooks are there to firewall IPX! You just need to write the code; I will happily help where possible.