3 iptables accounting questions

[Etienne Ledoux <etienne@unix.za.org>]

Greetings,

1) I have a firewall and would like to count all the traffic entering/leaving 
the external interface (I want to count only internet traffic, which is the 
traffic entering/leaving the external if). Is this rule right ?

iptables -N ACCT
iptables -I FORWARD -j ACCT
iptables -I INPUT -j ACCT
iptables -I OUTPUT -j ACCT
iptables -A ACCT -s 10.168.0.2/32 -d 0.0.0.0/0 -o eth0
iptables -A ACCT -s 0.0.0.0/0 -d 10.168.0.2/32 -i eth0

10.168.0.2 is my external interface ip and is also the ip which my internal 
network is natted behind.

2) I would like to save/restore only this accounting rule. I thought 
'iptables-save -c -t ACCT' would work but it doesn't. 'iptables -L ACCT -n -v 
-x' gives me the right counter values but how can I save and restore only my 
accounting rule to prevent loosing the values after a reboot and I don't want 
to save/restore all the accounting stats.

3) How do I flush the accounting stats. 

I'm trying to count all traffic for a month and would then like to flush it at 
the 1st of the next month, so I can start counting the new month. I'm stuck.

tx, in advance

e.