nfnetlink, cfnetlink, and iptables2

nfnetlink, cfnetlink, and iptables2

[Phil Dibowitz]

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Hey folks,

I posted this to the netfilter-devel list, but got no response. I'm not 
sure if they felt it wasn't appropriate for the devel list, so I'm 
posting it here in hopes of more information.

A while back Herald Welte emailed me and suggested I port my application 
(iptstate) to use the new ctnetlink/nfnetlink framework (as opposed to 
reading data out of /proc).

I haven't had much time since then, but I decided to sit down and look 
at this, and I'm a bit confused by what I found. I found libnfnetlink here:
http://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/netfilter/libnfnetlink/snapshot/
and libctnetlink here:
http://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/netfilter/libctnetlink/snapshot/

And since cfnetlink requires nfnetlink, I went to compile that first. 
And ran into some problems. So I started browsing the archives, and it 
seems people refer to an old "ctnetlink/nfnetlink" and a new one... and 
the new one is part of "iptables2" ? I haven't followed 
netfilter/iptables developement very carefully, so I don't know what 
iptables2 is, but seems to be the latest suite of "frontend" 
applications to netfilter.

At the very least, libnfnetlink requires nfnetlink.h, which I would have 
thought was part of libnfnetlink, but it appears it's not. I found a 
mention of a "release" of iptables2 here:

http://lists.netfilter.org/pipermail/netfilter/2001-November/016646.html

but the download requires a password which I don't have. Additionally 
the post talkes about a whole lot of kernel incompatibilities between 
old versions and new versions and it doesn't appear the latest versions 
have made it into the main kernel tree yet. Is this correct? If so, this 
doesn't actually sound like something ready for primetime yet...

Perhaps someone can relate ctnetlink/nfnetlink (old and new) to 
libcfnetlink/libnfnetlink and iptables2, and the current kernels for me?

Thanks...

-- 
Phil Dibowitz                             phil@ipom.com
Freeware and Technical Pages              Insanity Palace of Metallica
http://www.phildev.net/                   http://www.ipom.com/

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
  - Benjamin Franklin, 1759


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