Kernel Building Vs. sysctl

[nicke@imagenation.com]

Hi Steven,

Yes, praised be the command sysctl <bow> as it sure fixed me up. But not 
before I had the chance to look at the generic kernel config file.. WOW, there 
is a lot of stuff in there I don't need. 

I think you are right. I am going to close up this PPP project first and write it up 
as a FAQ, THEN dig into my kernel. Gotta do some weeding ;)

Now, with commands like sysctl, and starting my 'pppd /dev/tty01', where is the 
best place to put them? I have been using rc.local for this, am I in the best 
place?

Oh, and soon I will want to close my system up so it can move it outside my 
firewall (a Whistle Interjet). Where would I find documentation on port filtering, 
and blocking access? And can someone help me find out how I tell the BSD 
machine that the domain 192.168.1.* is trusted to relay out to the net? ;) I 
finally got Q-Mail working internally but I am getting turned away when it comes 
to getting outbound mail out the door <sigh> 

Nick

> Nick, I really wouldn't go to the trouble of compiling a new kernel if all
> you need to do is enable IPFORWARDING. I would invest some time into
> getting your PPP interfaces working, and then take on the new task of
> learning to build custom kernels. 
> 
> I must say now that Peter informed me (and the rest of the list) about
> sysctl, I will _very_ rarely need to build a new kernel. In fact, now that
> I can modify some of the kernel's data structures without building a new
> one, i'll likely only do it if I want/need to build a smaller kernel,
> without all of the excess services, drivers and protocols that I don't use.