[SlugBug] gentoo and.... firewalls

[mike dewar]

Hello all, I've more metworking questions:

On an old box i've installed Gentoo and, with your help, set up eth0 so 
it works well and I can 'emerge' packages. The next step is to install 
ssh so that I can log into the old box from my new box and leave the old 
box in the cupboard. I've installed Openssh on both computers, 
successfully I think. However, when I try to ssh into the old box from 
the old box (to test it) it says connection refused on port 22. My ssh 
How-To suggests poking a hole in the firewall and opening port 22 which 
makes sense.

The How-To says to use iptables to do this. So, after finding out 
iptables isn't installed i install it via gentoo's emerge thingy, which 
downloads and compiles iptables successfully. However, when I try and 
run iptables -L it says:

Can't locate module iptables
iptables v1.2.8: can't initialize iptables table 'filter': iptables who' 
(do you need insmod?)
perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.

Having a google for this is fun, but it mostly says 'you need a 2.4.x 
kernel' which I have... I have the latest gentoo kernel (although I 
don't know much about it). The iptables is the latest version that 
gentoo offers as well.

So, my questions are: what's going on? Can I poke a hole in the firewall 
another way? Should I be using ipchains? How do I have a firewall if 
iptables isn't working? (i thought iptables _was_ the firewall)...

If I log into the computer from itself, does it go through the router? 
Should all I be doing is opening up port22 on my router?

Any help would be appreciated, as always. Also, any hints on what I 
should be checking before emailng you lot would also be good - i.e. how 
can I troubleshoot this kind of thing and so avoid n00b questions...

Cheers,

Mike Dewar