Upgrading Iptables to 1.4 on Debian Etch

I required the module connlimit to limit the number of connections on one of our Debian firewall boxes. First download the iptables-1.4.2.tar.bz2version from Netfilter.

Unpack the tarball

tar -xjvf iptables-1.4.2.tar.bz2

Change directory

cd iptables-1.4.2

configure iptables

./configure –prefix=/

if you just use ./configure then everything will be installed to /usr/local

make and install iptables

make install

After that you can check your new iptables version

iptables -v

The only problem i encountered is apps which need iptables as dependency beacuse aptitude will try and install the old version of iptables again as a dependency. Either you install those apps from source as well. Or you can install two versions of iptables one under /usr/local and one under /sbin which can be confusing.

via Gentoo Blog » Upgrading Iptables to 1.4 on Debian Etch.