[PLUG] firewall

[Michael M.]

Elliott Mitchell wrote:
>>From: "Michael M." <debian at writemoore.net>
>>
>>IPv6 is here, but it doesn't work for me under Debian.  I had to turn it 
>>off completely in order to use Firefox, Mozilla and Ephiphany. 
>>Konqueror, however, worked fine, but I think the version I was using was 
>>not IPv6-enabled.  Also, w3m worked when invoked with the "-4" (IPv4 
>>only) option.  Otherwise, it would time out like the others.
> 
> Define "doesn't work". Though it isn't fully supported, a lot of Debian
> is fine with IPv6. Some programs do need recompilation to enable IPv6
> support. Multiple folks are filing non-wishlist bugs against packages
> which fail to support IPv6.

"Doesn't work" as in the apps I mentioned above will not load any 
websites; instead, they'd time out.  For example, doing:

:$ w3m http://www.google.com

would not load Google.  It would sit there trying to open a socket until 
it finally timed out.  But when I did:

:$ w3m -4 http://www.google.com

it loaded Google without delay.

It's not the program that's the problem.  I found a couple of 
discussions that went back and forth between the kernel module or 
Debian's network stack as the source of the problem, though some were 
also blaming Netscape/Mozilla.  But AFAIK, w3m is unrelated to Mozilla, 
so I don't think it's a Mozilla problem.

See, for example:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-ipv6/2004/12/msg00014.html
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=253590

I've also found at least one discussion on Ubuntu's developer forum 
pertaining to the IPv6 problem, and I had the same issue in Ubuntu.  My 
Debian kernel is 2.6.8, but I believe Ubuntu uses a newer kernel.

> Note that your ISP does need to support IPv6, or you need a tunnel to get
> to IPv6 sites.

I don't know whether it does or does not, but I do know that under OS X, 
I do have an IPv6 address (which, for all I know, might go unused) and 
this doesn't create any problems for me.  I have no issues with Safari, 
Firefox or Camino, which is a Mozilla Community Project and shares a lot 
of code with Mozilla/Firefox.  Under Debian (and Ubuntu), however, IPv6 
screws me up.  I had to disable it by commenting out the appropriate 
lines in /etc/modprobe.d/aliases.

There's nothing special I was trying to do with IPv6 -- I wouldn't have 
a clue how!  It's just that there's something amiss with the way Debian 
handles IPv6, or handles failed IPv6 queries, at least as compared to 
how OS X handles these things.

>>But I don't know about the new hardware requirement.  My machine, a 
>>flat-panel iMac, is (IIRC) five years old, or four at the least.  IPv6 
>>works fine under OS X, using both Safari and Camino.  Maybe you were 
>>referring to routers or modems?
> 
> How many routers actually do IP in hardware? Even Cisco routers which
> were designed to do IPv4 in hardware, can do IPv6 in hardware though it
> took them a long time to implement.

No idea.  It was just conjecture on my part.

-- 
Michael