Dear reader,

This is the first post of this blog, and I would like to introduce, what this blog will be about, what kind of information you will find here, and what is the motivation behing all this.

Fortunately my project proposal has been accepted to be carried out as part of the Google Summer of Code 2018 programme. As a consequence I will be working on the nftables project, which is a possible successor of iptables. The public details on my project are available here

This is an opportunity for me to learn a lot about parts of Linux networking that are usually out of scope for most of the users and administrators (and have been for me, too), and also get involved in kernel-level development with the help of the community. I have been dealing with it intensively for only some days, and I have already leant a lot.

During my former tries and education I found it quite hard to get clear about things that are not trivial at all and in dozens of cases it is hard to even ask the correct question. Even Google needs the appropriate keywords to show you what you want to know.

As I now have the support of the community to deal with a specific set of problems, I thought it would be benefficial to share what and how I learn during the summer to help those trying to get to know to these subjects, and probably to get closer to netfilter development.

This blog is thus going to serve both documentational and educational purposes about what problems I face, and what extra information is necessary to resolve them. Of course, all descriptions are based on my level of knowledge, although I will try to describe things on a way that is beneficial to those who are less avare of this area than I am.

Hope to help with this to some people.

Regards, Máté

Ps.: This blog is also a documentation for myself not to forget about what I have already learnt once :). This attitude can result in otherwise useless information in some posts.