If you are building from source, the most common procedure is as follows: 1) Untar the file ( lets call it xyz.tar.gz or xyz.tar) tar xvzf xyz.tar.gz or tar xvf xyz.tar 2) Now change the directory cd xyz 3) configure the source ./configure (Note: if you do not have root previlege, you might wanna change the installation directory by passing appropriate parameters to the configure script (e.g. --PREFIX=/home/myname/xyz ) 4) The configure script creates a makefile. Now you can start building the source with the following command make 5) After building is over, run the following to install it either in the default path (needs root previlege) or in the directory you specified to the configure script. make install For details, read file named INSTALL or README in the xyz directory. If the installation procedure is different from the one I mentioned it will be mentioned in the README file. As for iptables, it is usually preinstalled in any standard linux distribution. Make sure that the iptables kernel module is loaded (use lsmod to see all loaded modules, if not loaded, use insmod or modprobe to do so ). cheers arch119