[SWLUG] First real post

[Daniel T. Morgan]

Hey all,

I've not really posted here before, due to my lameness, and the on offness
of my linux interest. However this time I seem to be making a real go of it.
I recently installed debian woody on my old desktop pc, it's going to
replace my linux gateway, which acts as a router for my network as well as
other functions. You'll have to excuse my lameness, but I am trying :)

Ok I've managed to install and configure apache, mysql and php4, however I
really want to use/test mysql 4 and apache 2. I was having no luck with
apt-get to get said packages, but I've just read
http://linuxquestions.org/questions/history/135738. This seems to tell me
there's more hope than installing from the source. 

In my /etc/apt/sources.list it currently has:

deb http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.debian.org/debian/ stable main
non-free contrib
deb-src http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.debian.org/debian/ stable main
non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib
non-free
deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib
non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

I'm presuming that I just need to add the lines:

deb http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main
deb-src http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main

And then running apt-get update (correct me if I'm wrong), and away to go.
Now presuming I'm correct in this do I need to uninstall the older version
first, as I have no intentions of running both versions side by side. And as
I only want one httpd running on port 80. Perhaps uninstalling php4 as well?
Any feedback gratefully received even if its RTFM thx.

Ok, now onto my next problem, if I run apt-get install iptables I get:

b0c:/var/www/admin# apt-get install iptables
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Sorry, iptables is already the newest version.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0  not upgraded.
b0c:/var/www/admin#

which is fine, but then:

b0c:/var/www/admin# iptables -L
modprobe: Can't locate module ip_tables
iptables v1.2.6a: can't initialize iptables table `filter': iptables who?
(do you need to insmod?)
Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.
b0c:/var/www/admin#

Now somebody tells me I need to recompile the kernel, now this has always
been the dead end I reach with nix, I am absolutely lost with where to go
now. There a nice thing I can read to learn about compiling the kernel for
idiots, and/or when and if I can, is this necessary, and what exactly do I
need to do/add to the kernel.

Thanks in anticipation

Daniel T. Morgan (Plod)