From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 5 20:19:22 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EBAAE16A4CE for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2005 20:19:22 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtpout.mac.com (smtpout.mac.com [17.250.248.87]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C7CEF43D48 for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2005 20:19:22 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mac.com (smtpin02-en2 [10.13.10.147]) by smtpout.mac.com (Xserve/MantshX 2.0) with ESMTP id j05KJLls025738; Wed, 5 Jan 2005 12:19:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from [10.1.1.245] (nfw2.codefab.com [199.103.21.225] (may be forged)) (authenticated bits=0)j05KJJBG002892; Wed, 5 Jan 2005 12:19:21 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v619) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Message-Id: <145FEF80-5F57-11D9-93F7-003065ABFD92@mac.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Charles Swiger Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 15:19:19 -0500 To: Andreas Davour X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.619) cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Is bpf a part of IPFW, or am I confused? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 20:19:23 -0000 On Jan 5, 2005, at 3:09 PM, Andreas Davour wrote: > I have searched the handbook and the manpages and not really > understood the role of bpf. Is it supposed to be enabled when I use > IPFW or is it another beast altogether, best left undisturbed? The BPF, or Berkeley Packet Filter, is really intended for use by userland applications which want to perform network analysis and packet filtering. IPFW and the other firewalls for FreeBSD are written as kernel modules and thus deal with the network stack directly. The current DHCP implementation (ISC's dhcpd and dhclient programs) depends on BPF to work, so I would be cautious about removing it from your kernel unless you are sure you won't need it. -- -Chuck