<snipped>
Okay, I know what I was doing wrong, or what was going wrong without my
actually doing it :)
I extracted the bz2 kernel source archive in /usr/src and to prepare for
a compilation, I copied my config-2.4.18-bf2.4 from /boot to kernel
source directory (in my case it was kernel-source-2.4.22-hs1/). I
assumed this would give me the same configuration as I had in my
previous kernel. It was not so. I had to manually enable ip_forwarding,
nat filtering, and all the related features in the menuconfig interface.
These features were enabled in my older kernel, so I would guess
something has changed between the kernel versions and just copying the
old config file is not enough, it has to be hand edited to make sure all
the options are set correctly as desired -- cannot avoid spending that
half an hour going through that ncurses gui afterall :(
I did that (since everything else was working, I figured it *had* to be
the kernel) and my network is working perfectly.
I wonder why nobody could suggest this. Nobody has encountered this
before? Or nobody does masquarading with Debain (extremely unlikely I
would guess, but possible)? :)
Anyway, I hope this report helps someone else facing this problem,
->HS