Hi Gerald, On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 01:19:15PM +0000, Gerald Davies wrote: I don't know what it is, so not me. :) Okay, having looked it up, I now know what it is. Cool. :) This looks helpful: http://daemonkeeper.net/781/mass-blocking-ip-addresses-with-ipset/ It suggests if you used a kernel from squeeze-backports then you would be good (assuming you were on squeeze now). These are stock distribution kernels so any instructions that apply to bare metal should also apply to your VPS.. which means you may not need to recompile the entire kernel, just the modules you are interested in. Or maybe not even that if it's already there and just needs enabling. If you really need to recompile your kernel then you might be better off downloading the source package for the Debian kernel you're using and reconfiguring that, as opposed to using vanilla sources. There are instructions on Debian sites for building custom kernel packages "the Debian way". But anyway, there should be a /boot/config-2.6.32-5-686-bigmem listing the options your current one was built with. There are a few details about what specific options you need for it to work under Xen but I can't remember them and as long as you use the existing config and not disable anything I would have thought it would work. If you must compile a kernel from scratch using unmodified kernel.org sources then the best I can think of is what is in the Slackware guide since that contains that step: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Installing_Slackware#Compile_a_custom_kernel From my point of view (accepting that I've never personally done it), if I were on Debian squeeze and wanted to use ipset, the easiest route would appear to be a kernel from squeeze-backports. Wheezy will be released soon and then you could drop the backported kernel. Installing that should be almost as simple as any kernel upgrade. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting