as it turned out mdk 10 fails to install, I ended up installing fedora core 1, after learning that it does offer updates. I thought RHN just abandand free users all together but it looks like they didn't

I thank you for the link to the shore wall tutorial, and for the information on shorewall.conf and setting up rules to allow netbios. I decided that mandrake was causeing so many problems for me, and although reading the shorewall tutorial would have problably helped me set up rules, I still had other mdk problems to contend with. With the iptables/shorewall issue, I got very upset that after a fresh install of mdk and haveing used the controll center to set up ipmasq and samba, then only going into webmin shorewall resets my rules. This was a major issue for me.

Now in fedora I will consider shorewall, firestarter or some other iptables interface. Eventualy I plan to spend the time and learn iptables also. Many thanks to all who provided me help and guidence, and believe me I learned alot, and will be useing this information more especialy now since my distro is redhat based.

Many Thanks.