ipchains

Hello PLUG,
I am setting up a red hat 8 linux box and am having problems setting up
a firewall.
The ipchains and ipfwadm commands don't work with error messages:

# ipchains -L
ipchains: Incompatible with this kernel

# ipchains -M -L
ipchains: cannot open file `/proc/net/ip_masquerade'


# /sbin/ipfwadm
Generic IP Firewall Chains not in this kernel

It seems I must do something with the kernel (which is 2.4). Also I cannot create a ip_masquerade file (read only permissions on directories)

Can anyone send me in the right direction?

Thanks,
Dan