Yesterday, we had the first class at the Abdel Moneim el Sawy Cultural Center. This is a brief report on how things went.

Everyone showed that they have a great sense of punctuality; we were all there by approximately 5:45 pm. I like punctuality; thanks people. :)

One person did not show up, and that was kernel_canine who was supposed to be teaching. I tried calling him many times but he was not answering. This is strange given that he had repeatedly told me he was committed to this event.

By 6:00 pm, it was clear that he was not coming, so we had two options:

1. Cancel the class and everyone goes home
2. Find someone else who can teach

Fortunately, Ramez Hanna and I both have some experience with iptables, so we decided right then and there to do the teaching. Ramez went into the lab to refresh his knowledge for 5 minutes.

I started by giving a conceptual overview of firewalls as a concept, starting with what a firewall is and going into the occsional detail such as what is the difference between a software firewall and a hardware firewall, and what is connection tracking (stateful filtering). I ended my segment with a brief description of the concept of input, output, and forward tables.

From here, Ramez took over and began teaching our class the real details of what an iptables rule looks like, and what the components of a rule are including matches, targets, and tables.

We took a 15 minute break, then we came back and Ramez continued with the class, looking at a real-life example of an iptables firewall script on the RedHat machines in the Sakia lab.

It was 8:45 pm before we were able to finish off the first class; people were very enthusiastic and positive.

There were many questions asked, some of which we didn't know the answer to (which was mainly me not knowing), and asking questions is a good sign of people being interested.

The next session will initially be on next Monday, though we will confirm this here on the forum.

On a side note, all nine people who were there last night are now El Sakia members. :)

As for our teacher who did not show up, I can think of nothing to say.

Here is a photo of most of the team (missing two, will upload) looking VERY VERY interested. :)