IP packet filtering enabled in GENERIC?

[tom worster]

i installed 4.8-release from the disk 1 iso yesterday, built a new kernel
with "cpu I586_CPU" and "options IPFIREWALL" and a couple of other things
and turned on firewall_enable="YES" with firewall_type="OPEN" in rc.conf.

the new kernel panicked (i don't know why) so i booted kernel.old (i.e. the
GENERIC binary off the iso with a modification date of april 3rd) and noted
that dmesg now shows: "IP packet filtering initialized, divert disabled,
rule-based forwarding enabled, default to deny, logging disabled" and indeed
the filter is working and ipfw controls it.

what's going on? i thought that the packet filter was disabled in GENERIC.

was this a side effect of compiling my (broken) custom kernel and installing
all those .ko files in /modules?

c u
fsb