in looking through the system script for iptables under red hat 8.0, i notice the occasional reference to the file /proc/net/ip_tables_names, which contains, one per line, the names of one of more of the possible netfilter tables (filter, nat and/or mangle). what does it mean for a table to have its name in this file? first, i notice that, if i have the modules loaded for filter and nat, then the file contents will have the lines "filter" and "nat", even though i have not added any rules to the nat table. just the existence of the loaded module seems to be enough to have a table name in that file. (it's pretty clear that, if i'm using loadable modules and add a rule to a particular table, it's module will be loaded and its name will be added to that file.) so then what happens if i recompile the kernel and build in support for all three tables directly? will all three table names show up in that file, even if i have no ruleset entries for a given table? just curious since this leads into my next question that's based on the answer to this one. :-) rday
