On Friday 25 October 2002 12:30 am, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, Antony Stone wrote: > > On Thursday 24 October 2002 7:44 pm, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > > 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? > > > > It means that this particular netfilter system supports rules in those > > tables. > > > > If you compile netfilter without mangle table support and then try to add > > rules to the mangle table, you will get errors. > > > > By reading this file you can find out which tables are supported on a > > given machine. > > not quite. as i see it, that a table name is in that file means nothing > more than that it's currently being *required* by your rule set. No - it's nothing really to do with the rule set. You can have support for the mangle table, with a "mangle" entry in /proc/net/ip_tables_names, and have no mangle table rules at all (and not intend to have any either). What the file indicates is whether your machine is *capable* of accepting rules in particular tables, either becuase you compiled them in, or because you loaded a module. > so, if all your table support is modular, it looks like that file > will represent just those modules that had to be loaded for your > rule set. if you're not mangling, it won't show mangle since that > module never needed to be loaded. If you don't load the mangle module, then no, you won't get a "mangle" entry in /proc/net/ip_tables_names, and you can't add any mangling rules. If you do load the mangle module, then you will get a "mangle" entry in /proc/net/ip_tables_names, and you can add mangling rules. > what i *don't* know is what that file will show if your table > support is compiled directly into the kernel. and that's what > i'm asking here. anyone know? Yes. It will show the tables for which you have compiled in support. Antony. -- It is also possible that putting the birds in a laboratory setting inadvertently renders them relatively incompetent. - Daniel C Dennett
