Re: [RFD] iptables: mangle table obsoletes filter table

[Al Boldi <a1426z@gawab.com>]

Patrick McHardy wrote:
> Please send mails discussing netfilter to netfilter-devel.

Ok.  I just found out this changed to vger.  But 
netfilter-devel@vger.kernel.org is bouncing me.

> Al Boldi wrote:
> > With the existence of the mangle table, how useful is the filter table?
> >
> > Other than requiring the REJECT target to be ported to the mangle table,
> > is the filter table faster than the mangle table?
>
> There are some minor differences in ordering (mangle comes before
> DNAT, filter afterwards), but for most rulesets thats completely
> irrelevant. The only difference that really matters is that mangle
> performs rerouting in LOCAL_OUT for packets that had their routing
> key changed, so its really a superset of the filter table. If you
> want to use REJECT in the mangle table, you just need to remove the
> restriction to filter, it works fine. I would prefer to also remove
> the restriction of MARK, CONNMARK etc. to mangle, they're used for
> more than just routing today so that restriction also doesn't make
> much sense. Patches for this are welcome.

Something like this (untested):

--- ipt_REJECT.bak.c    2007-10-12 08:25:17.000000000 +0300
+++ ipt_REJECT.c        2007-10-12 08:31:44.000000000 +0300
@@ -165,6 +165,7 @@ static void send_reset(struct sk_buff *o
 
 static inline void send_unreach(struct sk_buff *skb_in, int code)
 {
+       if (!skb_in->dst) ip_route_me_harder(&skb_in, RTN_UNSPEC);
        icmp_send(skb_in, ICMP_DEST_UNREACH, code, 0);
 }
 
@@ -245,9 +246,6 @@ static struct xt_target ipt_reject_reg =
        .family         = AF_INET,
        .target         = reject,
        .targetsize     = sizeof(struct ipt_reject_info),
-       .table          = "filter",
-       .hooks          = (1 << NF_IP_LOCAL_IN) | (1 << NF_IP_FORWARD) |
-                         (1 << NF_IP_LOCAL_OUT),
        .checkentry     = check,
        .me             = THIS_MODULE,
 };

> > If not, then shouldn't the filter table be obsoleted to avoid confusion?
>
> That would probably confuse people. Just don't use it if you don't
> need to.

The problem is that people think they are safe with the filter table, when in 
fact they need the prerouting chain to seal things.  Right now this is only 
possible in the mangle table.



Thanks!

--
Al

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/