Re: -E flag in /etc/rc.d/ipfilter causes warnings

On 16 Jun 2003 21:35:44 -0400
Mike Bohan <bogin_at_shortcircut.org> wrote:

> Hello there,
> 
> 	I recently ran into a slight issue with ipfilter running on
> 5.1-RELEASE.  My machine serves the simple purpose as a nat gateway, so
> ipfilter is always going to be necessary on it.  Due to this fact, i
> decided to  include options IPFILTER in the kernel config, instead of
> dynamically loading the ipl.ko module.  However, when ipfilter is used
> in the kernel image, it's automatically initialized (and thus does not
> need the -E flag).  

hmm... I thought it was the other way around (it's not effective when loaded as
a module), but I may have misunderstood the man page.

>This has been noted in rc.conf for some time, and I
> of course removed the -E from the      
> ipfilter_flags variable in that file.  However, after booting my kernel
> with the IPFILTER options, I noticed warnings in my kernel logs that
> "ipfilter has already been initialized", which is consistent with using
> flag -E when ipf is already initialized.  After some brief analysis, I
> discovered that /etc/rc.d/ipfilter actually uses -E in the shell script
> function, ipfilter_start(). After removing the two instances of the -E
> and rebooting, the warning messages disappeared at boot time.  Is this a
> known glitch in the hopes that people start soley using the ipl kernel
> module? It's really not a big deal either way, but I was more just
> curious than anything in which direction it's going.  Thanks in advance!
> 

I believe it's harmless, and while not aesthetically pleasing, it's a necessary
work-around. The stop command to rc.d/ipfilter uses -D to disable ipfilter, so
it's necessary to use -E with the start command because there's no way to know
how/when/why/in-what-environment it's being called. If I'm wrong or you have a
better alternative to this please let me know.

Cheers.
-- 
Mike Makonnen  | GPG-KEY: http://www.identd.net/~mtm/mtm.asc
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