From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
Subject: Re: iptables error
Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:38:01 +0200
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Cc: netfilter-devel@vger.kernel.org
To: Nishit Shah <nishit@elitecore.com>
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Nishit Shah wrote:
> Hi,
> 	I am using 2.6.16.13 kernel in smp configuration. Machine is working
> as a gateway and frequent iptables commands are fired as users logged in and
> logged out.
> 
>       I got following error in between
> 
> [root@manage /root]# iptables -nvx -L INPUT
> ERROR: 7 not a valid target)
> Aborted (core dumped)
> 
> So, I tried to flush INPUT and got following
> 
> [root@manage /root]# iptables -F INPUT 
> iptables: Too many levels of symbolic links
> 
> following is a message I got in /var/log/messages
> 
> Aug 26 14:38:30 1219741710 kernel: iptables: loop hook 1 pos 0 00000022.

That kernel version has an iptables locking bug that might
lead to corruption. Latest 2.6.16 version has this fixed.