Re: [PATCH] iptables: fix error reporting for missing/wrong arguments

[Pablo Neira Ayuso <pablo@netfilter.org>]

Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> On Sunday 2008-10-12 15:39, Pablo Neira Ayuso wrote:
>> Some work to improve iptables error reporting would be nice, I'll see if
>> I can have a look into this issue.
> 
> Improve - in what way?

There are a couple of nitpicking issues that I have observed during some
training sessions, dummy users have the ability to trigger very
confusing error messages from iptables, just one example:

% iptables -I INPUT -m state --state NEW, ESTABLISHED
                                         ^
                                     mind the small space

triggers:

iptables v1.4.2-rc1: Bad state `'
Try `iptables -h' or 'iptables --help' for more information.

Another example: if iptables returns EINVAL, it would be nice to add a
string to say "Check your kernel log messages". Even if we don't have
better error handling, at least we can be more informative.

So, when I said *improve* I meant about hunting this sort of issues.

-- 
"Los honestos son inadaptados sociales" -- Les Luthiers