iptables: missing connlabel.conf causes unnecessary error messages

[Thomas De Schampheleire <patrickdepinguin@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Commit http://git.netfilter.org/iptables/commit/?id=51340f7b6a1103b12d86ef488f7140406d80401e
removed the default /etc/xtables/connlabel.conf file distributed with netfilter.

>From this commit onwards, every call to iptables will show the message:
    cannot open connlabel.conf, not registering 'connlabel' match: No
such file or directory

Creating an empty connlabel.conf file does not really help, the
message now becomes:
    cannot open connlabel.conf, not registering 'connlabel' match: Success

In order to remove the message, we have to specify at least one label,
for example '0 foo'.

I don't think this is correct behavior: even when not using connlabel
at all, iptables will print an error/warning in its default
installation. The only way to remove this warning is to create a dummy
rule.

Moreover, I do not understand the reasoning of the mentioned commit:
what is the problem in respecting sysconfdir? There are so many
applications and libraries that use autoconf and can have
configuration files in a place respecting sysconfdir.

Finally, even if you do not want to provide a default file with the
iptables installation, an empty file (created by the user) should hide
the error message.

What is your view on this?

Thanks,
Thomas