i have a requirement in which i have to flush kernel routing table (main table) and then populate it with net and host address from /etc/sysconfig/static-routes files on Linux RHEL5.2 release (64bit)servers. i tried running this command "ip route flush table main proto boot" at command prompt but server got shutdown immediatley after running this command. Also i tried a script to delete each entry from kernel routing table. After the execution of script server got shutdown.
Script:-

echo "Flushing routing table"
ip route show table main | while read ROUTES; do
ip route del $ROUTES
done
echo "Done Flushing !!"
echo "Show routing table content"
`ip route show table main`
echo "Done Showing content !!"

output:-
Flushing routing table
Done Flushing !!
Show routing table content
Done Showing content !!

please suggest how to flush the Linux kernel routing table.

You might want to read the code in ifdown-route & ifup-route. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to shut down the interface (ifdown <interface>). That will flush the routes. Your problem may be due to shutting down the local host route.

From browsing the script, running "ifroute-up" sets an ACTION variable to "replace". This sounds like you can run ifroute-up to flush and replace the routes.

I'm using SuSE, but there may be a similar script in rhel. Try grepping files in /etc/ for the string "ip route" or better yet "static-routes". The script you find may do exactly what you want.

This webpage has examples of using "ip route flush".
http://www.physics.umd.edu/pnce/pcs-...oute-hack.html