Iptables command won't work
 

Hi,

I have iptables installed but the command "iptables" doesn't do anything. All I get is bash: iptables: command not found, which seems a little odd to me.

I am sure that I have iptables installed and have tried to configure it will webmin but I think something went wrong. Can anyone help me recover this please?

Thanks,

James

Hi James,

Bash is telling you it couldn't find iptables. So, or if it is not installed or it is not on your path. Iptables is generally installed on /usr/sbin; if you are trying to execute it from a normal user, probably you won't find it.

Good luck!

Osvaldo.

What kernel are you using?

iptables should be in /usr/sbin/iptables, have you checked with whereis iptables? You may need to modprobe iptables if you have it compiled as a module and it does not load on boot.

Hi guys,

Thanks for your quick responses. I tried #whereis iptables and got iptables: /sbin/iptables /lib/iptables /usr/share/man/man8/iptables.8.gz

I am a newbie to this area of linux and don't understand what you mean by

"You may need to modprobe iptables if you have it compiled as a module and it does not load on boot."

Could it be that I have made a mess of the configuration files and now it won't start?

thanks,

James

also. I am using Fedora Core 2 which I think it kernel 2.4. Is there a shell command to tell this?

Do this /sbin/iptables -h
That should work. You have iptables in /sbin/ which is not in your $PATH, it shouldn't be if you are not root. Are you sure that you have been root when you have been trying to access iptables? Cause iptables requires root access.

Just tried /sbin/iptables -h and it displayed a list of instructions :) Now I have /sbin/ in front of the commands it seems to work. The /sbin/iptables command and /sbin/iptables --list command work.

Should I update my $PATH and if so do you know how I should do this?

thanks,

James

Are you sure that you are root when trying? Because here is the thing. /sbin is "super-user bin" and it is a dir with programs only for root, therefor root should have it in $PATH but a regular user should not. Whoever you are you can check you $PATH with echo $PATH.

Here is how you change $PATH.
Edit /root/.bashrc and add this line:
This line adds three sbin-dirs and at last the original path, to path. The reason we put it into the /root/.bashrc file is because now it will be updated every time you login as root.

I am certain that I am the su. Firstly if says root and second there is # which I assume also means root.

So on echo $path I got nothing at all. just a blank line. Should i be worried?

Anyhow I will try you code to change this.

James

Hi James,

If you're doing from kde and maybe gnome, you won't have /sbin and /usr/sbin in your path. It would be different in text mode.

Osvaldo.

P.S. PATH must be in upper case letters.