Segmentation fault (core dumped) when try to run iptables rhel6

Question

I'm currently trying to set up a MySQL replication and I don't have a /etc/sysconfig/iptables. So I tried to install it with yum install. It showed the following output.

  Installed Packages
Name        : iptables
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 1.4.7
Release     : 11.el6
Size        : 836 k
Repo        : installed
From repo   : anaconda-RedHatEnterpriseLinux-201311111358.x86_64
Summary     : Tools for managing Linux kernel packet filtering capabilities
URL         : http://www.netfilter.org/
License     : GPLv2
Description : The iptables utility controls the network packet filtering code in
            : the Linux kernel. If you need to set up firewalls and/or IP
            : masquerading, you should install this package.

Available Packages
Name        : iptables
Arch        : i686
Version     : 1.4.7
Release     : 11.el6
Size        : 247 k
Repo        : rhel-x86_64-server-6
Summary     : Tools for managing Linux kernel packet filtering capabilities
License     : GPLv2
Description : The iptables utility controls the network packet filtering code in
            : the Linux kernel. If you need to set up firewalls and/or IP
            : masquerading, you should install this package.

So far so good but when I try to run iptables I get a Segmentation fault

Do I need a better hardware?

[root@wltwd1 sysconfig]# iptables
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

This is my lscpu output:

[root@wltwd1 sysconfig]# lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                1
On-line CPU(s) list:   0
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    1
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 47
Stepping:              2
CPU MHz:               1995.034
BogoMIPS:              3990.06
Hypervisor vendor:     VMware
Virtualization type:   full
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              18432K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0

Solution

Check what CPU architecture you have on your system. You're likely mixing the 32-bit and 64-bit binaries and libraries together which is probably giving you this error message.

You can find out with this command:

# 64-bit system
$ getconf LONG_BIT
64

# 32-bit system
$ getconf LONG_BIT
32

If you have 32 then you should uninstall the 64-bit package of iptables. If you have 64-bit, then uninstall the 32-bit.

How to uninstall?

On the surface it would appear that the packages have the same name but I assure you they're different. You can get their actual names using this command:

$ rpm -aq iptables*
iptables-services-1.4.18-1.fc19.x86_64
iptables-1.4.18-1.fc19.x86_64
iptables-1.4.18-1.fc19.i686

So to get rid of the 32-bit version you can use this command:

$ yum remove iptables-1.4.18-1.fc19.i686

Obviously substitute your result in for the example above.

References

• 32-bit, 64-bit CPU op-mode on Linux

Comments

[slm]

@BlueFox - See update.