We have an RHEL 6.5 system which boots to the point of loading APF firewall and then just hangs indefinitely. The console shows the following:...Loading autofs4: [OK]Starting automount: [OK]Starting SWsoft control panels server... [OK]Starting APF: ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Teamnf_conntrack version 0.5.0 (16384 buckets, 65536 max)It then waits indefinitely on the screen above.  The only way we have been able to work around this was to disable the APF service from starting at boot./var/log/messages shows the following:May  9 04:15:29 sapphire acpid: waiting for events: event logging is offMay  9 04:15:29 sapphire acpid: client connected from 6777[68:68]May  9 04:15:29 sapphire acpid: 1 client rule loadedMay  9 04:15:30 sapphire automount[6797]: lookup_read_master: lookup(nisplus): couldn't locate nis+ table auto.masterMay  9 04:15:31 sapphire kernel: ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core TeamMay  9 04:15:31 sapphire kernel: nf_conntrack version 0.5.0 (16384 buckets, 65536 max)/var/log/apf_log consistently shows the following as the last lines before boot hangs:May 09 04:15:33 server apf(6915): {dshield} downloading http://feeds.dshield.org/top10-2.txtMay 09 04:15:33 server apf(6915): {dshield} parsing top10-2.txt into /etc/apf/ds_hosts.rulesMay 09 04:15:33 server apf(6915): {dshield} loading ds_hosts.rulesMay 09 04:30:50 server apf(2681): {dshield} downloading http://feeds.dshield.org/top10-2.txtMay 09 04:30:51 server apf(2681): {dshield} parsing top10-2.txt into /etc/apf/ds_hosts.rulesMay 09 04:30:51 server apf(2681): {dshield} loading ds_hosts.rulesMay 09 04:48:45 server apf(2653): {dshield} downloading http://feeds.dshield.org/top10-2.txtMay 09 04:48:46 server apf(2653): {dshield} parsing top10-2.txt into /etc/apf/ds_hosts.rulesMay 09 04:48:46 server apf(2653): {dshield} loading ds_hosts.rulesSo it would seem that loading of the DShield rules is causing boot to hang.After successfully booting, both iptables and APF are running fine.Can anyone suggest how to troubleshoot this?
RHEL 6.5 won't boot after loading APF firewall
rhel;iptables
This issue appears to have fixed itself as rebooting with the same configuration now works fine. As the system boot was hanging when loading the dynamically downloaded ds_hosts.rules file from DShield, we can only assume that there was a problem with this file which has since been updated as nothing else has changed on the system.The temporary workaround, while the server would not boot, was to disable APF at startup by booting in to single-user mode and then running:chkconfig apf off