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I'm running CentOS 5.3 and want to disable the nf_conntrack module to improve network performance for haproxy. I'm running iptables with some simple rules. I don't really need the connection tracking.

I'm running on Rackspace cloud servers, so I can't run a custom kernel. I've tried running modprobe, but that doesn't work.

[mmarano@w1 w1]$ sudo modprobe -n -r nf_conntrack
FATAL: Module nf_conntrack is in use.

[mmarano@w1 w1]$ uname -a
Linux w1.somewhere.com 2.6.24-23-xen #1 SMP Mon Jan 26 03:09:12 UTC 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[mmarano@w1 w1]$ cat /etc/redhat-release 
CentOS release 5.3 (Final)

I want to continue to run iptables after ripping this out, so I can't quite ditch all of netfilters. Anyone have any thoughts?

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3 Answers

  1. remove any reference to the state module in iptables. So, no rules like


    the state module requires the nf_conntrack (ip_conntrack) module

  2. remove the following line (if it exists) in /etc/sysconfig/iptables-config


    That module requires ip_conntrack which we are trying to ditch.

  3. reload iptables without your state rules.

    sudo iptables -F

    # add your real rules

  4. drop the modules. I had to use:

    sudo modprobe -r xt_NOTRACK nf_conntrack_netbios_ns nf_conntrack_ipv4 xt_state

    sudo modprobe -r nf_conntrack

  5. confirm you don't have a reference to /proc/net/nf_conntrack

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HUGE thanks to Willy Tarreau, creator of haproxy, for awesome help on the haproxy mailing list! –  user22277 Oct 9 '09 at 20:18
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  • What about adding the module to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf?

  • Have you tried:

    rmmod -f modulename
           -f --force
              This  option can be extremely dangerous: it has no effect unless
              CONFIG_MODULE_FORCE_UNLOAD was set when the kernel was compiled.
              unsafe (see lsmod(8)).
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If you are running Haproxy, you need two tipes of rules in iptables, for only disable conntrack in the port 80, ones for the connections from the clients to your balancer and others from your balancer to the backends.

These is a valid example:

iptables -t raw -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j NOTRACK
iptables -t raw -I PREROUTING -p tcp  --sport 80 -j NOTRACK
iptables -t raw -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j NOTRACK
iptables -t raw -I OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 803 -j NOTRACK
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