iptables não iniciando

Question

Eu herdei um kernel Linux 2.6.30.9 customizado e estou apenas atualizando o SO subjacente do RHEL 5.4 para 5.8 (kernels 2.6.18.164 e 2.6.18.308 respectivamente).

Ao inicializar, o seguinte é exibido:

unloading iptables modules                   [  OK  ]
Applying iptables firewall rules: modprobe: FATAL: module ip-tables not found.

iptables-restore v1.3.5: iptables-restore unable to initialize 'filter'

Error occurred at line 3
try 'iptables-restore -h' or 'iptables-restore --help' for more information
.                                             [FAILED]

o arquivo /etc/iptables se parece com:

# Firewall configuration written by system-config-securitylevel
# Manual customization of this file is not recommended.
*filter
:INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:RH-Firewall-1-INPUT - [0:0]
-A INPUT -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
-A FORWARD -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type any -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 50 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 51 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp --dport 5353 -d 224.0.0.251 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 631 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 631 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
COMMIT

a seção de kernel_config

#
# IP: Netfilter Configuration
#
# CONFIG_NF_DEFRAG_IPV4 is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_QUEUE is not set
CONFIG_IP_NF_IPTABLES=y
# CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_ADDRTYPE is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_AH is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_ECN is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_TTL is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_FILTER is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_LOG is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_ULOG is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_MANGLE is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_TTL is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_RAW is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_SECURITY is not set
# CONFIG_IP_NF_ARPTABLES is not set
# CONFIG_IP_DCCP is not set
# CONFIG_IP_SCTP is not set
# CONFIG_TIPC is not set
# CONFIG_ATM is not set
# CONFIG_BRIDGE is not set
# CONFIG_NET_DSA is not set
# CONFIG_VLAN_8021Q is not set
# CONFIG_DECNET is not set
# CONFIG_LLC2 is not set
# CONFIG_IPX is not set
# CONFIG_ATALK is not set
# CONFIG_X25 is not set
# CONFIG_LAPB is not set
# CONFIG_ECONET is not set
# CONFIG_WAN_ROUTER is not set
# CONFIG_PHONET is not set
CONFIG_NET_SCHED=y

e isso é correspondido em /proc/config.gz

Existe uma maneira simples de dar vida a isso? O iptables se comporta de maneira diferente quando compilado no kernel se compara a objetos do módulo?