type
/sbin/ipchains -L
/sbin/iptables -L

OMFG.

It's not a path thing, you've gotta be root.
Otherwise:
iptables v1.2.5: can't initialize iptables table `filter': Permission denied (you must be root)

do you know if it is not a messed up path ?
if you login as user1 and then su then you have to type /sbin/iptables or ipchains

Joe..

i've opened a root terminal:

Provided you reached the root shell by logging in as root and not using su then this is a little puzzling, but I hope you can understand how much this looks like a firewall issue. If you used su then use "su -" instead as this will also give you root's path. Also, just humour us and do a "which iptables" and "which ipchains". Once that's done and we can be sure that it isn't the firewall we can also check /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny I know that has irked me once or twice. You should also do a port scan on your Linux box to see if they're open, if you don't have a firewall then when you do a port scan (you can use nmap) you should have ports open for all services that are listening. Another possibility is Xinetd, if it isn't running none of your services will be able to start because that's what starts your services.

Bentz,
services that are usually only run by root are located in directories that are not in the path of the regular user such as /sbin, so when you su to root your path stays the same as that of your original login unless you use "su -" (without brackets of course).

Joe

Thanks, I know. I was commenting on the lack of understanding that even if the entire file system was part of this login's path, you still wouldn't nessasarily get a rule listing unless you were root.

The problem with your logic is that we just saw this person, logged in as root, accessing the binary (in it's typical place) directly, without using any path at all. Good suggestion about the 'which iptables', though. I'd also suggest you try 'rpm -q iptables', as Mandrake uses rpm for package management, and should notify whether or not iptables is installed at all.

Check out the following.

In both instances the person is root after su.

Joe

Yea.. but not in both cases you get a "command not found" lol

I don't get it.

That's pretty obvious. The binary 'iptables' does not appear to exist on this person's system. Even if

PATH=`find / -type d | tr '\n' ':'`

'iptables' still wouldn't work unless it was installed.