IPv6 policy routing not working on Ubuntu 8.04.3

I'm trying to setup some routing policy rules for IPv6 on Ubuntu 8.04.3, and it appears to be broken.

root@asura /root
% uname -a
Linux asura 2.6.24-23-generic #1 SMP Wed Apr 1 21:47:28 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

root@asura /root
% ip -6 rule list

root@asura /root
% ip -6 rule add from fd2e:51e9:65d3::/48 table 17 prio 700 RTNETLINK answers: Unknown error 4294967199

Notice how there are no rules listed when I run "ip -6 rule list", not even the normal local/main rules. I have no idea what the unknown error is from RTNETLINK. Anyways I have no problem with ip6tables, ipv6 routing, or ipv4 policy routing on this machine, and ipv6 policy routing does work on some of my other machines (with newer kernels). I'm wondering if I'm missing some module or if I have bad configuration, or is upgrading the kernel my only hope?

thanks,
Ben Swartzlander

The ipv6 routing stack inside the kernel is a separate
being that doesn't share much with the ipv4 stack (in those kernel versions at least), and still lacks some of the nicer features that the iproute interface pretends exists also for ipv6 (especially in old kernel versions). So in general, expect problems if you try to use the more exotic features of ip -6/ip6tables.

But in your case the problem is simply that the -generic Ubuntu 8.04 kernels are compiled without CONFIG_IPV6_MULTIPLE_TABLES. You could try the -server kernels instead, they might work for this particular feature.