We (Red Hat) should really try to resolve this before next release.

iptables-save / iptables-restore development was discontinued a few month
ago. The parameters --dport / --destination-port and probably some of the
rarely used others are not supported by iptables-restore.

I don't understand why you call "--dport" a "rarely used" option: half my
packet-filtering rules use it, and also some of my NAT rules! (sure, if you only
use the "state" module, you won't need --dport).

iptables-restore (from iptables-1.2.1a-1) also dumps core on some format errors
(e.g., when you forget the [0:0] counter on the :... chain policy line).

Will iptables-restore (and /etc/init.d/iptables) work correctly in Redhat 7.2?
If not, I wrote a very simple zsh script to replace iptables-restore, and I
suggest you do something similar (note that my simple script doesn't restore
counters and is not atomic). I can't believe I'm the only one who sets up a
firewall by putting commands in /etc/sysconfig/iptables....

#!/bin/zsh
# this is a simple replacement to iptables-restore, because that one is
# buggy (doesn't accept --dport, core dumps on errors, etc.)
set -e
while read a
do
        table="filter"   # iptables-restore starts with "", BTW
        case $a in
        \**) table=${a#\*};;
        -*) iptables -t "$table" ${=a};;
        :*) iptables -t "$table" -P ${${a#:}%% *} ${${a#* }%% *};;
        COMMIT);; # what should we do with that?
        esac
done </etc/sysconfig/iptables

# this is a simple replacement to iptables-restore, because that one is
# buggy (doesn't accept --dport, core dumps on errors, etc.)
set -e