Description of problem:

A RHEL5 guest under VMware 1.0.6 running on Windows XP will drop packets that should normally be ACCEPTED by the ESTABLISHED rule.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

RHEL 5.2 + latest errata
VMware 1.0.6

How reproducible:

Easily

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Install a RHEL5 guest OS under VMware-server running on Windows XP.
2. In VMware configure 3 Ethernet interfaces using "bridged" mode.
3. Boot the RHEL5 guest
4. In the guest OS, configure 3 ethernet interfaces, eth0-eth2. eth0 and eth1 should be up but with no IP address. eth2 should have an IP address.
5. Create a bridge br0 with interfaces eth0 and eth1.
6. Use the default IPtables ruleset which uses an ESTABLISHED rule.
7. Run a script which repeatedly scp's a 1k file to a remote host and keeps a count of how many it's done.
8. If the bridge is down then this will carry on forever.
9. If the bridge is up then it will hang after less than 1000 iterations.
  
Actual results:

Script hangs.


Expected results:

Script continues for ever.

Additional info:

It appears that conntrack is failing and packets that should be ESTABLISHED are in fact being dropped.