It seems that iptables is not built with mac match in openwrt.  In the buildroot, under iptables/extensions the libipt_mac.c file is there.  How can I build openwrt with mac match compiled into iptables?  What do I need to change in the iptables root directory?

figured this out looking around the openwrt patches, in the iptables patch, you need to add mac to the + line of PF_EXT_SLIB which is not commented out.  Any ideas why mac filtering was patched out?

now I have it compiled, everything seems to be working, but I cannot use it because I can't load the ipt_mac kernel module.  Any hints?

Please, paste more information, what does insmod tells you, if it is kernel mmodule what doesn't load. Or maybe you didn' t transfer libip_mac.so user space library to your openwrt /usr/lib/iptables folder ?