Learn how to disable firewalld and use iptables. Our Server Management Support team is here to help you with your questions and concerns.

How to Disable firewalld and use iptables

Did you know that some Linux distributions use the FirewallD service to provide network security by default?

Although Firewalld is not everyone’s cup of tea. In order to use iptables service, we have to stop and disable FirewallD.

How to Stop and Disable firewalld

First, we have to open a terminal and run the following commands:

sudo systemctl stop firewalld
sudo systemctl disable firewalld

These commands will stop the firewalld service and prevent it from starting automatically on system boot.

How to Install iptables Service

If iptables is not already installed on our system we can install it with our distribution’s package manager.

In most cases, the package name is simply iptables.

For example, on CentOS or Fedora, we can run:

sudo dnf install iptables

On Debian-based distributions, we can use apt:

sudo apt-get install iptables

How to Enable and Start iptables Service

After the iptables installation, we have to run these commands:

sudo systemctl enable iptables
sudo systemctl start iptables

This will make sure that iptables starts automatically on system boot and is running.

How to Configure iptables Rules

Now, it is time to our iptables rules as needed. This involves setting up rules to control incoming and outgoing network traffic.

Our experts would like to point out that configuring iptables rules can be complex. It involves specifying rules for various protocols, ports, and network interfaces.

For example, we can allow incoming SSH (port 22) traffic while blocking all other incoming traffic with the following commands:

sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A INPUT -j DROP

These commands add rules to the INPUT chain of iptables.

Unlike firewalld, iptables rules are not persistent by default. We have to use a separate tool to save our iptables rules so they persist across reboots. One common tool for this is iptables-persistent.

[Need assistance with a different issue? Our team is available 24/7.]

Conclusion

In brief, our Support Techs demonstrated how to disable firewalld and use iptables.