How to Disable Iptables in Ubuntu

Iptables are the most common firewall used in almost every Linux system. However, sometimes you may want to disable or stop iptables in Linux. For example, firewalld is a dynamic firewall manager that is often at conflict with iptables. So if you are installing firewalld on your system, you will need to disable iptables. In this article, we will look at how to disable iptables in Ubuntu/Debian systems.

How to Disable Iptables in Ubuntu

Here are the steps to disable iptables in Ubuntu. You will need to be logged in as user with root or sudo privileges to execute the following command. We will use ufw (Uncomplicated Firewall) command to start/stop/reload iptables. ufw command has the ability to control iptables, and provides many easy options to help you quickly manage iptables.

Get iptables status

Open terminal and run the following command to get current status of iptables.

$ sudo ufw status
Status : inactive

Disable or Stop iptables in Ubuntu

Run the following command to disable or stop iptables.

$ sudo ufw disable

Start or Enable iptables

Run the following command to enable or start iptables.

$ sudo ufw enable

Reload iptables

The following command will reload iptables with the latest configuration and firewall rules.

$ sudo ufw reload

You can also use iptables command to start/stop/reload iptables.

Here is the command to get status of iptables

$ sudo iptables -L -n -v #ipv4 iptables
$ sudo ip6tables -L -n -v #ipv6 iptables

Save Iptables

Here is the command to save iptables configuration to a file.

$ sudo iptables-save > $HOME/firewall.txt #ipv4 iptables
$ sudo ip6tables-save > $HOME/firewall.txt #ipv6 iptables

Restore Iptables

Here is the command to restore iptables configuration.

$ sudo iptables-restore #ipv4 iptables
$ sudo ip6tables-restore #ipv6 iptables

In this article, we have looked at how to start/stop/reload iptables in Linux. iptables is a robust firewall system for Linux but sometimes you want to disable or turn off iptables if it creates conflict with other software on your system.

How to Disable Iptables in Ubuntu