firewalld
and iptables
are both tools used for configuring firewall rules on Linux systems, but they function at different levels:
Relationship between firewalld
and iptables
- iptables: This is a lower-level tool that directly interacts with the Linux kernel’s Netfilter framework. It allows for manual management of firewall rules, defining chains and policies for handling traffic.
- firewalld: This is a higher-level tool that provides a dynamic interface for managing firewall rules. It uses the concept of “zones” and abstracts the complexity of managing individual
iptables
rules. Under the hood,firewalld
relies oniptables
(ornftables
in newer systems) to implement the rules you define, but it simplifies the management of these rules.
When firewalld
is running, it manages the iptables
rules, so direct modifications using iptables
might be overridden unless managed through firewalld
itself. In essence, firewalld
is a frontend to iptables
.
Checking Firewall Open Ports and Open??? Forward Rules
- To Check Open Ports in firewalld:
- Run the following command to list all open ports for the active zones:
- To see all active zones and their respective open ports:
- To Check Firewall Rules with iptables:
- To list all current
iptables
rules:
- To check specific chains (like
FORWARD
for ??? forwarding):
- Checking Open??? Forward Rules:
- Open??? typically requires traffic to be forwarded from its tun interface (e.g.,
tun0
) to the main network. Check the forwarding rules by inspecting theFORWARD
chain:
- You may also need to check
NAT
rules for proper IP masquerading:
If you’re using firewalld
, ensure that the proper forwarding rules are defined within the appropriate zone configuration.