How do I prevent iptables from loading on boot?

Question

I don't need iptables on my computer, since I'm behind a NAT Server and a router. I, therefore, flushed all the rules I had left to disactivate the firewall. I'm wonder if I could probably prevent iptables from starting on boot as well. My first trial was do blacklist all modules related to it on /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf, which were all together ip6table_filter, ip6_tables, ip6table_filter, iptable_filter, ip_tables, iptable_filter and x_tables. But it did not worked out.

My question is how can I avoid iptables to get loaded at startup?

Answer 1

If You are determined to get clear of iptables:

sudo modprobe -r ip6_tables iptable_filter ip_tables

could do the trick for you...

Of course, If You're satisfied with result it could be made permanent...

Answer 2

My first trial was do blacklist all modules related to it on /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf, which were all together ip6table_filter, ip6_tables, ip6table_filter, iptable_filter, ip_tables, iptable_filter and x_tables.

Well, if you have no rules and the firewall is disabled, those modules aren't going to be loaded anyway.

My question is how can I avoid iptables to get loaded at startup?

Strictly speaking, iptables is a utility for managing the firewall functionality (aka netfilter) built into the Linux kernel. So your question turns into how do I remove firewall functionality from the kernel?

The answer to that is...build your own kernel, after configuring it appropriately.

Answer 3

Flushing iptables rules / accept everything

You may skip this step since you mentioned in your question that you have flushed all the rules.

iptables -X &&
iptables -t nat -F
iptables -t nat -X
iptables -t mangle -F
iptables -t mangle -X
iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT

After flushing your iptables rules.

Run:

• iptables-save > save-file

• iptables-apply save-file

Answer 4

Ubuntu does not come with firewall enabled by default. However, it does come ufw package/service, which is the default firewall program, as far as I know it is not active by default. You could check if the service is active with rcconf, you need to install the package

sudo apt-get install rcconf dialog

You will need dialog to run rcconf even though it is not marked as a dependency.
More information on ufw here: https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/firewall.html
There are other firewall packages, I don't know them all, but you could do a

apt-cache search firewall | less

And see if there are some that sounds you familiar, for a service or package installed. Other ones I've seen in some installations are:

• firestarter
• fail2ban