Use persistent iptables on Debian

Debian

Now I cannot input any Japanese characters on my f**kin' arch laptop, so I write this article in English.

How should I make iptables persistent?

RedHat-like distro has /etc/sysconfig/iptables for persistent iptables, while Debian does not. How should we do? We used to write /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/iptables & /etc/network/if-post-down.d/iptables by hands. Now the answer is clearly shown in iptables - Debian Wiki. Let's install iptables-persistent.

sudo apt-get install iptables-persistent

This command tells you two important informations.

  1. The rule files are located in /etc/iptables directory. rules.v4 is for IPv4, while rules.v6 is for IPv6.
  2. At this time you can import your iptables config automatically, however, you have to manually save rules from now on.
iptables-save > /etc/iptables/rules.v4
ip6tables-save > /etc/iptables/rules.v6

Those commands will help you.