37

Could anyone kindly provide the commands to completely reset the iptables (firewall) for Ubuntu 12.04 to its default "factory" setting? From what I understand, doing this wrong would cause one to be locked out of the linux box?

Kenny Rasschaert
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Honey Badger
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3 Answers3

46

Set the default policy on the iptables to ACCEPT:

iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT
iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT

Then flush the rules:

iptables -F INPUT
iptables -F OUTPUT
iptables -F FORWARD

Note, this will not affect alternate tables, NAT tables, PRE/POST routing tables, etc.

Wing Tang Wong
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    Thanks @Wing Tang Wong. Will the above completely return the firewall to its Ubuntu default state? What if I have accidentally changed the other tables? How do I return all tables to default? Thanks! – Honey Badger Apr 09 '13 at 08:36
  • You can make use of iptables-save and iptables-restore. Basically, dump your iptables config to a file. Make sure the three primary are default ACCEPT, and then delete the other table types from the dump file. Then, import it back into the running system with iptables-restore. That should get you to a clean state. This presumes you can't or don't want to reboot the box. – Wing Tang Wong Apr 09 '13 at 19:59
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    Gotcha. Question: what if I reboot the box? What will happen? Thanks! – Honey Badger Apr 09 '13 at 23:47
  • If you disable all iptable rules that would kick off on a reboot, the default rules for a freshly booted box would default to just the three tables in ACCEPT mode. The other tables would disappear. Assuming the rules you were dealing with before were done manually, then a reboot would clear them. However, if they came up that way, then you will need to find and disable/comment out/remove the rules getting installed at startup. – Wing Tang Wong Apr 09 '13 at 23:58
  • The given solution would work only if you didn't install the persistent iptables If you did, you should need to do the folowing comand: `sudo apt-get remove iptables-persistent` – IsraGab May 27 '14 at 05:14
  • `Note, this will not affect alternate tables, NAT tables, PRE/POST routing tables, etc.` Yeah, a lot is missing. Here's what it looks like if you want to follow [this way](https://gist.github.com/x-yuri/da5de61959ae118900b685fed78feff1). And you might want to add `iptables -t "$table" -Z`. Do note that this way you're hardcoding the list of the tables and their chains. But I'm not sure if the order of the commands is safe. So I would seriously consider [save-restore solution](https://serverfault.com/a/200642/162443). Or you can just [unload iptables](https://serverfault.com/a/973412/162443). – x-yuri Jun 29 '19 at 20:38
  • this fixed my server 100% thanks so much – Nik Burns Mar 22 '20 at 18:10
31

This thing seem to be ok.. http://insanelabs.com/linux/linux-reset-iptables-firewall-rules/

iptables -F
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
Falcon Momot
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Aravinda
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    Man, you don't know how grateful I am for you post!!!! After several hours of painful debugging I finally changed my iptables to default and my problem is now fixed! My problem was that I had nodejs server that worked just fine on localhost:80 and also myip:80 but I also had one more nodejs server that worked on localhost:4000 but didn't worked on myip:4000 and I was very frustrated because this happened after installing mail server on my raspberri pi and this happened all of a sudden. Again man, you have a beer from me! Thank you! – Combine Sep 08 '17 at 19:43
7

Wing's answer will be at your rescue when things go wrong with iptables. If you want to reset everything, including alternate tables, NAT, PRE/POST ROUTING, use this script:

#!/bin/sh
#
# rc.flush-iptables - Resets iptables to default values.
#
# Copyright (C) 2001 Oskar Andreasson <bluefluxATkoffeinDOTnet>
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program or from the site that you downloaded it
# from; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple
# Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
#
# Configurations
#
IPTABLES="/sbin/iptables"
#
# reset the default policies in the filter table.
#
$IPTABLES -P INPUT ACCEPT
$IPTABLES -P FORWARD ACCEPT
$IPTABLES -P OUTPUT ACCEPT
#
# reset the default policies in the nat table.
#
$IPTABLES -t nat -P PREROUTING ACCEPT
$IPTABLES -t nat -P POSTROUTING ACCEPT
$IPTABLES -t nat -P OUTPUT ACCEPT
#
# reset the default policies in the mangle table.
#
$IPTABLES -t mangle -P PREROUTING ACCEPT
$IPTABLES -t mangle -P POSTROUTING ACCEPT
$IPTABLES -t mangle -P INPUT ACCEPT
$IPTABLES -t mangle -P OUTPUT ACCEPT
$IPTABLES -t mangle -P FORWARD ACCEPT
#
# flush all the rules in the filter and nat tables.
#
$IPTABLES -F
$IPTABLES -t nat -F
$IPTABLES -t mangle -F
#
# erase all chains that's not default in filter and nat table.
#
$IPTABLES -X
$IPTABLES -t nat -X
$IPTABLES -t mangle -X

Source: Internet Connection Sharing - Ubuntu Help

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