Linux – CentOS 7 iptables not persistent after reboot

I installed a minimal CentOS 7 version on a development server to virtualize some linux guests with kvm/qemu.

To use iptables instead of firewalld I install iptables-service and do:

systemctl stop firewalld
systemctl mask firewalld
systemctl enable iptables
systemctl start iptables

SELinux is disabled by editing /etc/sysconfig/selinux.

My rules for iptables are the following:

iptables -Z
iptables -F
iptables -X
iptables -t nat -Z
iptables -t nat -F
iptables -t nat -X
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o enp6s0 -j MASQUERADE
iptables -A FORWARD -i enp6s0 -o virbr0 -j ACCEPT

Now i save my settings with the following command:

iptables-save > /etc/sysconfig/iptables

My iptables-file looks:

# Generated by iptables-save v1.4.21 on Thu Aug 20 10:46:40 2015
*mangle
:PREROUTING ACCEPT [16736:10889078]
:INPUT ACCEPT [1063:106860]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [15679:10784186]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [570:71275]
:POSTROUTING ACCEPT [15728:10809742]
-A POSTROUTING -o virbr0 -p udp -m udp --dport 68 -j CHECKSUM --checksum-fill
COMMIT
# Completed on Thu Aug 20 10:46:40 2015
# Generated by iptables-save v1.4.21 on Thu Aug 20 10:46:40 2015
*filter
:INPUT ACCEPT [868:81772]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [8328:7311589]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [233:32016]
-A FORWARD -i enp6s0 -o virbr0 -j ACCEPT
COMMIT
# Completed on Thu Aug 20 10:46:40 2015
# Generated by iptables-save v1.4.21 on Thu Aug 20 10:46:40 2015
*nat
:PREROUTING ACCEPT [1308:86998]
:INPUT ACCEPT [77:12475]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [1:72]
:POSTROUTING ACCEPT [1228:74319]
-A POSTROUTING -o enp6s0 -j MASQUERADE
COMMIT
# Completed on Thu Aug 20 10:46:40 2015

A quick check to see if my rules are correct for now:

[root@dev1 ~]# iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere            

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination 

But after rebooting the server the iptables rules looks like:

[root@dev1 ~]# iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         
ACCEPT     udp  --  anywhere             anywhere             udp dpt:domain
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:domain
ACCEPT     udp  --  anywhere             anywhere             udp dpt:bootps
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:bootps

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             10.0.1.0/24          ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
ACCEPT     all  --  10.0.1.0/24          anywhere            
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere            
REJECT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere            

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         
ACCEPT     udp  --  anywhere             anywhere             udp dpt:bootpc

I don't understand where the other rules come from.

When calling iptables-restore -c /etc/sysconfig/iptables the expected rules are displayed.

It seems that the saved rules are not loaded at boot-time or that the "default"-rules are not flushed or whatever.

What is the problem here ??? I'm slowly getting gray hairs …

Thanks for your quick responses 🙂

As mentioned above the iptables-services was installed by me:

[root@dev1 ~]# rpm -aq iptables-services
iptables-services-1.4.21-13.el7.x86_64

Enabling the service with systemctl enable iptables.service instead of using systemctl enable iptables seems to make no difference because the same service file is linked:

[root@dev1 ~]# systemctl disable iptables
rm '/etc/systemd/system/basic.target.wants/iptables.service'
[root@dev1 ~]# systemctl enable iptables.service
ln -s '/usr/lib/systemd/system/iptables.service' '/etc/systemd/system/basic.target.wants/iptables.service'

This is the content of iptables file after calling
/usr/libexec/iptables/iptables.init save

[root@develcluster1 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/iptables
# Generated by iptables-save v1.4.21 on Fri Aug 21 14:34:04 2015
*nat
:PREROUTING ACCEPT [351490:22546787]
:INPUT ACCEPT [15751:2400243]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [324:21186]
:POSTROUTING ACCEPT [304860:18293418]
-A POSTROUTING -o enp6s0 -j MASQUERADE
COMMIT
# Completed on Fri Aug 21 14:34:04 2015
# Generated by iptables-save v1.4.21 on Fri Aug 21 14:34:04 2015
*filter
:INPUT ACCEPT [505048:69178501]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [55815086:22035726185]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [325986:56595531]
-A FORWARD -i enp6s0 -o virbr0 -j ACCEPT
COMMIT
# Completed on Fri Aug 21 14:34:04 2015
# Generated by iptables-save v1.4.21 on Fri Aug 21 14:34:04 2015
*mangle
:PREROUTING ACCEPT [109215513:66867793592]
:INPUT ACCEPT [505243:69203589]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [108710264:66798590873]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [326323:56634790]
:POSTROUTING ACCEPT [109036066:66855179944]
-A POSTROUTING -o virbr0 -p udp -m udp --dport 68 -j CHECKSUM --checksum-fill
COMMIT
# Completed on Fri Aug 21 14:34:04 2015

After reboot a call to iptables -L don't show my saved rules:

[root@dev1 ~]# iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         
ACCEPT     udp  --  anywhere             anywhere             udp dpt:domain
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:domain
ACCEPT     udp  --  anywhere             anywhere             udp dpt:bootps
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:bootps

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             10.0.1.0/24          ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
ACCEPT     all  --  10.0.1.0/24          anywhere            
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere            
REJECT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere            

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         
ACCEPT     udp  --  anywhere             anywhere             udp dpt:bootpc

Maybe I'm doing something fundamental wrong. But every thread i read do this the same way and it should work.

If you need more information please tell me.

Meanwhile, I helped me by calling a small script that i must call after each reboot.

#!/bin/sh

iptables -Z
iptables -F
iptables -X
iptables -t nat -Z
iptables -t nat -F
iptables -t nat -X
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o enp6s0 -j MASQUERADE
iptables -A FORWARD -i enp6s0 -o virbr0 -j ACCEPT

iptables --flush
iptables-restore -c /etc/sysconfig/iptables

Thats not sexy but works so far. But could not be the final solution.