UFW Firewall does not start after roboot on Ubuntu 14.04.3

linuxmac · 02-13-2016, 07:14 PM

All my Ubuntu 14.04.3 workstations do not start up the UFW firewall automatically after the computer is restarted. My ufw.config file is
# Set to yes to start on boot. If setting this remotely, be sure to add a rule
# to allow your remote connection before starting ufw. Eg: 'ufw allow 22/tcp'
ENABLED=yes

# Please use the 'ufw' command to set the loglevel. Eg: 'ufw logging medium'.
# See 'man ufw' for details.
LOGLEVEL=low

frankbell · 02-13-2016, 07:45 PM

Have you verified that ufw is not running in the background somewhere with the ps command?

Code:

ps -A | grep ufw

Note that ufw is not a firewall; it is a tool for configuring your firewall. Linux firewall capability is part of the kernel; it's called iptables. Once you have configured the firewall rules for iptables, there should be no need to run ufw unless you wish to change the firewall configuration.

unSpawn · 02-14-2016, 03:41 AM

Quote:

Linux firewall capability is part of the kernel;

It's called Netfilter, 'iptables' is the user land management interface.

Quote:

Once you have configured the firewall rules for iptables, there should be no need to run ufw unless you wish to change the firewall configuration.

So instead test rules are loaded issuing (sudo) 'iptables-save;'.

Habitual · 02-14-2016, 06:36 AM

Code:

sudo ufw enable

is the usual command to start and keep ufw running.

Code:

sudo ufw status

tells you its status.

IF

Code:

sudo ufw status

says "Status: inactive" after the enable command, then we can proceed.

linuxmac · 02-15-2016, 04:25 PM

I found the reason all 3 do not start up. It is because the kernel version was not the latest 3.16.0-60 as of Feb-15-2016.

Strangely the kernel was not updated by sudo apt-get update of sudo apt-get upgrade.