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IPTABLES(8) iptables 1.8.7 IPTABLES(8)
NAME
iptables/ip6tables -- administration tool for IPv4/IPv6 packet filtering and NAT
SYNOPSIS
iptables [-t table] {-A|-C|-D} chain rule-specification
ip6tables [-t table] {-A|-C|-D} chain rule-specification
iptables [-t table] -I chain [rulenum] rule-specification
iptables [-t table] -R chain rulenum rule-specification
iptables [-t table] -D chain rulenum
iptables [-t table] -S [chain [rulenum]]
iptables [-t table] {-F|-L|-Z} [chain [rulenum]] [options...]
iptables [-t table] -N chain
iptables [-t table] -X [chain]
iptables [-t table] -P chain target
iptables [-t table] -E old-chain-name new-chain-name
rule-specification = [matches...] [target]
match = -m matchname [per-match-options]
target = -j targetname [per-target-options]
DESCRIPTION
Iptables and ip6tables are used to set up, maintain, and inspect the tables of IPv4 and
IPv6 packet filter rules in the Linux kernel. Several different tables may be defined.
Each table contains a number of built-in chains and may also contain user-defined chains.
Each chain is a list of rules which can match a set of packets. Each rule specifies what
to do with a packet that matches. This is called a `target', which may be a jump to a
user-defined chain in the same table.
TARGETS
A firewall rule specifies criteria for a packet and a target. If the packet does not
match, the next rule in the chain is examined; if it does match, then the next rule is
specified by the value of the target, which can be the name of a user-defined chain, one
of the targets described in iptables-extensions(8), or one of the special values ACCEPT,
DROP or RETURN.
ACCEPT means to let the packet through. DROP means to drop the packet on the floor. RE-
TURN means stop traversing this chain and resume at the next rule in the previous (call-
ing) chain. If the end of a built-in chain is reached or a rule in a built-in chain with
target RETURN is matched, the target specified by the chain policy determines the fate of
the packet.
TABLES
There are currently five independent tables (which tables are present at any time depends
on the kernel configuration options and which modules are present).
-t, --table table
This option specifies the packet matching table which the command should operate
on. If the kernel is configured with automatic module loading, an attempt will be
made to load the appropriate module for that table if it is not already there.
The tables are as follows:
filter:
This is the default table (if no -t option is passed). It contains the built-in
chains INPUT (for packets destined to local sockets), FORWARD (for packets be-
ing routed through the box), and OUTPUT (for locally-generated packets).
nat:
This table is consulted when a packet that creates a new connection is encoun-
tered. It consists of four built-ins: PREROUTING (for altering packets as soon
as they come in), INPUT (for altering packets destined for local sockets), OUT-
PUT (for altering locally-generated packets before routing), and POSTROUTING
(for altering packets as they are about to go out). IPv6 NAT support is avail-
able since kernel 3.7.
mangle:
This table is used for specialized packet alteration. Until kernel 2.4.17 it
had two built-in chains: PREROUTING (for altering incoming packets before rout-
ing) and OUTPUT (for altering locally-generated packets before routing). Since
kernel 2.4.18, three other built-in chains are also supported: INPUT (for pack-
ets coming into the box itself), FORWARD (for altering packets being routed
through the box), and POSTROUTING (for altering packets as they are about to go
out).
raw:
This table is used mainly for configuring exemptions from connection tracking
in combination with the NOTRACK target. It registers at the netfilter hooks
with higher priority and is thus called before ip_conntrack, or any other IP
tables. It provides the following built-in chains: PREROUTING (for packets ar-
riving via any network interface) OUTPUT (for packets generated by local pro-
cesses)
security:
This table is used for Mandatory Access Control (MAC) networking rules, such as
those enabled by the SECMARK and CONNSECMARK targets. Mandatory Access Control
is implemented by Linux Security Modules such as SELinux. The security table
is called after the filter table, allowing any Discretionary Access Control
(DAC) rules in the filter table to take effect before MAC rules. This table
provides the following built-in chains: INPUT (for packets coming into the box
itself), OUTPUT (for altering locally-generated packets before routing), and
FORWARD (for altering packets being routed through the box).
OPTIONS
The options that are recognized by iptables and ip6tables can be divided into several dif-
ferent groups.
COMMANDS
These options specify the desired action to perform. Only one of them can be specified on
the command line unless otherwise stated below. For long versions of the command and op-
tion names, you need to use only enough letters to ensure that iptables can differentiate
it from all other options.
-A, --append chain rule-specification
Append one or more rules to the end of the selected chain. When the source and/or
destination names resolve to more than one address, a rule will be added for each
possible address combination.
-C, --check chain rule-specification
Check whether a rule matching the specification does exist in the selected chain.
This command uses the same logic as -D to find a matching entry, but does not alter
the existing iptables configuration and uses its exit code to indicate success or
failure.
-D, --delete chain rule-specification
-D, --delete chain rulenum
Delete one or more rules from the selected chain. There are two versions of this
command: the rule can be specified as a number in the chain (starting at 1 for the
first rule) or a rule to match.
-I, --insert chain [rulenum] rule-specification
Insert one or more rules in the selected chain as the given rule number. So, if
the rule number is 1, the rule or rules are inserted at the head of the chain.
This is also the default if no rule number is specified.
-R, --replace chain rulenum rule-specification
Replace a rule in the selected chain. If the source and/or destination names re-
solve to multiple addresses, the command will fail. Rules are numbered starting at
1.
-L, --list [chain]
List all rules in the selected chain. If no chain is selected, all chains are
listed. Like every other iptables command, it applies to the specified table (fil-
ter is the default), so NAT rules get listed by
iptables -t nat -n -L
Please note that it is often used with the -n option, in order to avoid long re-
verse DNS lookups. It is legal to specify the -Z (zero) option as well, in which
case the chain(s) will be atomically listed and zeroed. The exact output is af-
fected by the other arguments given. The exact rules are suppressed until you use
iptables -L -v
or iptables-save(8).
-S, --list-rules [chain]
Print all rules in the selected chain. If no chain is selected, all chains are
printed like iptables-save. Like every other iptables command, it applies to the
specified table (filter is the default).
-F, --flush [chain]
Flush the selected chain (all the chains in the table if none is given). This is
equivalent to deleting all the rules one by one.
-Z, --zero [chain [rulenum]]
Zero the packet and byte counters in all chains, or only the given chain, or only
the given rule in a chain. It is legal to specify the -L, --list (list) option as
well, to see the counters immediately before they are cleared. (See above.)
-N, --new-chain chain
Create a new user-defined chain by the given name. There must be no target of that
name already.
-X, --delete-chain [chain]
Delete the optional user-defined chain specified. There must be no references to
the chain. If there are, you must delete or replace the referring rules before the
chain can be deleted. The chain must be empty, i.e. not contain any rules. If no
argument is given, it will attempt to delete every non-builtin chain in the table.
-P, --policy chain target
Set the policy for the built-in (non-user-defined) chain to the given target. The
policy target must be either ACCEPT or DROP.
-E, --rename-chain old-chain new-chain
Rename the user specified chain to the user supplied name. This is cosmetic, and
has no effect on the structure of the table.
-h Help. Give a (currently very brief) description of the command syntax.
PARAMETERS
The following parameters make up a rule specification (as used in the add, delete, insert,
replace and append commands).
-4, --ipv4
This option has no effect in iptables and iptables-restore. If a rule using the -4
option is inserted with (and only with) ip6tables-restore, it will be silently ig-
nored. Any other uses will throw an error. This option allows IPv4 and IPv6 rules
in a single rule file for use with both iptables-restore and ip6tables-restore.
-6, --ipv6
If a rule using the -6 option is inserted with (and only with) iptables-restore, it
will be silently ignored. Any other uses will throw an error. This option allows
IPv4 and IPv6 rules in a single rule file for use with both iptables-restore and
ip6tables-restore. This option has no effect in ip6tables and ip6tables-restore.
[!] -p, --protocol protocol
The protocol of the rule or of the packet to check. The specified protocol can be
one of tcp, udp, udplite, icmp, icmpv6,esp, ah, sctp, mh or the special keyword
"all", or it can be a numeric value, representing one of these protocols or a dif-
ferent one. A protocol name from /etc/protocols is also allowed. A "!" argument
before the protocol inverts the test. The number zero is equivalent to all. "all"
will match with all protocols and is taken as default when this option is omitted.
Note that, in ip6tables, IPv6 extension headers except esp are not allowed. esp
and ipv6-nonext can be used with Kernel version 2.6.11 or later. The number zero
is equivalent to all, which means that you cannot test the protocol field for the
value 0 directly. To match on a HBH header, even if it were the last, you cannot
use -p 0, but always need -m hbh.
[!] -s, --source address[/mask][,...]
Source specification. Address can be either a network name, a hostname, a network
IP address (with /mask), or a plain IP address. Hostnames will be resolved once
only, before the rule is submitted to the kernel. Please note that specifying any
name to be resolved with a remote query such as DNS is a really bad idea. The mask
can be either an ipv4 network mask (for iptables) or a plain number, specifying the
number of 1's at the left side of the network mask. Thus, an iptables mask of 24
is equivalent to 255.255.255.0. A "!" argument before the address specification
inverts the sense of the address. The flag --src is an alias for this option. Mul-
tiple addresses can be specified, but this will expand to multiple rules (when
adding with -A), or will cause multiple rules to be deleted (with -D).
[!] -d, --destination address[/mask][,...]
Destination specification. See the description of the -s (source) flag for a de-
tailed description of the syntax. The flag --dst is an alias for this option.
-m, --match match
Specifies a match to use, that is, an extension module that tests for a specific
property. The set of matches make up the condition under which a target is invoked.
Matches are evaluated first to last as specified on the command line and work in
short-circuit fashion, i.e. if one extension yields false, evaluation will stop.
-j, --jump target
This specifies the target of the rule; i.e., what to do if the packet matches it.
The target can be a user-defined chain (other than the one this rule is in), one of
the special builtin targets which decide the fate of the packet immediately, or an
extension (see EXTENSIONS below). If this option is omitted in a rule (and -g is
not used), then matching the rule will have no effect on the packet's fate, but the
counters on the rule will be incremented.
-g, --goto chain
This specifies that the processing should continue in a user specified chain. Un-
like the --jump option return will not continue processing in this chain but in-
stead in the chain that called us via --jump.
[!] -i, --in-interface name
Name of an interface via which a packet was received (only for packets entering the
INPUT, FORWARD and PREROUTING chains). When the "!" argument is used before the
interface name, the sense is inverted. If the interface name ends in a "+", then
any interface which begins with this name will match. If this option is omitted,
any interface name will match.
[!] -o, --out-interface name
Name of an interface via which a packet is going to be sent (for packets entering
the FORWARD, OUTPUT and POSTROUTING chains). When the "!" argument is used before
the interface name, the sense is inverted. If the interface name ends in a "+",
then any interface which begins with this name will match. If this option is omit-
ted, any interface name will match.
[!] -f, --fragment
This means that the rule only refers to second and further IPv4 fragments of frag-
mented packets. Since there is no way to tell the source or destination ports of
such a packet (or ICMP type), such a packet will not match any rules which specify
them. When the "!" argument precedes the "-f" flag, the rule will only match head
fragments, or unfragmented packets. This option is IPv4 specific, it is not avail-
able in ip6tables.
-c, --set-counters packets bytes
This enables the administrator to initialize the packet and byte counters of a rule
(during INSERT, APPEND, REPLACE operations).
OTHER OPTIONS
The following additional options can be specified:
-v, --verbose
Verbose output. This option makes the list command show the interface name, the
rule options (if any), and the TOS masks. The packet and byte counters are also
listed, with the suffix 'K', 'M' or 'G' for 1000, 1,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 mul-
tipliers respectively (but see the -x flag to change this). For appending, inser-
tion, deletion and replacement, this causes detailed information on the rule or
rules to be printed. -v may be specified multiple times to possibly emit more de-
tailed debug statements.
-w, --wait [seconds]
Wait for the xtables lock. To prevent multiple instances of the program from run-
ning concurrently, an attempt will be made to obtain an exclusive lock at launch.
By default, the program will exit if the lock cannot be obtained. This option will
make the program wait (indefinitely or for optional seconds) until the exclusive
lock can be obtained.
-W, --wait-interval microseconds
Interval to wait per each iteration. When running latency sensitive applications,
waiting for the xtables lock for extended durations may not be acceptable. This op-
tion will make each iteration take the amount of time specified. The default inter-
val is 1 second. This option only works with -w.
-n, --numeric
Numeric output. IP addresses and port numbers will be printed in numeric format.
By default, the program will try to display them as host names, network names, or
services (whenever applicable).
-x, --exact
Expand numbers. Display the exact value of the packet and byte counters, instead
of only the rounded number in K's (multiples of 1000) M's (multiples of 1000K) or
G's (multiples of 1000M). This option is only relevant for the -L command.
--line-numbers
When listing rules, add line numbers to the beginning of each rule, corresponding
to that rule's position in the chain.
--modprobe=command
When adding or inserting rules into a chain, use command to load any necessary mod-
ules (targets, match extensions, etc).
LOCK FILE
iptables uses the /run/xtables.lock file to take an exclusive lock at launch.
The XTABLES_LOCKFILE environment variable can be used to override the default setting.
MATCH AND TARGET EXTENSIONS
iptables can use extended packet matching and target modules. A list of these is avail-
able in the iptables-extensions(8) manpage.
DIAGNOSTICS
Various error messages are printed to standard error. The exit code is 0 for correct
functioning. Errors which appear to be caused by invalid or abused command line parame-
ters cause an exit code of 2, and other errors cause an exit code of 1.
BUGS
Bugs? What's this? ;-) Well, you might want to have a look at http://bugzilla.netfil-
ter.org/
COMPATIBILITY WITH IPCHAINS
This iptables is very similar to ipchains by Rusty Russell. The main difference is that
the chains INPUT and OUTPUT are only traversed for packets coming into the local host and
originating from the local host respectively. Hence every packet only passes through one
of the three chains (except loopback traffic, which involves both INPUT and OUTPUT
chains); previously a forwarded packet would pass through all three.
The other main difference is that -i refers to the input interface; -o refers to the out-
put interface, and both are available for packets entering the FORWARD chain.
The various forms of NAT have been separated out; iptables is a pure packet filter when
using the default `filter' table, with optional extension modules. This should simplify
much of the previous confusion over the combination of IP masquerading and packet filter-
ing seen previously. So the following options are handled differently:
-j MASQ
-M -S
-M -L
There are several other changes in iptables.
SEE ALSO
iptables-apply(8), iptables-save(8), iptables-restore(8), iptables-extensions(8),
The packet-filtering-HOWTO details iptables usage for packet filtering, the NAT-HOWTO de-
tails NAT, the netfilter-extensions-HOWTO details the extensions that are not in the stan-
dard distribution, and the netfilter-hacking-HOWTO details the netfilter internals.
See http://www.netfilter.org/.
AUTHORS
Rusty Russell originally wrote iptables, in early consultation with Michael Neuling.
Marc Boucher made Rusty abandon ipnatctl by lobbying for a generic packet selection frame-
work in iptables, then wrote the mangle table, the owner match, the mark stuff, and ran
around doing cool stuff everywhere.
James Morris wrote the TOS target, and tos match.
Jozsef Kadlecsik wrote the REJECT target.
Harald Welte wrote the ULOG and NFQUEUE target, the new libiptc, as well as the TTL, DSCP,
ECN matches and targets.
The Netfilter Core Team is: Jozsef Kadlecsik, Pablo Neira Ayuso, Eric Leblond, Florian
Westphal and Arturo Borrero Gonzalez. Emeritus Core Team members are: Marc Boucher, Mar-
tin Josefsson, Yasuyuki Kozakai, James Morris, Harald Welte and Rusty Russell.
Man page originally written by Herve Eychenne <rv AT wallfire.org>.
VERSION
This manual page applies to iptables/ip6tables 1.8.7.
iptables 1.8.7 IPTABLES(8)
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On Apache
Under GNU General Public License
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