18.2.6. Activating the IPTables Service

The firewall rules are only active if the iptables service is running. To manually start the service, use the following command:

[root@myServer ~] # service iptables restart

To ensure that iptables starts when the system is booted, use the following command:

[root@myServer ~] # chkconfig --level 345 iptables on

The ipchains service is not included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However, if ipchains is installed (for example, an upgrade was performed and the system had ipchains previously installed), the ipchains and iptables services should not be activated simultaneously. To make sure the ipchains service is disabled and configured not to start at boot time, use the following two commands:

[root@myServer ~] # service ipchains stop
[root@myServer ~] # chkconfig --level 345 ipchains off