20.2. Activating the iptables Service

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

/sbin/service iptables restart

To ensure that it is started when the system is booted, issue the command:

/sbin/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 service should not be activated along with the iptables service. To make sure the ipchains service is disabled and configured not to start at boot time, execute the following two commands:

/sbin/service ipchains stop
/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 ipchains off

The Services Configuration Tool can be used to enable or disable the iptables and ipchains services.