Ubuntu – How to make a specific set of iptables rules permanent

When you send a HTTP request to the other server, you're using TCP. First, a SYN packet go outside to the other server from a random high port, then you'll receive a ACK response. Finally you send SYN/ACK to the server and the server responds with the requested document (in multiple packets). Your rules do not allow the ACK packet to be received and therefore the connection cannot be established. Add a rule like:

-A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

You don't get iptables logs for free. Your rules should look like:

# if no rule matched, the input should be dropped
-P INPUT DROP

-A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
# etc

# the limit prevents your logs from being flooded if there are a lot packets being captured
-A INPUT -m limit --limit 5/min -j LOG --log-prefix "iptables denied" --log-level debug

Note that I've omitted iptables before the commands, I recommend using iptables-restore (or iptables-apply for testing) to avoid locking yourself out if a rule fails to apply. The file to be passed to the command looks like:

*FILTER
# your rules here, for example:
-P INPUT DROP
-P INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
COMMIT

A newline after the COMMIT line is mandatory.

By default, the entries go to /var/log/kern.log. Not good if you want to differentiate between kernel and iptables messages, so create a filter for rsyslog in /etc/rsyslog.d/iptables.conf containing:

:msg,contains,"iptables denied" /var/log/iptables.log
& ~

This will filter iptables errors and send those to /var/log/iptables.log.

You may want to use the iptables-persistent package rather than mess with your boot scripts. First, run your script to set up the firewall rules. Secondly, run sudo apt-get install iptables-persistent, and follow the prompts. When it asks to save the current rules, hit "Yes" at both prompts. Now, on reboots, your iptables rules will be restored.

NOTE: If you change your rules after this, you will need to do the following command(s) after the changes:

To save your IPv4 iptables rules: sudo su -c 'iptables-save > /etc/iptables/rules.v4'

To save your IPv6 ip6tables rules: sudo su -c 'ip6tables-save > /etc/iptables/rules.v6'