Manual Firewall Configuration on Redhat IPTables

I'd suggest writing a script, e.g.:

#!/bin/bash

## Firewall flushing etc
for t in raw nat mangle filter; do
  iptables -t $t -F
  iptables -t $t -X
done

## Default policies
while read table chain policy; do
  [[ -z $table ]] && continue  ## Skip empty lines
  iptables -t $table -P $chain $policy
done <<< "
  raw    PREROUTING DROP
  filter FORWARD    DROP
  filter INPUT      DROP
  filter OUTPUT     ACCEPT
"

## These rules perform foo
iptables ...
iptables ...

## These rules perform bar
iptables ...
iptables ...

... and so on ...

## Save them
iptables-save > /etc/firewall-rules.conf

exit 0

Then, edit rc.local and add:

/sbin/iptables-restore < /etc/firewall-rules.conf

Right before the exit 0 line.

Now, if you need to modify your firewall, just edit and execute the first script.

The easiest way to manage your iptables configs on RHEL is to simply ignore the system provided config scripts entirely. I manage all of my RHEL systems with puppet, and use a fragments based approach as per Module Iptables Patterns.

This may not work for you if you're not a puppet shop, but at it's base all this does is build out the file /etc/sysconfig/iptables directly. That approach will likely work very well for you. In this way you can still keep your comments, and order the rules however you would like.

As I've already said IMHO writing SHELL scripts for configuring iptables is a dumb approach.

iptables own facilities allow implementing 99.99 % of policies w/o need to bring in some additional things like SHELL-scripting, for e. g.

If you need comments to be saved inside your iptables config, you use -m comment --comment ""

You could make your own startup script and add it to your existing services with chkconfig.

Here's a template that I often use.

It flushes all rules in place and replaces them with a custom set that allows ssh, http and https in.

#!/bin/bash
#
# firewall  firewall script
# description:  a firewall script
# chkconfig: 2345 91 09
#

IPTABLES=/sbin/iptables

start() {
    ret=0
    # input chain
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -m state --state INVALID -j DROP || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 --syn -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 --syn -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 --syn -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT || ret=1
    # output chain
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -m state --state INVALID -j DROP || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT || ret=1
    return $ret
}

stop() {
    ret=0
    $IPTABLES -F || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -F -t nat || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -X || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -P INPUT ACCEPT || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -P OUTPUT ACCEPT || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -P FORWARD ACCEPT || ret=1
    return $ret
}

panic() {
    ret=0
    $IPTABLES -F || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -F -t nat || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -X || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -P INPUT DROP || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -P OUTPUT DROP || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -P FORWARD DROP || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -Z || ret=1
    $IPTABLES -t nat -Z || ret=1
    return $ret
}

status() {
    $IPTABLES -t filter -L -v --line-numbers
    $IPTABLES -t nat -L -v --line-numbers
    return 0
}

restart() {
    stop
    start
}

case "$1" in
    start)
        stop
        start
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
    stop)
        stop
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
    restart)
        restart
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
    status)
        status
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
    panic)
        panic
        RETVAL=$?
            ;;
    *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status|panic}"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit $RETVAL

You could simple put this script inside /etc/init.d/, make it executable and run chkconfig firewall --add && chkconfig firewall on.

You can now enable the firewall with service firewall start, service firewall panic stops all network traffic and service firewall stop disables the firewall.
I think you get the idea.

The major advantage of this system is that you have one script that you can heavily customize and write comments in, without touching any of the existing iptables settings of the OS.