Debian 13 Firewall Rules Lost After Reboot

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Traffic policies reset on reboot, exposing services or blocking legitimate access.

Environment & Reproduction

Debian 13 using transient nftables or iptables rules without persistent save/restore.

Root Cause Analysis

Runtime firewall rules were not committed to persistent configuration files.

Quick Triage

Check active ruleset and whether persistence service is enabled.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Verify boot ordering and inspect persistence configuration paths.

Solution – Primary Fix

Save validated rules to persistent files and enable load service at boot.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Manage firewall as code via configuration management for consistent host policy.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Rules survive reboot and expected ports are enforced per policy.

Rollback Plan

Restore prior firewall file and reload service if new policy breaks traffic.

Prevention & Hardening

Require persistent-rule checks in post-change validation runbooks.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Related issues include nft syntax errors and duplicate chain definitions.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for Debian 13.

View all Debian 13 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

Debian nftables wiki and netfilter-persistent documentation.