Undoing specific iptables ip/port restriction

Question

Say I add the following iptables rules:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s localhost --dport 4444 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 4444 -j DROP

This allows localhost to access port 4444 then blocks all other IPs from accessing port 4444...

I now want to undo these previous iptables commands. What is the easiest way to "undo" that? e.g. allow all ips to access port 4444 again.

Answer 1

From iptables --help:

--delete  -D chain      Delete matching rule from chain
--delete  -D chain rulenum
                Delete rule rulenum (1 = first) from chain

So, just issue:

iptables -D INPUT -p tcp -s localhost --dport 4444 -j ACCEPT
iptables -D INPUT -p tcp --dport 4444 -j DROP

Alternatively, you can delete by line numbers. First, get the line numbers of your rules:

iptables -L INPUT -n --line-numbers

Then, delete:

iptables -D INPUT <line_number>