List UFW Rules When The Application is Inactive or Disabled

When working on your server you might need to disable the Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW). When doing so you’ll notice it doesn’t display your rules when the application is inactive.

# ufw status Status: inactive

To get around this you have to find the UFW users file (file name == user.rules). Every installation is different, the fastest way to find this file is to use the FIND command.

# find / -name user.rules /etc/ufw/user.rules

Now open the file, you are looking for this section: ### RULES ###. Here is an example of what my file looks like:

### tuple ### allow any 22 0.0.0.0/0 any [my ip] in
-A ufw-user-input -p tcp --dport 22 -s [my ip] -j ACCEPT
-A ufw-user-input -p udp --dport 22 -s [my ip] -j ACCEPT

### tuple ### allow any 443 0.0.0.0/0 any [my ip] in
-A ufw-user-input -p tcp --dport 443 -s [my ip] -j ACCEPT
-A ufw-user-input -p udp --dport 443 -s [my ip] -j ACCEPT

You’ll notice the format, it shows the main port and associated IP then highlights the specific connection protocols allowed on the port (e.g., TCP and UDP).