[SOLVED...sorta] Linux Mint 21.1 MATE: Firewall not working? UFW or iptables?

[YellowJersey]

I'm having trouble with a recent upgrade to Linux Mint 21.1 MATE. I noticed that the ufw firewall is always turned off; even if I turn it back on, it will turn itself back off.

 

History:

I went to the GUI for ufw and noticed it was toggled off, so I toggled it on. However, a little later, I checked again and it was turned off.
I've attached a screenshot of my adventures in the terminal, but nothing seems to be working. I even tired a clean install of the OS itself, and it didn't fix the issue (I'm not having this issue on any other machines running 21.1 MATE.

 Any ideas? I just want my firewall to be on!


***Edit: SOLUTION: I just went back to 20.3 and I don't have this problem anymore. Couldn't figure it out in 21.1.

 

 

 

 

[C2dan88]

11 minutes ago, YellowJersey said:

Any ideas? I just want my firewall to be on!

 

You should be running check-requirements as root

sudo /usr/share/ufw/check-requirements

 

[YellowJersey]

3 minutes ago, C2dan88 said:

 

You should be running check-requirements as root

sudo /usr/share/ufw/check-requirements

 

Ok, I've made some progress. You're right. So, what appears to be happening is that ufw firewall turns on on system startup like it's supposed to. However, I use a VPN, which disables ufw (presumably using iptables instead). However, when I turn off my VPN, it doesn't turn ufw back on (it used to, but now it doesn't)

[C2dan88]

What does

sudo systemctl status ufw

show after you disable the vpn

[YellowJersey]

5 minutes ago, C2dan88 said:

What does

sudo systemctl status ufw

show after you disable the vpn

 

 

Status: "inactive"

 It wants me to manually enable ufw after closing the VPN.

 

[YellowJersey]

11 minutes ago, C2dan88 said:

What does

sudo systemctl status ufw

show after you disable the vpn

Sorry, I'm super tired (it's nearly 5:30 AM where I am) and I've been up all night so I'm probably not the most coherent. I put in "sudo systemctl status ufw" and it spits this out: (I get this after rebooting and vpn is not open, while vpn is open, and after I close vpn)

(out of curiosity, I got the exact same message on my other machine running Mint 21.1 MATE. On my other machine, I also tried "sudo ufw status verbose" and and it spits out "status: active" even when the VPN is on, so my other machine does not have this issue; status of ufw is always active. I don't know why it's different on this machine)