Which command is primarily used in managing firewall rules in Linux systems?

The command commonly used for managing firewall rules in Linux systems is iptables. Iptables is a user-space utility program that allows system administrators to configure the packet filtering rules of the Linux kernel firewall. This command provides a framework for managing incoming and outgoing network traffic, allowing users to define rules that dictate how packets should be processed by the kernel. The flexibility and granularity of iptables make it a vital tool for securing networks by controlling traffic based on various criteria such as source and destination IP addresses, protocols, and ports.

While firewalld, another option, is indeed a more modern alternative that offers a dynamic way to manage firewall rules in real-time (particularly suitable for systems requiring frequent changes), it often relies on iptables as its underlying mechanism on many distributions. Thus, while it may be used for similar purposes, iptables remains the foundational command and is better represented as the primary method for directly managing firewall rules.

The options uhost and ipset serve different functions within Linux networking. Uhost is not a standard command for firewall management, and ipset is used for managing sets of IP addresses that can be referenced in iptables rules, but it does not directly handle the creation or management of firewall rules itself. Therefore, iptables stands