firewalld service is running, but firewall-cmd doesn't work

Question

I am new to Centos 7/Server management. I am trying to figure out how to work with firewalld. my kernel release is: 2.6.32-042stab084.20(OpenVZ)

And:

#firewall-cmd --version
#0.3.9

The problem is I can't get any functionality out of firewall-cmd. Here is some of commands I have tried:

# systemctl status firewalld -l
firewalld.service - firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/firewalld.service; enabled)
Active: active (running) since ...; 
Main PID: 120
CGroup: /system.slice/firewalld.service
       └─120 /usr/bin/python -Es /usr/sbin/firewalld --nofork --nopid

systemd[1]: Starting firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon...
systemd[1]: Started firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon.
firewalld[120]: ERROR: ebtables not usable, disabling ethernet bridge firewall.
firewalld[120]: ERROR: INVALID_ZONE

It seems that firewalld is running, and actually it is doing its job as a firewall. but when I try to use firewall-cmd:

# firewall-cmd --state
not running
#firewall-cmd --get-zones
#[nothing happens]
#firewall-cmd --reload
[X]Server crashed and I had to request a reboot!

I have installed fail2ban and it works by adding IPs to banned list which I can view by: iptables -L -n.

# iptables -V
#iptables v1.4.21

    # iptables -nvL
    Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 798 packets, 89141 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
76260   14M f2b-SSH    tcp  --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0            tcp dpt:22
69823   14M f2b-sshd   tcp  --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0            multiport dports 22

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 725 packets, 113K bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

Chain INPUT_ZONES (0 references)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

Chain INPUT_ZONES_SOURCE (0 references)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

Chain INPUT_direct (0 references)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

Chain f2b-SSH (1 references)
pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
       17  1060 REJECT     all  --  *      *       111.222.333.444      0.0.0.0/0            reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
    ...
    ...

But now I want to open a specific port for an application and I can't use firewall-cmd. So what can I do?

• P.S: The reason I changed my firewall client to firewalld and disabled iptables service was that fail2ban didn't work with iptables. It just sat there and did nothing.But that's another problem!

Answer 1

The problem is you're using OpenVZ. OpenVZ is running a 2.6 kernel which does not have the capabilities that the firewalld daemon relies upon and all of the systemd changes are backported into sysvinit for OpenVZ.