Hi,

I'm initializing my iptables rules via /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/iptables, using iptables-restore. This works fine, but I'm a bit worried about what would happen, if that script failed for some reason (maybe the saved iptables file is corrupt or whatever).

In case the script failed, I'd like to:

• Start up my network interfaces without any iptables rules
• Start up OpenSSH server
• But not any other services like web server, ... (and maybe stop running instances)

Is there a good canonical way to do that? Going into a lower init stage? - I haven't done that in a long time, and I think a lot about init has changed in recent years (?) - which stage should I drop to, and would the OpenSSH server and my network interfaces still run?

Thanks

Chris

(On Debian Lenny)