This is because you're editing a file not being used by the firewall until told to do so. This worked for me updating the configuration files without disrupting the firewall. It's a bit of a work around but its tested and works with 14.04. Restart UFW ufw disable & ufw enable & ufw status Save your changes :wqĬopy the temp directory while also replacing the Original UFW files with the files in the temp directory using the update flag cp -u /home//temp_dir/* /etc/ufw/ Make your rules by directly adding them to the temp ufw.conf file. Note: The default values in ufw.conf consists of comments plus these 2 lines: ENABLED=no Make a temp directory sudo mkdir /home//temp_dirĬopy /etc/ufw/ directory to your temp directory cp /etc/ufw/* /home//temp_dir/Įdit the ufw.conf and other config files in your temp directory accordingly to your prefered design editing directly to the configuration file vi /home//temp_dir/ufw.conf This is a process where you would be manually configuring the conf file directly instead of using various commands to edit the conf file. I did this so I could edit the ufw.conf file directly all day remotely over ssh without interfering with the active ufw.conf, just cause.

Original ufw flag