How to enable ip masquerading/forwarding on CentOS 7

What? I google searched and this was the first result. I wanted to add a comment here on my “opinion” of how to implement this.

Why? So when reading the file /etc/sysctl.conf, it seems we have a few options (none are wrong because they all work) listed out. One area not mentioned, which in my opinion, I like more, is where it says:

To override
# only specific settings, add a file with a lexically later
# name in /etc/sysctl.d/ and put new settings there.

How? So after running sudo -s I then ran echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1" > /etc/sysctl.d/100-sysctl.conf. Why did I choose to name the file 100-sysctl.conf? Because there was a file in there that was 99-sysctl.conf

Verify You can run sudo sysctl -a | grep ip_forward or without sudo sysctl -a | grep ip_forward to verify it’s there. I would suggest doing a sudo reboot now and then running this sysctl command to verify the setting sticks after reboot.

Future State : Started a gist for this that covers ipv6 too : https://gist.github.com/josephdrane/cd6cf46d32c3932c9fb663b4cac105a6 Would love to have contributors on there or stars if you found this useful! Thanks!

To enable IP forwarding, uncomment this line in /etc/sysctl.conf

$ cat /etc/sysctl.conf | grep ip_forward
#net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

/usr/lib/… path usually for packages,daemon,services that you install or exist when you installed your os . Relevant config also may exist in /etc/…

/etc/… path is the place where you as a administrator should be configuring

for ip forwarding you should not be touching any file on /usr/lib/… same goes for firewalld, systemd for them /etc/firewalld/… or /etc/systemd/…

you can directly edit the good ol /etc/sysctl.conf or preferably /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf

the 99-sysctl.conf is symbolic link to the /etc/sysctl.conf

upon reboot or sysctl -p allows the systemd-sysctl service read the link/nonlink files if they exist if not read sysctl.conf and make necessary entry in /usr/lib/… and/or load your defined or other variables that there exist and ofcourse giving you ip forwarding for this scenario.

in simple al custom goes in /etc/

you should not be editing /usr/lib/sysctl.d/50-default.conf

you can edit /etc/sysctl.conf or /etc/sysctl.d/ 99-sysctl.conf or /etc/sysctl.d/<numberdigits and nameappropriatelyaccordingtoyourpurpose>.conf

t the last one is user created it dont have to be a linked file. systemd-sysctl will load the values