Some questions about ipset-country HOT 2 CLOSED

1. Why require to use iptables-restore? furthermore I can only find that iptables-save is used to grep rules, when is the rules.v{4/6} created / written to? - For myself I want to disable the restore function as I rely on other scripts to restore rules but want to understand this before I proceed.

Nothing is written to any files.
Restore is optional, to disable set RESTORE=0

2. When updating does it only add new IP blocks or does it also remove anything that's not in the new downloaded file? - this is not easily clear from the ipset command. - Also wouldn't it be more efficient to replace the rule with the new file rather then checking for each ipblock?

Iirc it only adds. You could ipset flush a set first if you want.
Afaik it cannot use zone files directly, entries need to get added to a set, they are stored as hashes.

from ipset-country.

Restore is optional, to disable set RESTORE=0

Indeed, however in the last IF statement in func_vars (if [ ! -f "$rulesfile" ]; then) it fails if a rules file does not exist.
I will push a fix for this (if RESTORE = 0) you can accept if you want.

Iirc it only adds. You could ipset flush a set first if you want.
Afaik it cannot use zone files directly, entries need to get added to a set, they are stored as hashes.

If it only adds the updates will never remove removed IP's
I will add a param to enable ipset flush

from ipset-country.