What happens if I disable the loopback device using ifconfig?

I found out that I can disable my interfaces using

$ sudo ifconfig lo down

I want to know what happens if I disable my loopback interface forever. It's disabled now and nothing has changed. Are there any disadvantages that I can't see now?

3

1 Answer

It is used by various local services which will fail when lo is down. Many local service make use of a Unix socket and of course those will continue to work. Those using a TCP socket, however...

Here is a picture of my firewall and we can see that there are quite a few packets going through....

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