Extension Scripts and Default Actions
Tom
Eastep
2001-2006
Thomas M. Eastep
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document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version
1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with
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Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled
GNU Free Documentation
License
.
This article applies to Shorewall 3.0 and
later. If you are running a version of Shorewall earlier than Shorewall
3.0.0 then please see the documentation for that
release.
Extension scripts are user-provided scripts that are invoked at
various points during firewall start, restart, stop and clear. The scripts
are placed in /etc/shorewall and are processed using the Bourne shell
source
mechanism.
Be sure that you actually need to use an extension script to do
what you want. Shorewall has a wide range of features that cover most
requirements.
DO NOT SIMPLY COPY RULES THAT YOU FIND ON THE NET INTO AN
EXTENSION SCRIPT AND EXPECT THEM TO WORK AND TO NOT BREAK SHOREWALL.
TO USE SHOREWALL EXTENSION SCRIPTS YOU MUST KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING
WITH RESPECT TO iptables/Netfilter AND SHOREWALL.
The following scripts can be supplied:
init -- invoked early in shorewall start
and
shorewall restart
initdone -- invoked after Shorewall has flushed all existing rules
but before any rules have been added to the builtin chains.
start -- invoked after the firewall has been started or
restarted.
started -- invoked as a first step when the firewall is being
started
stop -- invoked as a first step when the firewall is being
stopped.
stopped -- invoked after the firewall has been stopped.
clear -- invoked after the firewall has been cleared.
refresh -- invoked while the firewall is being refreshed but
before the blacklst chains have been rebuilt.
continue -- invoked to allow you to insert special rules to allow
traffic while Shorewall is [re]starting. Any rules added in this script
should be deleted in your start script. This script
is invoked earlier in the [re]start process than is the
initdone script described above.
maclog -- (Added in Shorewall version 3.2.5) invoked while mac
filtering rules are being created. It is invoked once for each interface
having 'maclist' specified and it is invoked just before the logging
rule is added to the current chain (the name of that chain will be in
$CHAIN).
If your version of Shorewall doesn't have the
file that you want to use from the above list, you can simply create the
file yourself. You can also supply a script with the same name as
any of the filter chains in the firewall and the script will be invoked
after the /etc/shorewall/rules file has been processed but before the
/etc/shorewall/policy file has been processed.
There are a couple of special considerations for commands in extension
scripts:
When you want to run iptables, use the command
run_iptables instead. run_iptables
will run the iptables utility passing the arguments to
run_iptables and if the command fails, the firewall
will be stopped.
If you wish to generate a log message, use log_rule_limit. Parameters are:
Log Level
Chain to insert the rule into
Chain name to display in the message (this can be different
from the preceding argument — see the Port Knocking article for an example
of how to use this).
Disposition to report in the message (ACCEPT, DROP,
etc)
Rate Limit (if passed as "" then $LOGLIMIT is assumed — see
the LOGLIMIT option in /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf)
Log Tag ("" if none)
Command (-A or -I for append or insert).
The remaining arguments are passed "as is" to iptables
Many of the extension scripts get executed for both the shorewall
start and shorewall restart commands. You can determine which command is
being executed using the contents of $COMMAND.
if [ $COMMAND = start ]; then
...
Shorewall versions 3.0.x and earlier
only. If you run commands other than
iptables that must be re-run in order to restore the
firewall to its current state then you must save the commands to the
restore file. The restore file is a temporary
file in /var/lib/shorewall that
will be renamed /var/lib/shorewall/restore-base at
the successful completion of the Shorewall command. The
shorewall save command combines
/var/lib/shorewall/restore-base with the output of
iptables-save to produce the
/var/lib/shorewall/restore script.
Here are three functions that are useful when running commands
other than iptables:
save_command() -- saves the
passed command to the restore file.
Example: save_command echo Operation Complete
That command would simply write "echo Operation Complete" to
the restore file.
run_and_save_command() --
saves the passed command to the restore file then executes it. The
return value is the exit status of the command. Example:
run_and_save_command "echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all"
Note that as in this example, when the command involves file
redirection then the entire command must be enclosed in quotes. This
applies to all of the functions described here.
ensure_and_save_command() --
runs the passed command. If the command fails, the firewall is
restored to it's prior saved state and the operation is terminated.
If the command succeeds, the command is written to the restore
file
Shorewall version 3.2.0 and later
only. When compiling your firewall configuration, Shorewall
copies most extension scripts directly into the "compiled" program where
they are executed in-line during processing of the start, restart and
restore commands. When copying a script, Shorewall indents the script to
match the surrounding code; if you have 'awk' installed on the system
where the configuration is being compiled, Shorewall can correctly
handle line continuation in your script ("\" as the last character on a
line). If you do not have awk, you may not use line continuation in your
scripts. Also beware that quoted strings continued from one line to
another will have extra whitespace inserted as a result of
indentation.
The /etc/shorewall/params script is
processed during compilation and
copied into the compiled script as just described. So shell variables
set during compilation may be used in Shorewall configuration files
while those set at run-time are available to your other extension
scripts. Note that if you assign dynamic values to variables, there is
no guarantee that the value calculated at compile time will be the
same as what is calculated at run time. This is particularly true if
you use the shorewall compile command to compile a
program then run that program at a later time.
Extension scripts associated with a particular chain or action
are not copied into the compiled script; they are rather processed
directly by the compiler using the Bourne shell "." command. For
example, if A is an action then if /etc/shorewall/A exists then it will be
processed by the compiler rather than copied into the compiled
script.
You can also define a default action to be
performed immediately before a policy of ACCEPT, DROP or REJECT is applied.
Separate actions can be assigned to each
policy type so for example you can have a different default action for DROP
and REJECT policies. The most common usage of default actions is to silently
drop traffic that you don't wish to have logged by the policy.
As released, Shorewall defines a number of actions which are cataloged
in the /usr/share/shorewall/actions.std file. That file
is processed before /etc/shorewall/actions. Among the entries in
/usr/share/shorewall/actions.std are:
Drop:DROP
Reject:REJECT
So the action named Drop
is performed immediately
before DROP policies are applied and the action called Reject
is performed before REJECT policies are applied. These actions are defined
in the files /usr/share/shorewall/action.Drop and
/usr/share/shorewall/action.Reject respectively.
You can override these defaults with entries in your
/etc/shorewall/actions file. For example, if that file were to contain
MyDrop:DROP
then the default action for DROP policies would
become MyDrop
.
One final note. The chain created to perform an action has the same
name as the action. You can use an extension script by that name to add
rules to the action's chain in the same way as you can any other chain. So
if you create the new action Dagger
and define it in
/etc/shorewall/action.Dagger, you can also have an
extension script named /etc/shorewall/Dagger that can
add rules to the Dagger
chain that can't be created using
/etc/shorewall/action.Dagger.