Tom Eastep 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Thomas M. Eastep Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License. This document describes the Multi-ISP facility in Shorewall 4.3.5 and later. If you are running an earlier release, please see the documentation for that release. Reading just Shorewall documentation is probably not going to give you enough background to use this material. Shorewall may make iptables easy but the Shorewall team doesn't have the resources to be able to spoon-feed Linux policy routing to you (please remember that the user's manual for a tractor doesn't teach you to grow corn either). You will likely need to refer to the following additional information: The LARTC HOWTO: http://www.lartc.org Output of man ip Output of ip route help and ip rule help

Shorewall includes limited support for multiple Internet connections. Limitations of this support are as follows: It utilizes static routing configuration. If there is a change in the routing topopogy, Shorewall must be restarted. The routing changes are made and the route cache is purged when Shorewall is started and when Shorewall is restarted (unless you specify the "-n" option to shorewall restart). Ideally, restarting the packet filter should have no effect on routing. For most routing applications, Quagga is a better solution although it requires that your ISPs offer routing protocol support.

Let's assume that a firewall is connected via two separate Ethernet interfaces to two different ISPs. While we describe a setup using different ISPs in this article, the facility also works with two uplinks from the same ISP. as in the following diagram. eth0 connects to ISP1. The IP address of eth0 is 206.124.146.176 and the ISP's gateway router has IP address 206.124.146.254. eth1 connects to ISP 2. The IP address of eth1 is 130.252.99.27 and the ISP's gateway router has IP address 130.252.99.254. eth2 connects to the local LAN. Its IP configuration is not relevant to this discussion. Each of these providers is described in an entry in the file /etc/shorewall/providers. Entries in /etc/shorewall/providers can specify that outgoing connections are to be load-balanced between the two ISPs. Entries in /etc/shorewall/tcrules and /etc/shorewall/route_rules can be used to direct particular outgoing connections to one ISP or the other. Use of /etc/shorewall/tcrules is not required for /etc/shorewall/providers to work, but in most cases, you must select a unique MARK value for each provider so Shorewall can set up the correct marking rules for you. When you use the track option in /etc/shorewall/providers, connections from the Internet are automatically routed back out of the correct interface and through the correct ISP gateway. This works whether the connection is handled by the firewall itself or if it is routed or port-forwarded to a system behind the firewall. Shorewall will set up the routing and will update the /etc/iproute2/rt_tables to include the table names and numbers of the tables that it adds. This feature uses packet marking to control the routing. As a consequence, there are some restrictions concerning entries in /etc/shorewall/tcrules: Packet marking for traffic control purposes may not be done in the PREROUTING table for connections involving providers with 'track' specified (see below). You may not use the SAVE or RESTORE options unless you also set HIGH_ROUTE_MARKS=Yes in /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf. You may not use connection marking unless you also set HIGH_ROUTE_MARKS=Yes in /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf. The /etc/shorewall/providers file can also be used in other routing scenarios. See the Squid documentation for an example.

Entries in this file have the following columns. As in all Shorewall configuration files, enter "-" in a column if you don't want to enter any value. NAME The provider name. Must begin with a letter and consist of letters and digits. The provider name becomes the name of the generated routing table for this provider. NUMBER A number between 1 and 252. This becomes the routing table number for the generated table for this provider. MARK A mark value used in your /etc/shorewall/tcrules file to direct packets to this provider. Shorewall will also mark connections that have seen input from this provider with this value and will restore the packet mark in the PREROUTING CHAIN. Mark values must be in the range 1-255. Alternatively, you may set HIGH_ROUTE_MARKS=Yes in /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf. This allows you to: Use connection marks for traffic shaping, provided that you assign those marks in the FORWARD chain. Use mark values > 255 for provider marks in this column. These mark values must be a multiple of 256 in the range 256-65280 (hex equivalent 0x100 - 0xFF00 with the low-order 8 bits being zero); or Set WIDE_TC_MARKS=Yes in shorewall.conf (5) and use mark values in the range 0x10000 - 0xFF0000 with the low-order 16 bits being zero. This column may be omitted if you don´t use packet marking to direct connections to a particular provider and you don´t specify track in the OPTIONS column. DUPLICATE Gives the name or number of a routing table to duplicate. May be 'main' or the name or number of a previously declared provider. For most applications, you want to specify 'main' here. This field should be be specified as '-' when USE_DEFAULT_RT=Yes in shorewall.conf INTERFACE The name of the interface to the provider. Where multiple providers share the same interface, you must follow the name of the interface by a colon (":") and the IP address assigned by this provider (e.g., eth0:206.124.146.176). See below for additional considerations. The interface must have been previously defined in shorewall-interfaces (5). In general, that interface should not have the proxyarp option specified unless loose is given in the OPTIONS column of this entry. GATEWAY The IP address of the provider's Gateway router. You can enter detect here and Shorewall will attempt to automatically determine the gateway IP address. Hint: "detect" is appropriate for use in cases where the interface named in the INTERFACE column is dynamically configured via DHCP etc. Be sure, however, that you don't have stale dhcp client state files in /var/lib/dhcpcd or /var/lib/dhclient-*.lease because Shorewall may try to use those stale files to determine the gateway address. The GATEWAY may be omitted (enter '-') for point-to-point links. OPTIONS A comma-separated list from the following: track Beginning with Shorwall 4.3.3, track defaults to the setting of the TRACK_PROVIDERS option in shorewall.conf (5). To disable this option when you have specified TRACK_PROVIDERS=Yes, you must specify notrack (see below). If specified, connections FROM this interface are to be tracked so that responses may be routed back out this same interface. You want to specify 'track' if Internet hosts will be connecting to local servers through this provider. Any time that you specify 'track', you will normally want to also specify 'balance' (see below). 'track' will also ensure that outgoing connections remain stay anchored to a single provider and don't try to switch providers when route cache entries expire. Use of this feature requires that your kernel and iptables include CONNMARK target and connmark match support (Warning: Until recently, standard Debian and Ubuntu kernels lacked that support. Both Lenny and Jaunty do have the proper support). If you are running a version of Shorewall earlier than 4.4.3 and are using /etc/shorewall/providers because you have multiple Internet connections, we recommend that you specify track even if you don't need it. It helps maintain long-term connections in which there are significant periods with no traffic. balance The providers that have balance specified will get outbound traffic load-balanced among them. Balancing will not be perfect, as it is route based, and routes are cached. This means that routes to often-used sites will always be over the same provider. By default, each provider is given the same weight (1) . You can change the weight of a given provider by following balance with "=" and the desired weight (e.g., balance=2). The weights reflect the relative bandwidth of the providers connections and should be small numbers since the kernel actually creates additional default routes for each weight increment. If you are using /etc/shorewall/providers because you have multiple Internet connections, we recommend that you specify balance even if you don't need it. You can still use entries in /etc/shorewall/tcrules and /etc/shorewall/route_rules to force all traffic to one provider or another. If you don't heed this advice then please read and follow the advice in FAQ 57 and FAQ 58. If you specify balance and still find that all traffic is going out through only one provider, you may need to install a kernel built with CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_MULTIPATH_CACHED=n. Several users have reported that this change has corrected similar problems. The SuSE 10.0 kernel is subject to this problem, and a kernel oops may result in this circumstance. SUSE 10.1 and SLES 10 have CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_MULTIPATH_CACHED=n set by default. The source of the problem seems to be an incompatibility between the LARTC patches and CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_MULTIPATH_CACHED. loose Do not generate routing rules that force traffic whose source IP is an address of the INTERFACE to be routed to this provider. Useful for defining providers that are to be used only when the appropriate packet mark is applied. Shorewall makes no attempt to consolidate the routing rules added when loose is not specified. So, if you have multiple IP addresses on a provider interface, you may be able to replace the rules that Shorewall generates with one or two rules in /etc/shorewall/route_rules. In that case, you can specify loose to suppress Shorewall's rule generation. See the example below. notrack Added in Shorewall 4.4.3. This option turns off the track option. optional This option is deprecated in favor of the optional interface option. That option performs the same function. Shorewall will determine if this interface is up and has a configured IP address. If it is not, a warning is issued and this provider is not configured. optional is designed to detect interface states that will cause shorewall start or shorewall restart to fail; just because an interface is in a state that Shorewall can [re]start without error doesn't mean that traffic can actually be sent through the interface. You can supply an 'isusable' extension script to extend Shorewall's interface state detection. See also the Gateway Monitoring and Failover section below. src=source-address Specifies the source address to use when routing to this provider and none is known (the local client has bound to the 0 address). May not be specified when an address is given in the INTERFACE column. If this option is not used, Shorewall substitutes the primary IP address on the interface named in the INTERFACE column. mtu=number Specifies the MTU when forwarding through this provider. If not given, the MTU of the interface named in the INTERFACE column is assumed. fallback[=weight] Indicates that a default route through the provider should be added to the default routing table (table 253). If a weight is given, a balanced route is added with the weight of this provider equal to the specified weight. If the option is given without a weight, a separate default route is added through the provider's gateway; the route has a metric equal to the provider's NUMBER. The option is ignored with a warning message if USE_DEFAULT_RT=Yes in shorewall.conf. For those of you who are confused between track and balance: track governs incoming connections (but is also useful for binding long-running connections to the same interface). balance governs outgoing connections. COPY A comma-separated list of interface names. Wildcards specified using an asterisk ("*") are permitted (e.g., tun* ). When you specify an existing table in the DUPLICATE column, Shorewall copies all routes through the interface specified in the INTERFACE column plus the interfaces listed in this column. Normally, you will list all interfaces on your firewall in this column except those Internet interfaces specified in the INTERFACE column of entries in this file.

Adding another entry in the providers file simply creates an alternate routing table for you (see the LARTC Howto). The table will usually contain two routes: A host route to the specified GATEWAY through the specified INTERFACE. A default route through the GATEWAY. Note that the first route is omitted if "-" is specified as the GATEWAY; in that case, the default route does not specify a gateway (point-to-point link). If the DUPLICATE column is non-empty, then routes from the table named in that column are copied into the new table. By default, all routes (except default routes) are copied. The set of routes copied can be restricted using the COPY column which lists the interfaces whose routes you want copied. You will generally want to include all local interfaces in this list. You should exclude the loopback interface (lo) and any interfaces that do not have an IP configuration. You should also omit interfaces like tun interfaces that are created dynamically. Traffic to networks handled by those interfaces should be routed through the main table using entries in /etc/shorewall/route_rules (see Example 2 below) or by using USE_DEFAULT_RT=Yes. In addition: Unless loose is specified, an ip rule is generated for each IP address on the INTERFACE that routes traffic from that address through the associated routing table. If you specify track, then connections which have had at least one packet arrive on the interface listed in the INTERFACE column have their connection mark set to the value in the MARK column. In the PREROUTING chain, packets with a connection mark have their packet mark set to the value of the associated connection mark; packets marked in this way bypass any prerouting rules that you create in /etc/shorewall/tcrules. This ensures that packets associated with connections from outside are always routed out of the correct interface. If you specify balance, then Shorewall will replace the 'default' route with weight 100 in the 'main' routing table with a load-balancing route among those gateways where balance was specified. So if you configure default routes, be sure that their weight is less than 100 or the route added by Shorewall will not be used. That's all that these entries do. You still have to follow the principle stated in the Shorewall Routing documentation: Routing determines where packets are to be sent. Once routing determines where the packet is to go, the firewall (Shorewall) determines if the packet is allowed to go there and controls rewriting of the SOURCE IP address (SNAT/MASQUERADE). The bottom line is that if you want traffic to go out through a particular provider then you must mark that traffic with the provider's MARK value in /etc/shorewall/tcrules and you must do that marking in the PREROUTING chain; or, you must provide the appropriate rules in /etc/shorewall/route_rules.

If you masquerade a local network, you will need to add masquerade rules for both external interfaces. Referring to the diagram above, if each of the interfaces has only a single IP address and you have no systems with public IP addresses behind your firewall, then I suggest the following simple entries: #INTERFACE SOURCE ADDRESS eth0 0.0.0.0/0 206.124.146.176 eth1 0.0.0.0/0 130.252.99.27 If you have a public subnet (for example 206.124.146.176/30) behind your firewall, then use exclusion: #INTERFACE SOURCE ADDRESS eth0 !206.124.146.176/29 206.124.146.176 eth1 0.0.0.0/0 130.252.99.27 Note that exclusion is only used on the interface corresponding to internal subnetwork. If you have multiple IP addresses on one of your interfaces, you can use a similar technique -- simplY exclude the smallest network that contains all of those addresses from being masqueraded. Entries in /etc/shorewall/masq have no effect on which ISP a particular connection will be sent through. That is rather the purpose of entries in /etc/shorewall/tcrules and /etc/shorewall/route_rules.

One problem that often arises with Multi-ISP configuration is 'Martians'. If your Internet interfaces are configured with the routefilter option in /etc/shorewall/interfaces (remember that if you set that option, you should also select logmartians), then things may not work correctly and you will see messages like this: Feb 9 17:23:45 gw.ilinx kernel: martian source 206.124.146.176 from 64.86.88.116, on dev eth1 Feb 9 17:23:45 gw.ilinx kernel: ll header: 00:a0:24:2a:1f:72:00:13:5f:07:97:05:08:00 The above message is somewhat awkwardly phrased. The source IP in this incoming packet was 64.86.88.116 and the destination IP address was 206.124.146.176. Another gotcha is that the incoming packet has already had the destination IP address changed for DNAT or because the original outgoing connection was altered by an entry in /etc/shorewall/masq (SNAT or Masquerade). So the destination IP address (206.124.146.176) may not have been the destination IP address in the packet as it was initially received. There a couple of common causes for these problems: You have connected both of your external interfaces to the same hub/switch. Connecting multiple firewall interfaces to a common hub or switch is always a bad idea that will result in hard-to-diagnose problems. You are specifying both the loose and balance options on your provider(s). This can cause individual connections to ping-pong back and forth between the interfaces which is almost guaranteed to cause problems. You are redirecting traffic from the firewall system out of one interface or the other using packet marking in your /etc/shorewall/tcrules file. A better approach is to configure the application to use the appropriate local IP address (the IP address of the interface that you want the application to use). See below. If all else fails, remove the routefilter option from your external interfaces. If you do this, you may wish to add rules to log and drop packets from the Internet that have source addresses in your local networks. For example, if the local LAN in the above diagram is 192.168.1.0/24, then you would add this rule: #ACTION SOURCE DEST DROP:info net:192.168.1.0/24 all Be sure the above rule is added before any other rules with net in the SOURCE column.

The configuration in the figure at the top of this section would be specified in /etc/shorewall/providers as follows. #NAME NUMBER MARK DUPLICATE INTERFACE GATEWAY OPTIONS COPY ISP1 1 1 main eth0 206.124.146.254 track,balance eth2 ISP2 2 2 main eth1 130.252.99.254 track,balance eth2 Other configuration files go something like this: /etc/shorewall/interfaces: #ZONE INTERFACE BROADCAST OPTIONS net eth0 detect … net eth1 detect … /etc/shorewall/policy: #SOURCE DESTINATION POLICY LIMIT:BURST net net DROP /etc/shorewall/masq: #INTERFACE SOURCE ADDRESS eth0 0.0.0.0/0 206.124.146.176 eth1 0.0.0.0/0 130.252.99.27

This continues the example in the preceding section. Now suppose that you want to route all outgoing SMTP traffic from your local network through ISP 2. You would make this entry in /etc/shorewall/tcrules (and if you are running a version of Shorewall earlier than 3.0.0, you would set TC_ENABLED=Yes in /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf). #MARK SOURCE DEST PROTO PORT(S) CLIENT USER TEST # PORT(S) 2:P <local network> 0.0.0.0/0 tcp 25 Note that traffic from the firewall itself must be handled in a different rule: #MARK SOURCE DEST PROTO PORT(S) CLIENT USER TEST # PORT(S) 2 $FW 0.0.0.0/0 tcp 25

Shorewall provides considerable flexibility for port forwarding in a multi-ISP environment. Normal port forwarding rules such as the following will forward from both providers. /etc/shorewall/rules: #ACTION SOURCE DEST PROTO DEST PORT(S) SOURCE ORIGINAL # PORTS(S) DEST DNAT net loc:192.168.1.3 tcp 25 Continuing the above example, to forward only connection requests from ISP 1, you can either: Qualify the SOURCE by ISP 1's interface: #ACTION SOURCE DEST PROTO DEST PORT(S) SOURCE ORIGINAL # PORTS(S) DEST DNAT net:eth0 loc:192.168.1.3 tcp 25 or Specify the IP address of ISP 1 in the ORIGINAL DEST column: #ACTION SOURCE DEST PROTO DEST PORT(S) SOURCE ORIGINAL # PORTS(S) DEST DNAT net loc:192.168.1.3 tcp 25 - 206.124.146.176

When there are more than two providers, you need to extend the two-provider case in the expected way: For each external address, you need an entry in /etc/shorewall/masq to handle the case where a connection using that address as the SOURCE is sent out of the interfaces other than the one that the address is configured on. For each external interface, you need to add an entry to /etc/shorewall/masq. If we extend the above example to add eth3 with IP address 16.105.78.4 with gateway 16.105.78.254, then: /etc/shorewall/providers:#NAME NUMBER MARK DUPLICATE INTERFACE GATEWAY OPTIONS COPY ISP1 1 1 main eth0 206.124.146.254 track,balance eth2 ISP2 2 2 main eth1 130.252.99.254 track,balance eth2 ISP3 3 3 main eth3 16.105.78.254 track,balance eth2 /etc/shorewall/masq:#INTERFACE SUBNET ADDRESS eth0 0.0.0.0/0 206.124.146.176 eth1 0.0.0.0/0 130.252.99.27 eth3 0.0.0.0/0 16.105.78.4

As noted above, separate entries in /etc/shorewall/tcrules are required for traffic originating from the firewall. Experience has shown that in some cases, problems occur with applications running on the firewall itself. This is especially true when you have specified routefilter on your external interfaces in /etc/shorewall/interfaces (see above). When this happens, it is suggested that you have the application use specific local IP addresses rather than 0. Examples: Squid: In squid.conf, set tcp_outgoing_address to the IP address of the interface that you want Squid to use. In OpenVPN, set local (--local on the command line) to the IP address that you want the server to receive connections on. Note that some traffic originating on the firewall doesn't have a SOURCE IP address before routing. At least one Shorewall user reports that an entry in /etc/shorewall/route_rules with 'lo' in the SOURCE column seems to be the most reliable way to direct such traffic to a particular ISP.

The route_rules file allows assigning certain traffic to a particular provider just as entries in the tcrules file. The difference between the two files is that entries in route_rules are independent of Netfilter.

Routing rules are maintained by the Linux kernel and can be displayed using the ip rule ls command. When routing a packet, the rules are processed in turn until the packet is successfully routed. gateway:~ # ip rule ls 0: from all lookup local <=== Local (to the firewall) IP addresses 10001: from all fwmark 0x1 lookup Blarg <=== This and the next rule are generated by the 10002: from all fwmark 0x2 lookup Comcast 'MARK' values in /etc/shorewall/providers. 20000: from 206.124.146.176 lookup Blarg <=== This and the next rule are generated unless 20256: from 24.12.22.33 lookup Comcast 'loose' is specified; based in the output of 'ip addr ls' 32766: from all lookup main <=== This is the routing table shown by 'iproute -n' 32767: from all lookup default <=== This table is usually empty gateway:~ # In the above example, there are two providers: Blarg and Comcast with MARK 1 going to Blarg and mark 2 going to Comcast.

Columns in the file are: SOURCE (Optional) An ip address (network or host) that matches the source IP address in a packet. May also be specified as an interface name optionally followed by ":" and an address. If the device 'lo' is specified, the packet must originate from the firewall itself. DEST (Optional) An ip address (network or host) that matches the destination IP address in a packet. If you choose to omit either SOURCE or DEST, place "-" in that column. Note that you may not omit both SOURCE and DEST. PROVIDER The provider to route the traffic through. May be expressed either as the provider name or the provider number. PRIORITY The rule's priority which determines the order in which the rules are processed. 1000-1999 Before Shorewall-generated 'MARK' rules 11000- 11999 After 'MARK' rules but before Shorewall-generated rules for ISP interfaces. 26000-26999 After ISP interface rules but before 'default' rule. Rules with equal priority are applied in the order in which they appear in the file.

For those VPN types that use routing to direct traffic to remote VPN clients (including but not limited to OpenVPN in routed mode and PPTP), the VPN software adds a host route to the main table for each VPN client. The best approach is to use USE_DEFAULT_RT=Yes as described below. If that isn't possible, you must add a routing rule in the 1000-1999 range to specify the main table for traffic addressed to those clients. See Example 2 below. If you have an IPSEC gateway on your firewall, be sure to arrange for ESP packets to be routed out of the same interface that you have configured your keying daemon to use.

Example 1: You want all traffic entering the firewall on eth1 to be routed through Comcast. #SOURCE DEST PROVIDER PRIORITY eth1 - Comcast 1000 With this entry, the output of ip rule ls would be as follows. gateway:~ # ip rule ls 0: from all lookup local 1000: from all iif eth1 lookup Comcast 10001: from all fwmark 0x1 lookup Blarg 10002: from all fwmark 0x2 lookup Comcast 20000: from 206.124.146.176 lookup Blarg 20256: from 24.12.22.33 lookup Comcast 32766: from all lookup main 32767: from all lookup default gateway:~ #Note that because we used a priority of 1000, the test for eth1 is inserted before the fwmark tests. Example 2: You use OpenVPN (routed setup w/tunX) in combination with multiple providers. In this case you have to set up a rule to ensure that the OpenVPN traffic is routed back through the tunX interface(s) rather than through any of the providers. 10.8.0.0/24 is the subnet chosen in your OpenVPN configuration (server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0). #SOURCE DEST PROVIDER PRIORITY - 10.8.0.0/24 main 1000

USE_DEFAULT_RT is an option in shorewall.conf (5). One of the drawbacks of the Multi-ISP support as described in the preceding sections is that changes to the main table made by applications are not added to the individual provider tables. This makes route rules such as described in one of the examples above necessary. USE_DEFAULT_RT=Yes works around that problem by passing packets through the main table first rather than last. This has a number of implications: Both the DUPLICATE and the COPY columns in the providers file must remain empty or contain "-". The individual provider routing tables generated when USE_DEFAULT_RT=Yes contain only a host route to the gateway and a default route via the gateway. The balance option is assumed for all interfaces that do not have the loose option. When you want both balance and loose, both must be specified. The default route generated by Shorewall is added to the default routing table (253) rather than to the main routing table (254). Packets are sent through the main routing table by a routing rule with priority 999. The priority range 1-998 may be used for inserting rules that bypass the main table. You should disable all default route management outside of Shorewall. If a default route is inadvertently added to the main table while Shorewall is started, then all policy routing will stop working except for those routing rules in the priority range 1-998. For ppp interfaces, the GATEWAY may remain unspecified ("-"). For those interfaces managed by dhcpcd or dhclient, you may specify 'detect' in the GATEWAY column; Shorewall will use the dhcp client's database to determine the gateway IP address. All other interfaces must have a GATEWAY specified explicitly. Although 'balance' is automatically assumed when USE_DEFAULT_RT=Yes, you can easily cause all traffic to use one provider except when you explicitly direct it to use the other provider via shorewall-route_rules (5) or shorewall-tcrules (5). Example (send all traffic through the 'shorewall' provider unless otherwise directed). /etc/shorewall/providers:#NAME NUMBER MARK DUPLICATE INTERFACE GATEWAY OPTIONS linksys 1 1 - wlan0 172.20.1.1 track,balance=1,optional shorewall 2 2 - eth0 192.168.1.254 track,balance=2,optional/etc/shorewall/route_rules:#SOURCE DEST PROVIDER PRIORITY - - shorewall 11999

There are a couple of options available for monitoring the status of provider links and taking action when a failure occurs. Both of these options assume that each provider has a unique nexthop gateway; if two or more providers use the same gateway router then neither option is suitable. You specify the optional option in /etc/shorewall/interfaces: #ZONE INTERFACE BROADCAST OPTIONS net eth0 detect optional net eth1 detect optional

Shorewall includes a sample monitoring script swping. The swping file is available in the main directory contained in the Shorewall-common tarball and is included in the Shorewall-common documentation directory in the Shorewall-common RPM. The script is inspired by Angsuman Chakraborty's gwping script. These samples are offered as is — they work for me but I don't make any claim that they will work for anyone else. But if you have a need for automated link monitoring, they offer you a place to start. The script should be copied to a directory on root's PATH such as /usr/local/sbin/. The script works by sending pings to target IP addresses through each external interface. These targets must not depend on any routes other than those that are present in the main routing table. That ensures that a route is available to the target even when the target's interface is not working and Shorewall has omitted it from the routing configuration. An interface is assumed to be up when a specified number (UP_COUNT) of consecutive ping operations succeed. Similarly, an interface is assumed to be down when a specified number (DOWN_COUNT) of consecutive ping operations fail. You can specify the interval between pings (PING_INTERVAL). The script monitors two interfaces but it is a trivial exercise to extend it to more than two. At the top are a number of variables to set: # # IP family -- 4 or 6 # FAMILY=4 # # The commands to run when the status of a line changes. Multiple commands may be specified # when separated by semicolons (";") # COMMAND= ... # # Interfaces to monitor -- you may use shell variables from your params file # IF1=eth0 IF2=eth1 # # Sites to Ping. Must depend only on routes in the 'main' routing table. If not specified, # the interface is assumed to be managed by dhcpcd and the script uses the gateway address # from /var/lib/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-${IFx}.info # TARGET1= TARGET2= # # How often to ping # PING_INTERVAL=5 # # Value for ping's -W option # PING_TIMEOUT=2 # # This many successive pings must succeed for the interface to be marked up when it is down # UP_COUNT=5 # # This many successive pings must fail for the interface to be marked down when it is up # DOWN_COUNT=2 If you leave COMMAND empty, the script sets its value automatically depending on whether Shorewall-lite is installed. When the status of an interface changes: For each interface, a file is placed in ${VARDIR} (normally /var/lib/shorewall) to record the status of the interface: either 0 (UP) or 1 (DOWN). The name of the file is interface.status where interface is the interface (e.g., eth0.status). A shorewall -f restart command is executed (shorewall-lite restart, if Shorewall-lite is installed). The contents of the main routing table are displayed. The .status files are intended to be used with the following /etc/shorewall/isusable script.local status=0 [ -f ${VARDIR}/${1}.status ] && status=$(cat ${VARDIR}/${1}.status) return $status The above script is installed in /etc/shorewall, beginning with Shorewall 4.3.11. Also included is a sample init script (swping.init) to start the monitoring daemon. Copy it to /etc/init.d/swping and use your distribution's SysV init tools to cause it to be run at boot. It works on OpenSuSE 11.0 -- YMMV. Modify the PROG and STATEDIR variables as needed. As an alternative to using the init script, you can add the following to /etc/shorewall/started: if [ "$COMMAND" = start ]; then killall -9 swping 2> /dev/null #be sure that there are none left running /usr/local/sbin/swping & fi and add this to /etc/shorewall/stopped. if [ "$COMMAND" = stop -o "$COMMAND" = clear ]; then killall -9 swping 2> /dev/null fi This simple script has a number of limitations: It only works on IPv4 or IPv6 but not both at once. So if you want to monitor both IPv4 and IPv6, you need to clone the script are run two copies; one for IPv4 and one for IPv6. It can only detect the gateway for interfaces managed by dhcpcd. It's method of determining whether an interface is up or down is crude. You will normally specify the default gateway for each provider as the sites to ping and being able to ping the default gateway is not a surefire indication that the provider is usable. The method of determining whether a site is up or down is also crude. Because of the crudeness of the algorithm, hysteresis may occur. It is tricky to configure a system such that the system works correctly when one of its providers is down unless you largely don't care which interface is used.

Link Status Monitor was written by Mika Ilmaranta <ilmis at nullnet.fi> and performs more sophisticated monitoring than the simple swping script described in the preceding section. Like many Open Source products, LSM is poorly documented. It's main configuration file is normally kept in /etc/lsm/lsm.conf, but the file's name is passed as an argument to the lsm program so you can name it anything you want. The sample lsm.conf included with the product shows some of the possibilities for configuration. One feature that is not mentioned in the sample is that an "include" directive is supported. This allows additional files to be sourced in from the main configuration file. LSM monitors the status of the links defined in its configuration file and runs a user-provided script when the status of a link changes. The script name is specified in the eventscript option in the configuration file. Key arguments to the script are as follows: $1 The state of the link ('up' or 'down') $2 The name of the connection as specified in the configuration file. $4 The name of the network interface associated with the connection. $5 The email address of the person specified to receive notifications. Specified in the warn_email option in the configuration file. It is the responsibility of the script to perform any action needed in reaction to the connection state change. The default script supplied with LSM composes an email and sends it to $5. I personally use LSM here at shorewall.net (configuration is described below). I have set things up so that: Shorewall [re]starts lsm during processing of the start and restore commands. I don't have Shorewall restart lsm during Shorewall restart because I restart Shorewall much more often than the average user is likely to do. Shorewall starts lsm because I have a dynamic IP address from one of my providers (Comcast); Shorewall detects the default gateway to that provider and creates a secondary configuration file (/etc/lsm/shorewall.conf) that contains the link configurations. That file is included by /etc/lsm/lsm.conf. The script run by LSM during state change (/etc/lsm/script) writes a ${VARDIR}/xxx.status file when the status of an interface changes. Those files are read by the isusable extension script (see below). Below are my relevant configuration files. These files only work with Shorewall-perl 4.4 Beta 2 and later. /etc/shorewall/isusable: local status=0 # # Read the status file (if any) created by /etc/lsm/script # [ -f ${VARDIR}/${1}.status ] && status=$(cat ${VARDIR}/${1}.status) return $status /etc/shorewall/lib.private: ############################################################################### # Create /etc/lsm/shorewall.conf # Remove the current interface status files # Start lsm ############################################################################### start_lsm() { # # Kill any existing lsm process(es) # killall lsm 2> /dev/null # # Create the Shorewall-specific part of the LSM configuration. This file is # included by /etc/lsm/lsm.conf # # Avvanta has a static gateway while Comcast's is dynamic # cat <<EOF > /etc/lsm/shorewall.conf connection { name=Avvanta checkip=206.124.146.254 device=$EXT_IF ttl=2 } connection { name=Comcast checkip=${ETH0_GATEWAY:-71.231.152.1} device=$COM_IF ttl=1 } EOF # # Since LSM assumes that interfaces start in the 'up' state, remove any # existing status files that might have an interface in the down state # rm -f /var/lib/shorewall/*.status # # Run LSM -- by default, it forks into the background # /usr/sbin/lsm /etc/lsm/lsm.conf >> /var/log/lsm } eth3 has a dynamic IP address so I need to use the Shorewall-detected gateway address ($ETH3_GATEWAY). I supply a default value to be used in the event that detection fails. /etc/shorewall/started: ################################################################################## # [re]start lsm if this is a 'start' command or if lsm isn't running ################################################################################## if [ "$COMMAND" = start -o -z "$(ps ax | grep 'lsm ' | grep -v 'grep ' )" ]; then start_lsm fi /etc/shorewall/restored: ################################################################################## # Start lsm if it isn't running ################################################################################## if [ -z "$(ps ax | grep 'lsm ' | grep -v 'grep ' )" ]; then start_lsm fi /etc/lsm/lsm.conf: # # Defaults for the connection entries # defaults { name=defaults checkip=127.0.0.1 eventscript=/etc/lsm/script max_packet_loss=20 max_successive_pkts_lost=7 min_packet_loss=5 min_successive_pkts_rcvd=10 interval_ms=2000 timeout_ms=2000 warn_email=teastep@shorewall.net check_arp=0 sourceip= ttl=0 } include /etc/lsm/shorewall.conf /etc/lsm/script#!/bin/sh # # (C) 2009 Mika Ilmaranta <ilmis@nullnet.fi> # (C) 2009 Tom Eastep <teastep@shorewall.net> # # License: GPLv2 # STATE=${1} NAME=${2} CHECKIP=${3} DEVICE=${4} WARN_EMAIL=${5} REPLIED=${6} WAITING=${7} TIMEOUT=${8} REPLY_LATE=${9} CONS_RCVD=${10} CONS_WAIT=${11} CONS_MISS=${12} AVG_RTT=${13} if [ -f /usr/share/shorewall-lite/lib.base ]; then VARDIR=/var/lib/shorewall-lite STATEDIR=/etc/shorewall-lite else VARDIR=/var/lib/shorewall STATEDIR=/etc/shorewall fi [ -f ${STATEDIR}/vardir ] && . ${STATEDIR}/vardir cat <<EOM | mail -s "${NAME} ${STATE}, DEV ${DEVICE}" ${WARN_EMAIL} Hi, Connection ${NAME} is now ${STATE}. Following parameters were passed: newstate = ${STATE} name = ${NAME} checkip = ${CHECKIP} device = ${DEVICE} warn_email = ${WARN_EMAIL} Packet counters: replied = ${REPLIED} packets replied waiting = ${WAITING} packets waiting for reply timeout = ${TIMEOUT} packets that have timed out (= packet loss) reply_late = ${REPLY_LATE} packets that received a reply after timeout cons_rcvd = ${CONS_RCVD} consecutively received replies in sequence cons_wait = ${CONS_WAIT} consecutive packets waiting for reply cons_miss = ${CONS_MISS} consecutive packets that have timed out avg_rtt = ${AVG_RTT} average rtt, notice that waiting and timed out packets have rtt = 0 when calculating this Your LSM Daemon EOM [ ${STATE} = up ] && state=0 || state=1 echo $state > ${VARDIR}/${DEVICE}.status /sbin/shorewall restart -f >> /var/log/lsm 2>&1 /sbin/shorewall show routing >> /var/log/lsm exit 0 #EOF:

Shared interface support has the following characteristics: Only Ethernet (or Ethernet-like) interfaces can be used. For inbound traffic, the MAC addresses of the gateway routers are used to determine which provider a packet was received through. Note that only routed traffic can be categorized using this technique. You must specify the address on the interface that corresponds to a particular provider in the INTERFACE column by following the interface name with a colon (":") and the address. Entries in /etc/shorewall/masq must be qualified by the provider name (or number). This feature requires Realm Match support in your kernel and iptables. You must add route_rules entries for networks that are accessed through a particular provider. If you have additional IP addresses through either provider, you must add route_rules to direct traffic FROM each of those addresses through the appropriate provider. You must manually add MARK rules for traffic known to come from each provider. You must specify a gateway IP address in the GATEWAY column of /etc/shorewall/providers; detect is not permitted. Taken together, b. and h. effectively preclude using this technique with dynamic IP addresses. Example: This is our home network circa fall 2008. We have two Internet providers: Comcast -- Cable modem with one dynamic IP address. Avvanta -- ADSL with 5 static IP addresses. Because the old Compaq Presario that I use for a firewall only has three PCI slots and no onboard Ethernet, it doesn't have enough Ethernet controllers to support both providers. So I use a Linksys WRT300n pre-N router as a gateway to Comcast. Note that because the Comcast IP address is dynamic, I could not share a single firewall interface between the two providers directly. On my personal laptop (ursa), I have 9 virtual machines running various Linux distributions. It is the Shorewall configuration on ursa that I will describe here. Below is a diagram of our network: The local wired network in my office is connected to both gateways and uses the private (RFC 1918) network 172.20.1.0/24. The Comcast gateway has local IP address 172.20.1.1 while the Avvanta gateway has local IP address 172.20.1.254. Ursa's eth0 interface has a single IP address (172.20.1.130). This configuration uses USE_DEFAULT_RT=Yes in shorewall.conf (see above). Here is the providers file: #NAME NUMBER MARK DUPLICATE INTERFACE GATEWAY OPTIONS COPY comcast 1 1 - eth0:172.20.1.130 172.20.1.1 track,loose,balance,optional avvanta 2 2 - eth0:172.20.1.130 172.20.1.254 track,optional,loose wireless 3 3 - wlan0 172.20.1.1 track,optional Several things to note: 172.20.1.130 is specified as the eth0 IP address for both providers. Both wired providers have the loose option. This prevents Shorewall from automatically generating routing rules based on the source IP address. Only comcast has the balance option. With USE_DEFAULT_RT=yes, that means that comcast will be the default provider. While balance is the default, with USE_DEFAULT_RT=Yes, it must be specified explicitly when loose is also specified. I always disable the wireless interface when the laptop is connected to the wired network. I use a different Shorewall configuration when I take the laptop on the road. Here is the route_rules file:#SOURCE DEST PROVIDER PRIORITY - 206.124.146.176/31 avvanta 1000 - 206.124.146.178/31 avvanta 1000 - 206.124.146.180/32 avvanta 1000 Those rules direct traffic to the five static Avvanta IP addresses (only two are currently used) through the avvanta provider. Here is the tcrules file (MARK_IN_FORWARD_CHAIN=No in shorewall.conf):#MARK SOURCE DEST PROTO PORT(S) CLIENT USER TEST LENGTH TOS CONNBYTES HELPER # PORT(S) 2 $FW 0.0.0.0/0 tcp 21 2 $FW 0.0.0.0/0 tcp - - - - - - - ftp 2 $FW 0.0.0.0/0 tcp 119 These rules: Use avvanta for FTP. Use avvanta for NTTP The remaining files are for a rather standard two-interface config with a bridge as the local interface. zones:#ZONE IPSEC OPTIONS IN OUT # ONLY OPTIONS OPTIONS fw firewall net ipv4 kvm ipv4policy:net net NONE fw net ACCEPT fw kvm ACCEPT kvm all ACCEPT net all DROP info all all REJECT info interfaces:#ZONE INTERFACE BROADCAST OPTIONS GATEWAY # net eth0 detect dhcp,tcpflags,routefilter,blacklist,logmartians,optional,arp_ignore net wlan0 detect dhcp,tcpflags,routefilter,blacklist,logmartians,optional kvm br0 detect routeback #Virtual Machines wlan0 is the wireless adapter in the notebook. Used when the laptop is in our home but not connected to the wired network. masq:#INTERFACE SUBNET ADDRESS PROTO PORT(S) IPSEC eth0 192.168.0.0/24 wlan0 192.168.0.0/24 Because the firewall has only a single external IP address, I don't need to specify the providers in the masq rules.

This section describes the network at shorewall.net early in 2009. The configuration is as follows: Two providers: Avvanta -- A slow (1.5mb/384kb) DSL service with 5 static IP addresses. Comcast -- A fast (20mb/10mb) Cable circuit with a single dynamic address. A local network consisting of wired and wireless client systems. A Linksys WRT300N wireless router is used as an access point for the wireless hosts. A DMZ hosting a single server (lists.shorewall.net aka www1.shorewall.net, ftp1.shorewall.net,etc.) The network is pictured in the following diagram: Because of the speed of the cable provider, all traffic uses that provider unless there is a specific need for the traffic to use the DSL line. Responses to connections from the Internet to one of the DSL IP addresses -- the track option takes care of that. Connections initiated by the server and connections requested by clients on the firewall that have bound their local socket to one of the DSL IP addresses. Two entries in /etc/shorewall/route_rules take care of that traffic. As a consequence, I have disabled all route filtering on the firewall and only use the balance option in /etc/shorewall/providers on the Comcast provider whose default route in the main table is established by DHCP. By specifying the fallback option on Avvanta, I ensure that there is still a default route if Comcast is down. lsm is used to monitor the links. /etc/sysctl.conf: net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 0 /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf: ROUTE_FILTER=No RESTORE_DEFAULT_ROUTE=No RESTORE_DEFAULT_ROUTE=No causes the default route in the main table to be deleted when the Comcast link is unavailable. That way, the default route in the default table will be used until Comcast is available again. /etc/shorewall/providers: #NAME NUMBER MARK DUPLICATE INTERFACE GATEWAY OPTIONS COPY Avvanta 1 0x100 main eth0 206.124.146.254 track,loose,fallback eth2,eth4,tun* Comcast 2 0x200 main eth3 detect track,balance eth2,eth4,tun* #LAST LINE -- ADD YOUR ENTRIES ABOVE THIS LINE -- DO NOT REMOVE The loose option on Avvanta results in fewer routing rules. The first two routing rules below insure that all traffic from Avvanta-assigned IP addresses is sent via the Avvanta provider. The 'tun*' included in the COPY column is there because I run a routed OpenVPN server on the firewall. /etc/shorewall/route_rules: #SOURCE DEST PROVIDER PRIORITY - 172.20.0.0/24 main 1000 # Addresses assigned by routed OpenVPN server 206.124.146.176/30 - Avvanta 26000 206.124.146.180 - Avvanta 26000 - 216.168.3.44 Avvanta 26000 # Avvanta NNTP Server -- verifies source IP address #LAST LINE -- ADD YOUR ENTRIES BEFORE THIS ONE -- DO NOT REMOVE The /etc/shorewall/route_rules entries provide all of the provider selection necessary so my /etc/shorewall/tcrules file is used exclusively for traffic shaping of the Avvanta line. Note that I still need to provide values in the MARK colum of /etc/shorewall/providers because I specify track on both providers. Here is the output of shorewall show routing: Routing Rules 0: from all lookup local 1000: from all to 172.20.0.0/24 lookup main 10000: from all fwmark 0x100 lookup Avvanta 10001: from all fwmark 0x200 lookup Comcast 20256: from 71.227.156.229 lookup Comcast 26000: from 206.124.146.176/30 lookup Avvanta 26000: from 206.124.146.180 lookup Avvanta 26000: from all to 216.168.3.44 lookup Avvanta 32766: from all lookup main 32767: from all lookup default Table Avvanta: 206.124.146.254 dev eth0 scope link src 206.124.146.176 206.124.146.177 dev eth4 scope link 172.20.1.0/24 dev eth2 proto kernel scope link src 172.20.1.254 206.124.146.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 206.124.146.176 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link default via 206.124.146.254 dev eth0 src 206.124.146.176 Table Comcast: 206.124.146.177 dev eth4 scope link 71.227.156.1 dev eth3 scope link src 71.227.156.229 172.20.1.0/24 dev eth2 proto kernel scope link src 172.20.1.254 71.227.156.0/23 dev eth3 proto kernel scope link src 71.227.156.229 default via 71.227.156.1 dev eth3 src 71.227.156.229 Table default: default via 206.124.146.254 dev eth0 metric 1 Table local: broadcast 127.255.255.255 dev lo proto kernel scope link src 127.0.0.1 broadcast 172.20.1.0 dev eth2 proto kernel scope link src 172.20.1.254 broadcast 206.124.146.255 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 206.124.146.176 local 206.124.146.179 dev eth0 proto kernel scope host src 206.124.146.176 local 206.124.146.178 dev eth0 proto kernel scope host src 206.124.146.176 local 206.124.146.176 dev eth0 proto kernel scope host src 206.124.146.176 local 206.124.146.176 dev eth4 proto kernel scope host src 206.124.146.176 broadcast 71.227.157.255 dev eth3 proto kernel scope link src 71.227.156.229 broadcast 71.227.156.0 dev eth3 proto kernel scope link src 71.227.156.229 local 172.20.1.254 dev eth2 proto kernel scope host src 172.20.1.254 local 127.0.0.2 dev lo proto kernel scope host src 127.0.0.1 broadcast 172.20.1.255 dev eth2 proto kernel scope link src 172.20.1.254 local 71.227.156.229 dev eth3 proto kernel scope host src 71.227.156.229 broadcast 206.124.146.0 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 206.124.146.176 broadcast 127.0.0.0 dev lo proto kernel scope link src 127.0.0.1 local 206.124.146.180 dev eth0 proto kernel scope host src 206.124.146.176 local 127.0.0.1 dev lo proto kernel scope host src 127.0.0.1 local 127.0.0.0/8 dev lo proto kernel scope host src 127.0.0.1 Table main: 206.124.146.177 dev eth4 scope link 172.20.1.0/24 dev eth2 proto kernel scope link src 172.20.1.254 206.124.146.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 206.124.146.176 71.227.156.0/23 dev eth3 proto kernel scope link src 71.227.156.229 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link 127.0.0.0/8 dev lo scope link default via 71.227.156.1 dev eth3 /etc/shorewall/interfaces: #ZONE INTERFACE BROADCAST OPTIONS loc eth2 detect dhcp,routeback dmz eth4 detect net eth0 detect dhcp,blacklist,tcpflags,optional net eth3 detect dhcp,blacklist,tcpflags,optional #LAST LINE -- ADD YOUR ENTRIES BEFORE THIS ONE -- DO NOT REMOVE /etc/shorewall/masq: #INTERFACE SOURCE ADDRESS PROTO PORT(S) IPSEC COMMENT Masquerade Local Network eth3 0.0.0.0/0 eth0 !206.124.146.0/24 206.124.146.179 #LAST LINE -- ADD YOUR ENTRIES ABOVE THIS LINE -- DO NOT REMOVE All traffic leaving eth3 must use the dynamic IP address assigned to that interface as the SOURCE address. All traffic leaving eth0 that does not have a SOURCE address falling within the Avvanta subnet (206.124.146.0/24) must have its SOURCE address changed to 206.124.146.179.