Tom Eastep 2003-2009 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 article applies to Shorewall 4.0 and later. If you are running a version of Shorewall earlier than Shorewall 4.0.0 then please see the documentation for that release.

Shorewall accounting rules are described in the file /etc/shorewall/accounting. By default, the accounting rules are placed in a chain called accounting and can thus be displayed using shorewall[-lite] show -x accounting. All traffic passing into, out of, or through the firewall traverses the accounting chain including traffic that will later be rejected by interface options such as tcpflags and maclist. The columns in the accounting file are described in shorewall-accounting (5) and shorewall6-accounting (5). In all columns except ACTION and CHAIN, the values -, any and all are treated as wild-cards. The accounting rules are evaluated in the Netfilter filter table. This is the same environment where the rules file rules are evaluated and in this environment, DNAT has already occurred in inbound packets and SNAT has not yet occurred on outbound packets. Accounting rules are not stateful -- each rule only handles traffic in one direction. For example, if eth0 is your Internet interface, and you have a web server in your DMZ connected to eth1, then to count HTTP traffic in both directions requires two rules: #ACTION CHAIN SOURCE DESTINATION PROTOCOL DEST SOURCE # PORT PORT DONE - eth0 eth1 tcp 80 DONE - eth1 eth0 tcp - 80 Associating a counter with a chain allows for nice reporting. For example: #ACTION CHAIN SOURCE DESTINATION PROTOCOL DEST SOURCE # PORT PORT web:COUNT - eth0 eth1 tcp 80 web:COUNT - eth1 eth0 tcp - 80 web:COUNT - eth0 eth1 tcp 443 web:COUNT - eth1 eth0 tcp - 443 DONE web Now shorewall show web (or shorewall-lite show web for Shorewall Lite users) will give you a breakdown of your web traffic: [root@gateway shorewall]# shorewall show web Shorewall-1.4.6-20030821 Chain web at gateway.shorewall.net - Wed Aug 20 09:48:56 PDT 2003 Counters reset Wed Aug 20 09:48:00 PDT 2003 Chain web (4 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 11 1335 tcp -- eth0 eth1 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 18 1962 tcp -- eth1 eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp spt:80 0 0 tcp -- eth0 eth1 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:443 0 0 tcp -- eth1 eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp spt:443 29 3297 RETURN all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 [root@gateway shorewall]# Here is a slightly different example: #ACTION CHAIN SOURCE DESTINATION PROTOCOL DEST SOURCE # PORT PORT web - eth0 eth1 tcp 80 web - eth1 eth0 tcp - 80 web - eth0 eth1 tcp 443 web - eth1 eth0 tcp - 443 COUNT web eth0 eth1 COUNT web eth1 eth0 Now shorewall show web (or shorewall-lite show web for Shorewall Lite users) simply gives you a breakdown by input and output: [root@gateway shorewall]# shorewall show accounting web Shorewall-1.4.6-20030821 Chains accounting web at gateway.shorewall.net - Wed Aug 20 10:27:21 PDT 2003 Counters reset Wed Aug 20 10:24:33 PDT 2003 Chain accounting (3 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 8767 727K web tcp -- eth0 eth1 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 0 0 web tcp -- eth0 eth1 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:443 11506 13M web tcp -- eth1 eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp spt:80 0 0 web tcp -- eth1 eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp spt:443 Chain web (4 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 8767 727K all -- eth0 eth1 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 11506 13M all -- eth1 eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 [root@gateway shorewall]# Here's how the same example would be constructed on an HTTP server with only one interface (eth0). READ THE ABOVE CAREFULLY -- IT SAYS SERVER. If you want to account for web browsing, you have to reverse the rules below. #ACTION CHAIN SOURCE DESTINATION PROTOCOL DEST SOURCE # PORT PORT web - eth0 - tcp 80 web - - eth0 tcp - 80 web - eth0 - tcp 443 web - - eth0 tcp - 443 COUNT web eth0 COUNT web - eth0 Note that with only one interface, only the SOURCE (for input rules) or the DESTINATION (for output rules) is specified in each rule. Here's the output: [root@mail shorewall]# shorewall show accounting web Shorewall-1.4.7 Chains accounting web at mail.shorewall.net - Sun Oct 12 10:27:21 PDT 2003 Counters reset Sat Oct 11 08:12:57 PDT 2003 Chain accounting (3 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 8767 727K web tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 11506 13M web tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp spt:80 0 0 web tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:443 0 0 web tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp spt:443 Chain web (4 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 8767 727K all -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 11506 13M all -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 [root@mail shorewall]# For an example of integrating Shorewall Accounting with MRTG, see http://www.nightbrawler.com/code/shorewall-stats/.

The structure of the accounting rules changes slightly when there are bridges defined in the Shorewall configuration. Because of the restrictions imposed by Netfilter in kernel 2.6.21 and later, output accounting rules must be segregated from forwarding and input rules. To accomplish this separation, Shorewall-perl creates two accounting chains: accounting - for input and forwarded traffic. accountout - for output traffic. If the CHAIN column contains -, then: If the SOURCE column in a rule includes the name of the firewall zone (e.g., $FW), then the default chain to insert the rule into is accountout only. Otherwise, if the DEST in the rule is any or all or 0.0.0.0/0, then the rule is added to both accounting and accountout. Otherwise, the rule is added to accounting only.

Sergiusz Pawlowicz has written a nice article that shows how to integrate Shorewall Accounting with collectd to produce nice graphs of traffic activity. The article may be found at http://collectd.org/wiki/index.php/Plugin:IPTables.