Shorewall Traffic AccountingTomEastep2003-2009Thomas M. EastepPermission 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.Accounting BasicsShorewall 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 as follows:ACTION - What to do when a
match is found. Possible values are:COUNT- Simply count the match and continue trying to match
the packet with the following accounting rulesDONE- Count the match and don't attempt to match any
following accounting rules.<chain> - The name of a chain;
Shorewall will create the chain automatically if it doesn't
already exist. A jump to this chain will be generated from the
chain specified by the CHAIN column. If the name of the chain is
followed by :COUNT then a COUNT rule matching this
entry will automatically be added to <chain>. Chain names
must start with a letter, must be composed of letters and digits,
and may contain underscores (_) and periods
(.). Beginning with Shorewall version 1.4.8, chain
names may also contain embedded dashes (-) and are
not required to start with a letter.COMMENT - (Shorewall-perl only) - The remainder of the line
is treated as a comment which is attached to subsequent
rules until another COMMENT line is found or until the end
of the file is reached. To stop adding comments to rules, use a
line with only the word COMMENT.CHAIN - The name of the chain
where the accounting rule is to be added. If empty or -
then the accounting chain is assumed (see below for exceptions).SOURCE - Packet Source. The
name of an interface, an address (host or net), or an interface name
followed by : and a host or net address.DESTINATION - Packet
Destination. Format the same as the SOURCE column.PROTOCOL - A protocol name
(from /etc/protocols), a protocol number or
ipp2p. For ipp2p, your kernel and
iptables must have ipp2p match support from xtables-addons.DEST PORT - Destination Port
number. Service name from /etc/services or port
number. May only be specified if the protocol is TCP (6), UDP (17),
DCCP (33), SCTP (132) or UDPLITE (136). If the PROTOCOL is
ipp2p, then this column is interpreted as an ipp2p
option without the leading -- (default
ipp2p). For a list of value ipp2p options, as root type
iptables -m ipp2p --help.SOURCE PORT- Source Port
number. Service name from /etc/services or port number. May only be
specified if the protocol is TCP (6), UDP (17), DCCP (33), SCTP (132)
or UDPLITE (136).USER/GROUP - This column may
only be non-empty if the CHAIN is OUTPUT. The column may
contain:[!][<user name or number>][:<group name or number>]When this column is non-empty, the rule applies only if the
program generating the output is running under the effective
<user> and/or <group> specified (or is NOT running under
that id if ! is given).Examples:joe #program must be run by joe:kids #program must be run by a member of the
kids group.!:kids #program must not be run by a member of the
kids groupMARK - Only count packets with
particular mark values. [!]<value>[/<mask>][:C]
Defines a test on the existing packet or connection mark. The rule
will match only if the test returns true.If you don’t want to define a test but need to specify anything
in the following columns, place a - in this
field.! — Inverts the test (not equal)<value> — Value of the packet or connection
mark.<mask> — A mask to be applied to the mark before
testing.:C — Designates a connection mark. If omitted, the packet
mark’s value is tested. This option is only supported by
Shorewall-perl.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 - 80Associating 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 webNow 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 eth0Now 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 - eth0Note 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/.Accounting with BridgesThe 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.Integrating Shorewall Accounting with CollectdSergiusz 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.