Shorewall Traffic Accounting
Tom
Eastep
2004-04-19
2003-2004
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
.
Shorewall Traffic Accounting support was added in Shorewall release
1.4.7.
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 show 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
. If your kernel doesn't support the
connection tracking match extension (Kernel 2.4.21) then some traffic
rejected under norfc1918
will not traverse the accounting
chain.
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 rules
DONE- Count the match and don't attempt to match any
following accounting rules.
<chain> - The name of a chain to
jump to. Shorewall will create the chain automatically. If the name
of the chain is followed by :COUNT
then a COUNT rule
matching this rule 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 man also contain embedded dashes (-
) and
are not required to start with a letter.
CHAIN - The name of the chain
where the accounting rule is to be added. If empty or -
then the accounting
chain is assumed.
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) or a protocol number.
DEST PORT - Destination Port
number. Service name from /etc/services or port
number. May only be specified if the protocol is TCP or UDP (6 or 17).
SOURCE PORT- Source Port number.
Service name from /etc/services or port number. May only be specified if
the protocol is TCP or UDP (6 or 17).
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 ones.
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
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
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/.