Shoreline Firewall (Shorewall) 1.4

Introduction

Netfilter - the packet filter facility built into the 2.4 and later Linux kernels.
ipchains - the packet filter facility built into the 2.2 Linux kernels. Also the name of the utility program used to configure and control that facility. Netfilter can be used in ipchains compatibility mode.
iptables - the utility program used to configure and control Netfilter. The term 'iptables' is often used to refer to the combination of iptables+Netfilter (with Netfilter not in ipchains compatibility mode).

The Shoreline Firewall, more commonly known as "Shorewall", is high-level tool for configuring Netfilter. You describe your firewall/gateway requirements using entries in a set of configuration files. Shorewall reads those configuration files and with the help of the iptables utility, Shorewall configures Netfilter to match your requirements. Shorewall can be used on a dedicated firewall system, a multi-function gateway/router/server or on a standalone GNU/Linux system. Shorewall does not use Netfilter's ipchains compatibility mode and can thus take advantage of Netfilter's connection state tracking capabilities.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of Version 2 of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

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 is the Shorewall 1.4 Web Site

The information on this site applies only to 1.4.x releases of Shorewall. For older versions:

The 1.3 site is here.
The 1.2 site is here.

Getting Started with Shorewall

New to Shorewall? Start by selecting the QuickStart Guide that most closely match your environment and follow the step by step instructions.

Looking for Information?

The Documentation Index is a good place to start as is the Quick Search in the frame above.

Running Shorewall on Mandrake with a two-interface setup?

If so, the documentation on this site will not apply directly to your setup. If you want to use the documentation that you find here, you will want to consider uninstalling what you have and installing a setup that matches the documentation on this site. See the Two-interface QuickStart Guide for details.

News

1/13/2004 - Shorewall 1.4.9

Problems Corrected since version 1.4.8:

There has been a low continuing level of confusion over the terms "Source NAT" (SNAT) and "Static NAT". To avoid future confusion, all instances of "Static NAT" have been replaced with "One-to-one NAT" in the documentation and configuration files.
The description of NEWNOTSYN in shorewall.conf has been reworded for clarity.
Wild-card rules (those involving "all" as SOURCE or DEST) will no longer produce an error if they attempt to add a rule that would override a NONE policy. The logic for expanding these wild-card rules now simply skips those (SOURCE,DEST) pairs that have a NONE policy.
DNAT rules that also specified SNAT now work reliably. Previously, there were cases where the SNAT specification was effectively ignored.

Migration Issues:

None.

New Features:

The documentation has been completely rebased to Docbook XML. The documentation is now released as separate HTML and XML packages.
To cut down on the number of "Why are these ports closed rather than stealthed?" questions, the SMB-related rules in /etc/shorewall/common.def have been changed from 'reject' to 'DROP'.
For easier identification, packets logged under the 'norfc1918' interface option are now logged out of chains named 'rfc1918'. Previously, such packets were logged under chains named 'logdrop'.
Distributors and developers seem to be regularly inventing new naming conventions for kernel modules. To avoid the need to change Shorewall code for each new convention, the MODULE_SUFFIX option has been added to shorewall.conf. MODULE_SUFFIX may be set to the suffix for module names in your particular distribution. If MODULE_SUFFIX is not set in shorewall.conf, Shorewall will use the list "o gz ko o.gz".

To see what suffix is used by your distribution:

ls /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter

All of the files listed should have the same suffix (extension). Set MODULE_SUFFIX to that suffix.

Examples:

If all files end in ".kzo" then set MODULE_SUFFIX="kzo"
If all files end in ".kz.o" then set MODULE_SUFFIX="kz.o"
Support for user defined rule ACTIONS has been implemented through two new files:

/etc/shorewall/actions - used to list the user-defined ACTIONS.
/etc/shorewall/action.template - For each user defined <action>, copy this file to /etc/shorewall/action.<action> and add the appropriate rules for that <action>. Once an <action> has been defined, it may be used like any of the builtin ACTIONS (ACCEPT, DROP, etc.) in /etc/shorewall/rules.

Example: You want an action that logs a packet at the 'info' level and accepts the connection.

In /etc/shorewall/actions, you would add:

     LogAndAccept

You would then copy /etc/shorewall/action.template to /etc/shorewall/action.LogAndAccept and in that file, you would add the two rules:
        LOG:info
        ACCEPT
The default value for NEWNOTSYN in shorewall.conf is now "Yes" (non-syn TCP packets that are not part of an existing connection are filtered according to the rules and policies rather than being dropped). I have made this change for two reasons:

a) NEWNOTSYN=No tends to result in lots of "stuck" connections since any timeout during TCP session tear down results in the firewall dropping all of the retries.

b) The old default of NEWNOTSYN=No and LOGNEWNOTSYN=info resulted in lots of confusing messages when a connection got "stuck". While I could have changed the default value of LOGNEWNOTSYN to suppress logging, I dislike defaults that silently throw away packets.
The common.def file now contains an entry that silently drops ICMP packets with a null source address. Ad Koster reported a case where these were occuring frequently as a result of a broken system on his external network.

12/28/2003 - www.shorewall.net/ftp.shorewall.net Back On-line

Our high-capacity server has been restored to service -- please let us know if you find any problems.

12/03/2003 - Support Torch Passed

Effective today, I am reducing my participation in the day-to-day support of Shorewall. As part of this shift to community-based Shorewall support a new Shorewall Newbies mailing list has been established to field questions and problems from new users. I will not monitor that list personally. I will continue my active development of Shorewall and will be available via the development list to handle development issues -- Tom.

More News

Jacques Nilo and Eric Wolzak have a LEAF (router/firewall/gateway on a floppy, CD or compact flash) distribution called Bering that features Shorewall-1.4.2 and Kernel-2.4.20. You can find their work at: http://leaf.sourceforge.net/devel/jnilo

Congratulations to Jacques and Eric on the recent release of Bering 1.2!!!