Shorewall Support GuideTomEastep2001-2007Thomas 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.Problem reports that do not include the information requested in
the Problem Reporting Guidelines
below will not be answered by the Shorewall
author.This article applies to Shorewall 3.0 and
later. If you are running a version of Shorewall earlier than Shorewall
3.0.0 then please see the documentation for that
release.Before Reporting a Problem or Asking a QuestionThere are a number of sources of Shorewall information. Please try
these before you post.The three currently-supported Shorewall major releases are 3.2, 3.4 and
4.0.Shorewall versions earlier than 3.2.0 are no longer supported;
we will try to help but I will personally not spend time reading
earlier code to try to help you solve a problem and I will not
release a patch to correct any defect found.More than half of the questions posted on the support list have
answers directly accessible from the Documentation IndexThe FAQ has solutions to more than
50 common problems.The Troubleshooting
Information contains a number of tips to help you solve common
problems.The Shorewall
Users Mailing List Archives are a good source of
information.Problem Reporting GuidelinesPlease refer to the following flowchart to guide you through the
problem reporting process. It will ensure that you provide us with the
information we need to solve your problem as quickly as possible.Please don't use distribution specific
programs like "service" or init scripts to start/restart Shorewall
while trying to solve a problem, just follow carefully the
instructions below.As a general matter, please do not edit
the diagnostic information in an attempt to conceal your IP
address, netmask, nameserver addresses, domain name, etc. These
aren't secrets, and concealing them
often misleads us (and 80% of the time, a cracker could derive them
anyway from information contained in the SMTP headers of your
post).If your problem is that an error occurs when you try to
shorewall start or if Shorewall is
otherwise failing to start properly, then please do the
following.
If your VERBOSITY setting in shorewall.conf is less than 2 and
you are running the Shorewall-shell compiler, then try running with
a higher verbosity level by using the "-vv" option:
shorewall -vv [re]start
That will give you additional progress messages that may make
it clear which entry in which file is generating the error.If that didn't solve your problem, then please/sbin/shorewall trace start 2> /tmp/traceForward the /tmp/trace file as an
attachment compressed with gzip or bzip2 (If you are running
Shorewall-perl, there is no need to compress the file — it will be
very short).If you are running Shorewall version 3.2.0 or later and
compilation succeeds but the compiled program fails, then please
include the compiled program with your report. The compiled program
will be named /var/lib/shorewall/.start if the
command is shorewall start and it will be named
/var/lib/shorewall/.restart if the command is
shorewall restart.If you are running Shorewall-perl 4.0.5 or later, you may also
include the word debug as the first
argument to the /sbin/shorewall and
/sbin/shorewall-lite commands.shorewall debug restartIn
most cases, debug is a synonym for
trace. The exceptions are:debug is ignored by the
Shorewall-perl compiler.debug causes altered
behavior of scripts generated by the Shorewall-perl compiler.
These scripts normally use iptables-restore
to install the Netfilter ruleset but with debug, the commands normally passed to
iptables-restore in its input file are passed
individually to iptables. This is a
diagnostic aid which allows identifying the individual command
that is causing iptables-restore to fail; it
should be used when iptables-restore fails when executing a
COMMIT command.The debug feature is
strictly for problem analysis. When debug is used:The firewall is made 'wide open' before the rules are
applied.The routestopped file is not
consulted.The rules are applied in the canonical
iptables-restore order. So if you need
critical hosts to be always available during start/restart,
you may not be able to use debug.
If you are unsure if Shorewall is starting successfully or not
then first note that if Shorewall starts successfully, the last
message produced by Shorewall 3.0 is "Shorewall Started" and the last
message produced by Shorewall 3.2 in "done.":
If you are seeing this message then Shorewall is starting
successfully.If you are still unsure if Shorewall is starting or not, enter
the following command:
/sbin/shorewall status
If Shorewall has started successfully, you will see output
similar to this:
Shorewall-3.0.6 Status at gateway - Thu Mar 30 14:07:29 PDT 2006
Shorewall is running
State:Started (Thu Mar 30 14:07:29 PDT 2006)
If Shorewall has not started properly, you will see output
similar to this:
Shorewall-3.0.6 Status at gateway - Thu Mar 30 14:08:11 PDT 2006
Shorewall is stopped
State:Stopped (Thu Mar 30 14:08:11 PDT 2006)
The "State:" refers to the Shorewall State
Diagram.If Shorewall is starting successfully and your problem is that
some set of connections to/from or
through your firewall isn't working
(examples: local systems can't access the internet, you can't send
email through the firewall, you can't surf the web from the firewall,
connections that you are certain should be rejected are mysterously
accepted, etc.) or you are having problems with
traffic shaping then please perform the following six
steps:If Shorewall isn't started then /sbin/shorewall
start. Otherwise /sbin/shorewall
reset.Try making the connection that is failing./sbin/shorewall dump >
/tmp/status.txtPost the /tmp/status.txt file as an
attachment compressed with gzip or bzip2.Describe where you are trying to make the connection from
(IP address) and what host (IP address) you are trying to connect
to.Otherwise:Shorewall is starting successfuly and you have no connection problems and you have no traffic shaping problems. Your problem is
with performance, logging, etc. Please include the following:the exact version of Shorewall you are running./sbin/shorewall versionthe complete exact output ofip addr showthe complete exact output ofip route showA detailed description of your problem.Please remember we only know what is posted in your message. Do
not leave out any information that appears to be correct, or was
mentioned in a previous post. There have been countless posts by
people who were sure that some part of their configuration was correct
when it actually contained a small error. We tend to be skeptics where
detail is lacking.Please keep in mind that you're asking for free technical support. Any help we offer is an
act of generosity, not an obligation. Try to
make it easy for us to help you. Follow good, courteous
practices in writing and formatting your e-mail. Provide details that
we need if you expect good answers. Exact quoting of error messages,
log entries, command output, and other output is better than a
paraphrase or summary.Please give details about what doesn't work. Reports that say
I followed the directions and it didn't work may elicit
sympathy but probably little in the way of help. Again -- if ping from
A to B fails, say so (and see below for information about reporting
ping problems). If Computer B doesn't show up in
Network Neighborhood then say so. If access by IP
address works but by DNS names it doesn't then say so.Please don't describe your environment and then ask us to send
you custom configuration files. We're here to answer your questions
but we can't do your job for you.Please do NOT include the output of iptables
-L — the output of shorewall
show or shorewall dump is much more
useful to us.Do you see any Shorewall messages
(/sbin/shorewall show log) when you
exercise the function that is giving you problems? If so, include the
message(s) in your post.Please do not include Shorewall configuration files unless you
have been specifically asked to do so. The output of
shorewall dump collected as described above is much
more useful.The list server limits the size of posts
to the lists, so don't post graphics of your network layout, etc. to
the Mailing List -- your post will be rejected.The author gratefully acknowleges that the above list was
heavily plagiarized from the excellent LEAF document by Ray
Olszewski found here.Where to Send your Problem Report or to Ask for HelpIf you haven't read the Problem Reporting Guidelines above, please
read them now — Failure to supply the information that we need will just
delay a solution to your problem.If you run the current development release and
your question involves a feature that is only available in the development
release (see the Shorewall
Release Model page) then please post your question or problem to
the Shorewall
Development Mailing List.Otherwise, please post your question or problem report to the Shorewall users mailing
list. If you wish to keep the details of your configuration
private, then you may forward the accompanying dumps/traces etc. to support@shorewall.net; the
report itself should still go to the appropriate mailing list.IMPORTANT: You must subscribe to
the mailing lists before you will be able to post to them (see links
below).For quick questions, there is also
a #shorewall channel at irc.freenode.net.Subscribing to the Users Mailing ListTo Subscribe to the users mailing list go to https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/shorewall-users.Subscribing to the Announce Mailing ListTo Subscribe to the announce mailing list (low-traffic,read only) go
to:https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/shorewall-announceSubscribing to the Development Mailing ListTo Subscribe to the development mailing list go to https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/shorewall-devel.Unsubscribing from Shorewall Mailing ListsIf you are really dim-witted enough to have to ask -- you
unsubscribe at the same place that you subscribed. Doh.......Other Mailing ListsFor information on other Shorewall mailing lists, go to http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=22587
.