Extension Scripts and Common Actions
Tom
Eastep
2005-04-06
2001-2005
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
.
Extension scripts are user-provided scripts that are invoked at
various points during firewall start, restart, stop and clear. The scripts
are placed in /etc/shorewall and are processed using the Bourne shell
source
mechanism.
Be sure that you actually need to use an extension script to do
what you want. Shorewall has a wide range of features that cover most
requirements.
DO NOT SIMPLY COPY RULES THAT YOU FIND ON THE NET INTO AN
EXTENSION SCRIPT AND EXPECT THEM TO WORK AND TO NOT BREAK SHOREWALL.
TO USE SHOREWALL EXTENSION SCRIPTS YOU MUST KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING
WITH RESPECT TO iptables/Netfilter AND SHOREWALL.
The following scripts can be supplied:
init -- invoked early in shorewall start
and
shorewall restart
initdone (added in Shorewall 2.0.2 RC1) -- invoked after Shorewall
has flushed all existing rules but before any rules have been added to
the builtin chains.
start -- invoked after the firewall has been started or
restarted.
stop -- invoked as a first step when the firewall is being
stopped.
stopped -- invoked after the firewall has been stopped.
clear -- invoked after the firewall has been cleared.
refresh -- invoked while the firewall is being refreshed but
before the common and/or blacklst chains have been rebuilt.
newnotsyn (added in version 1.3.6) -- invoked after the
newnotsyn
chain has been created but before any rules
have been added to it.
continue (added in version 2.2.3) -- invoked to allow you to
insert special rules to allow traffic while Shorewall is [re]starting.
Any rules added in this script should be deleted in your
start script. This script is invoked earlier in the
[re]start process than is the initdone script
described above.
If your version of Shorewall doesn't have the
file that you want to use from the above list, you can simply create the
file yourself. You can also supply a script with the same name as
any of the filter chains in the firewall and the script will be invoked
after the /etc/shorewall/rules file has been processed but before the
/etc/shorewall/policy file has been processed.
There are a couple of special considerations for commands in extension
scripts:
When you want to run iptables, use the command
run_iptables instead. run_iptables
will run the iptables utility passing the arguments to
run_iptables and if the command fails, the firewall
will be stopped (Shorewall version < 2.0.2 Beta 1 or there is no
/var/lib/shorewall/restore file) or restored
(Shorewall version >= 2.0.2 Beta 1 and
/var/lib/shorewall/restore exists).
With Shorewall 2.0.2 Beta 1 and later versions, if you run
commands other than iptables that must be re-run in
order to restore the firewall to its current state then you must save
the commands to the restore file. The restore
file is a temporary file in /var/lib/shorewall that will be renamed
/var/lib/shorewall/restore-base at the successful
completion of the Shorewall command. The shorewall
save command combines
/var/lib/shorewall/restore-base with the output of
iptables-save to produce the
/var/lib/shorewall/restore script.
Here are three functions that are useful when running commands
other than iptables:
save_command() -- saves the
passed command to the restore file.
Example: save_command echo Operation Complete
That command would simply write "echo Operation Complete" to
the restore file.
run_and_save_command() --
saves the passed command to the restore file then executes it. The
return value is the exit status of the command. Example:
run_and_save_command "echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all"
Note that as in this example, when the command involves file
redirection then the entire command must be enclosed in quotes. This
applies to all of the functions described here.
ensure_and_save_command() --
runs the passed command. If the command fails, the firewall is
restored to it's prior saved state and the operation is terminated.
If the command succeeds, the command is written to the restore
file
Beginning with Shorewall 2.0.0, you can also define a common
action to be performed immediately before a policy of ACCEPT,
DROP or REJECT is applied. Separate actions can be assigned to each policy type so
for example you can have a different common action for DROP and REJECT
policies. The most common usage of common actions is to silently drop
traffic that you don't wish to have logged by the policy.
As released, Shorewall defines a number of actions which are cataloged
in the /usr/share/shorewall/actions.std file. That file
is processed before /etc/shorewall/actions. Among the entries in
/usr/share/shorewall/actions.std are:
Drop:DROP
Reject:REJECT
So the action named Drop
is performed immediately
before DROP policies are applied and the action called Reject
is performed before REJECT policies are applied. These actions are defined
in the files /usr/share/shorewall/action.Drop and
/usr/share/shorewall/action.Reject respectively.
You can override these defaults with entries in your
/etc/shorewall/actions file. For example, if that file were to contain
MyDrop:DROP
then the common action for DROP policies would
become MyDrop
.
One final note. The chain created to perform an action has the same
name as the action. You can use an extension script by that name to add
rules to the action's chain in the same way as you can any other chain. So
if you create the new action Dagger
and define it in
/etc/shorewall/action.Dagger, you can also have an
extension script named /etc/shorewall/Dagger that can
add rules to the Dagger
chain that can't be created using
/etc/shorewall/action.Dagger.