Copyright © 2008 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”.
2009/02/27
Table of Contents
Beginning with Shorewall 4.2.4, support for firewalling IPv6 is included as part of Shorewall.
In order to use Shorewall with IPv6, your firewall must meet the following prerequisites:
Iptables 1.4.0 or later (1.4.1.1 is strongly recommended)
If you wish to include DNS names in your IPv6 configuration files, you must have Perl 5.10 and must install the Perl Socket6 library.
Shorewall IPv6 support introduced two new packages:
Shorewall6. This package provides
/sbin/shorewall6 which is the IPv6 equivalent
of /sbin/shorewall.
/sbin/shorewall only handles IPv4 while
/sbin/shorewall6 handles only IPv6.. Shorewall6
depends on both Shorewall-common and on Shorewall-perl. The
Shorewall6 configuration is stored in /etc/shorewall6.
Shorewall6 Lite. This package is to IPv6 what Shorewall Lite
is to IPv4. The package stores its configuration in /etc/shorewall6-lite. As with Shorewall
Lite, Shorewall6 Lite usually requires no configuration changes on
the firewall system.
IP connections are either IPv4 or IPv6; there is no such thing as a mixed IPv4/6 connecton. IPv4 connections are controlled by Shorewall (or Shorewall-lite); IPv6 connections are controlled by Shorewall6 (or Shorewall6-lite). Starting and stopping the firewall for one address family has no effect on the other address family.
As a consequence, there is very little interaction between Shorewall and Shorewall6.
An obvious area where the configuration of Shorewall affects
Shorewall6 is the DISABLE_IPV6 setting in
/etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf. When configuring
Shorewall6, you will want to set DISABLE_IPV6=No and restart Shorewall
or Shorewall-lite.
Another area where their configurations overlap is in traffic
shaping; the tcdevices and tcclasses files do
exactly the same thing in both Shorewall and Shorewall6. Consequently,
you will have TC_ENABLED=Internal in Shorewall or in Shorewall6 and
TC_ENABLED=No in the other product. Also, you will want CLEAR_TC=No in
the configuration with TC_ENABLED=No.
Regardless of which product has TC_ENABLED=Internal:
IPv4 packet marking is controlled by /etc/shorewall/tcrules
IPv6 packet marking is controlled by /etc/shorewall6/tcrules
Multi-ISP users will need to be aware of this one. When there
are entries in the providers file, Shorewall normally installs a
modified /etc/iproute2/rt_tables during
shorewall start and shorewall
restart and restores a default file during
shorewall stop. Setting KEEP_RT_TABLES=Yes in
shorewall.conf(5)
stops Shorewall (Shorewall lite) from modifying
/etc/iproute2/rt_tables.
Shorewall6 is also capable of modifying
/etc/iproute2/rt_tables in a similar way.
Our recommendation to Multi-ISP users is to:
Select the same names for similar providers.
Set KEEP_RT_TABLES=No in shorewall.conf(5) and set KEEP_RT_TABLES=Yes in shorewall6.conf(5).
These setting allow Shorewall to control the contents of
/etc/iproute2/rt_tables.
Configuring and operating Shorewall6 is very similar to configuring Shorewall with some notable exceptions:
In Shorewall6, there is no NAT of any kind (Netfilter6 doesn't support any form of NAT). Most people consider this to be a giant step forward.
When an ISP assigns you an IPv6 address, you are actually assigned an IPv6 prefix (similar to a subnet). A 64-bit prefix defines a subnet with 4 billion hosts squared (the size of the IPv4 address space squared). Regardless of the length of your prefix, you get to assign local addresses within that prefix.
The default zone type in Shorewall6 is
ipv6. It is suggested that you specify
ipv6 in the TYPE column of
/etc/shorewall6/zones and a type of ipv4 in
/etc/shorewall/zones; that way, if you run the
wrong utility on a configuration, you will get an instant
error.
The following interface options are available in
/etc/shorewall6/interfaces:
Same as in Shorewall
Same as in Shorewall
Interface is assigned by IPv6 DHCP or the firewall hosts an IPv6 DHCP server on the interface.
Same as in Shorewall
Checks the source IP address of packets arriving on the interface and drops packets whose SOURCE address is:
An IPv6 multicast address
The subnet-router anycast address for any of the global unicast addresses assigned to the interface.
An RFC 2526 anycast address for any of the global unicast addresses assigned to the interface.
Same as in Shorewall
Same as in Shorewall
Same as in Shorewall
Same as in Shorewall
mssSame as in Shorewall
Override the setting of IP_FORWARDING in shorewall6.conf with respect to how the system behaves on this interface. If 1, behave as a router; if 0, behave as a host.
The following host options are available in
/etc/shorewall6/hosts:
Same as in Shorewall
Same as in Shorewall
Same as in Shorewall
Same as in Shorewall
Anywhere that an address or address list follows a colon (":"), the address or list may be enclosed in angled brackets ("<" and ">") to improve readability.
Example (/etc/shorewall6/rules):
#ACTION SOURCE DEST PROTO DEST # PORT(S) ACCEPT net $FW:<2002:ce7c:92b4::3> tcp 22
When the colon is preceeded by an interface name, the angle brackets are required. This is true even when the address is a MAC address in Shorewall format.
Example (/etc/shorewall6/rules):
#ACTION SOURCE DEST PROTO DEST # PORT(S) ACCEPT net:wlan0:<2002:ce7c:92b4::3> tcp 22
When Shorewall6 or Shorewall6 Lite is in the stopped state, the following traffic is still allowed.
Traffic with a multicast destination IP address (ff00::/8).
Traffic with a link local source address (ff800::/8)
Traffic with a link local destination address.
The Linux IPv6 stack does not support balancing (multi-hop)
routes. Hence, neither the balance option in shorewall6-providers(5)
nor USE_DEFAULT_RT=Yes in shorewall6.conf(5) is
supported.
Several commands supported by
/sbin/shorewall and
/sbin/shorewall-lite are not supported by
/sbin/shorewall6 and
/sbin/shorewall6-lite:
hits
ipcalc
iprange
Also, please note that since Shorewall6 is based on
Shorewall-perl, dynamic zones are not supported. Hence the add and
delete commands are not supported by
/sbin/shorewall6 and
/sbin/shorewall6-lite.
The Shorewall6 package depends on Shorewall-common for application macros. Only certain address-family specific macros such as macro.AllowICMPs are included in Shorewall6. As a consequence, /usr/share/shorewall/ is included in the default Shorewall6 CONFIG_PATH.
You will need at least the following packages:
Shorewall-common 4.2.4 or later.
Shorewall-perl 4.2.4 or later.
Shorewall6 4.2.4 or later.
You may also with to install Shorewall6-lite 4.3.4 or later on your remote firewalls to allow for central IPv6 firewall administration.
I strongly suggest that you read the Linux IPv6 HOWTO. The 6to4 Tunnels page also includes instructions for setting up your first IPv6 environment.
In addition to the Linux IPv6 HOWTO, I have found the following two books to be useful:
IPv6 Essentials, Silvia Hagen, 2002, O'Reilly Media, Inc, ISBN 0-596-00125-8.
O'Reilly published a second edition of this book in 2006.
IPV6 Theory, Protocol, and Practice, Second Edition, Pete Loshin, 2004, Morgan-Kaufmann Publishers, IBSN 1-55860-820-9