Shorewall Installation and Upgrade

Tom 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.

2010/02/27



Table of Contents

Install using RPM
Install using tarball
Install the .deb
General Notes about Upgrading Shorewall
Upgrade using RPM
Upgrade using tarball
Upgrading the .deb
Configuring Shorewall
Uninstall/Fallback

Caution

This article applies to Shorewall 4.3 and later. If you are installing or upgrading to a version of Shorewall earlier than Shorewall 4.3.5 then please see the documentation for that release.

Important

Before attempting installation, I strongly urge you to read and print a copy of the Shorewall QuickStart Guide for the configuration that most closely matches your own. This article only tells you how to install the product on your system. The QuickStart Guides describe how to configure the product.

Important

Before upgrading, be sure to review the Upgrade Issues.

Note

Shorewall RPMs are signed. To avoid warnings such as the following

warning: shorewall-3.2.1-1.noarch.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6c562ac4

download the Shorewall GPG key and run this command:

rpm --import shorewall.gpg.key

Install using RPM

To install Shorewall using the RPM:

  1. Be sure that you have the correct RPM package!

    The standard RPM package from shorewall.net and the mirrors is known to work with SUSE, Power PPC, Trustix and TurboLinux. There is also an RPM package provided by Simon Matter that is tailored for RedHat/Fedora™ and another package from Jack Coates that is customized for Mandriva. All of these are available from the download page.

    If you try to install the wrong package, it probably won't work.

  2. Install the RPMs

    rpm -ivh <shorewall rpm>

    Caution

    Some users are in the habit of using the rpm -U command for installing packages as well as for updating them. If you use that command when installing the Shorewall RPM then you will have to manually enable Shorewall startup at boot time by running chkconfig, insserv or whatever utility you use to manipulate you init symbolic links.

    Note

    Shorewall is dependent on the iproute package. Unfortunately, some distributions call this package iproute2 which will cause the installation of Shorewall to fail with the diagnostic:

    error: failed dependencies:iproute is needed by shorewall-3.2.x-1

    This problem should not occur if you are using the correct RPM package (see 1., above) but may be worked around by using the --nodeps option of rpm.

    rpm -ivh --nodeps <rpms>

    Example:

    rpm -ivh shorewall-4.3.5-0base.noarch.rpm

Install using tarball

To install Shorewall using the tarball and install script:

  1. unpack the tarballs:

    tar -jxf shorewall-4.3.5.tar.bz2
  2. cd to the shorewall directory (the version is encoded in the directory name as in shorewall-4.3.5).

  3. Type:

    ./install.sh 

    or if you are installing Shorewall or Shorewall6 version 4.4.8 or later, you may type:

    ./install.sh -s

    The -s option supresses installation of all files in /etc/shorewall except shorewall.conf. You can copy any other files you need from one of the Samples or from /usr/share/shorewall/configfiles/.

  4. If the install script was unable to configure Shorewall to be started automatically at boot, see these instructions.

Install the .deb

Important

Once you have installed the .deb packages and before you attempt to configure Shorewall, please heed the advice of Lorenzo Martignoni, former Shorewall Debian Maintainer:

For more information about Shorewall usage on Debian system please look at /usr/share/doc/shorewall-common/README.Debian provided by [the] shorewall-common Debian package.

The easiest way to install Shorewall on Debian, is to use apt-get.

First, to ensure that you are installing the latest version of Shorewall, please modify your /etc/apt/preferences:

Package: shorewall
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: shorewall-doc
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 700

Then run:

# apt-get update
# apt-get install shorewall

Once you have completed configuring Shorewall, you can enable startup at boot time by setting startup=1 in /etc/default/shorewall.

General Notes about Upgrading Shorewall

Most problems associated with upgrades come from two causes:

  • The user didn't read and follow the migration considerations in the release notes (these are also reproduced in the Shorewall Upgrade Issues).

  • The user mis-handled the /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf file during upgrade. Shorewall is designed to allow the default behavior of the product to evolve over time. To make this possible, the design assumes that you will not replace your current shorewall.conf file during upgrades. It is recommended that after you first install Shorewall that you modify /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf so as to prevent your package manager from overwriting it during subsequent upgrades (since the addition of STARTUP_ENABLED, such modification is assured since you must manually change the setting of that option). If you feel absolutely compelled to have the latest options in your shorewall.conf then you must proceed carefully. You should determine which new options have been added and you must reset their value (e.g. OPTION=""); otherwise, you will get different behavior from what you expect.

Upgrade using RPM

If you already have the Shorewall RPM installed and are upgrading to a new version:

  1. Be sure that you have the correct RPM package!

    The standard RPM package from shorewall.net and the mirrors is known to work with SUSE™, Power PPC, Trustix and TurboLinux. There is also an RPM package provided by Simon Matter that is tailored for RedHat/Fedora and another package from Jack Coates that is customized for Mandriva. If you try to upgrade using the wrong package, it probably won't work.

    Important

    Simon Matter names his 'common' rpm 'shorewall' rather than 'shorewall-common'.

  2. If you are upgrading from a 2.x or 3.x version to a 4.x version or later, please see the upgrade issues for specific instructions.

  3. Upgrade the RPM

    rpm -Uvh <shorewall rpm file> 

    Note

    Shorewall is dependent on the iproute package. Unfortunately, some distributions call this package iproute2 which will cause the upgrade of Shorewall to fail with the diagnostic:

    error: failed dependencies:iproute is needed by shorewall-3.2.1-1

    This may be worked around by using the --nodeps option of rpm.

    rpm -Uvh --nodeps <shorewall rpm> ...
  4. See if there are any incompatibilities between your configuration and the new Shorewall version and correct as necessary.

    shorewall check
  5. Restart the firewall.

    shorewall restart

Upgrade using tarball

Important

If you are upgrading from a 2.x or 3.x version to a 4.x version or later, please see the upgrade issues for specific instructions.

If you already have Shorewall installed and are upgrading to a new version using the tarball:

  1. unpack the tarball:

    tar -jxf shorewall-4.3.5.tar.bz2
  2. cd to the shorewall-perl directory (the version is encoded in the directory name as in shorewall-4.3.5).

  3. Type:

    ./install.sh

    or if you are installing Shorewall or Shorewall6 version 4.4.8 or later, you may type:

    ./install.sh -s

    The -s option supresses installation of all files in /etc/shorewall except shorewall.conf. You can copy any other files you need from one of the Samples or from /usr/share/shorewall/configfiles/.

  4. See if there are any incompatibilities between your configuration and the new Shorewall version and correct as necessary.

    shorewall check
  5. Start the firewall by typing

    shorewall start
  6. If the install script was unable to configure Shorewall to be started automatically at boot, see these instructions.

Upgrading the .deb

Warning

When the installer asks if you want to replace /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf with the new version, we strongly advise you to say No. See above.

Configuring Shorewall

You will need to edit some or all of the configuration files to match your setup. In most cases, the Shorewall QuickStart Guides contain all of the information you need.

Uninstall/Fallback

See Fallback and Uninstall.