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screend(8) System Manager's Manual screend(8) NAME screend - Internet (IP) gateway screening daemon SYNOPSIS /usr/sbin/screend [-d] [-c] [-l] [-f configfile] [-L logfile] [-s] [-r] DESCRIPTION The screend daemon is used in conjunction with the gateway screen fa- cility to decide which IP packets should be forwarded when the system is acting as an IP gateway. Only the super-user may run this program. Before using screend you must add the following line to your system configuration file: pseudo-device gwscreen After editing the system configuration file you must rebuild the ker- nel, and reboot the system. For information on rebuilding the kernel see the System Administration and the doconfig(8) reference page. When screend is started, it reads the configuration file specified (configfile) and then processes packets according to the instructions in that file. The kernel screening facility must be enabled using screenmode(8) be- fore screend has any effect. (When screening is disabled, packets are forwarded by the kernel according to its usual procedures.) It is possible to run more than one copy of screend at a time, although it is not recommended. You might do this, however, when the configura- tion file is changed. Because the configuration file is read only at program startup, you must restart screend when the file is changed. To avoid any service interruption, you should start a new instance of screend before killing the old one. FLAGS Prints large amounts of debugging information. This is not meant for normal use. Checks the syntax of the configuration file but does not actually process any packets. Turns on logging for all packets (nor- mally, packets are logged only if requested in the configuration file). Specifies the configuration file. If not specified, the default, /etc/screend.conf, is used. Specifies that logging records should be appended to the given file. There is no default logging file. This may be specified simultaneously with -s, in which case each logging record is stored by both means. Specifies that logging records should be logged using syslogd(8). Specifies that logging records should include the rule number of the configuration file rule responsible for the ac- tion logged. This is useful for debugging configuration file problems. See the section in this reference page on Rule Numbers. RESTRICTIONS IP gateways are allowed to fragment IP datagrams if they are too large to be forwarded in one piece. Only the first fragment of a datagram carries enough information to make certain kinds of accept/reject deci- sions. The screend daemon can only handle fragments if it sees the first fragment of a datagram before it sees any subsequent fragments. Also, only a limited rate of fragmented packet arrival can be accommo- dated by the program (fragmentation is, in general, a bad idea). Fi- nally, if more than one instance of screend is running, most likely this will result in significant loss of fragments. The current implementation does not forward packets that contain IP header options. This is because several of these options can be used to subvert checks based on the IP header destination address. If a host name given in an object specification has more than one IP address associated with it, screend does not understand that all these addresses should be checked. Only the first (primary) address of the host is used. This may lead to erroneous operation in some cases (pos- sibly including a security hole), so a warning is printed if the con- figuration file contains such names. (Note that you probably will not see this warning if screend is started using the init program.) EXAMPLES This following is an example of the syntax; it is not intended to be used in an actual installation: # Example configuration file default reject; for 36.0.0.0 netmask is 255.255.0.0; from subnet 36.8.0.0 to net milnet reject notify; from host nic.ddn.mil to host any accept; from host any to net arpanet tcp port telnet ac- cept; from host any to host any icmp type redirect reject log; from host any to subnet 36.10.0.0 tcp port-not reserved reject; CONFIGURATION FILE This is an informal guide to the grammar of the screend configuration file. It is intended for readers who are familiar with the basic con- cepts of the IP protocol family, including the distinction between the terms ``network'' and ``subnet.'' Lexical structure: Can either be C-style comments, delimited by /* and */ or csh- style comments begun with a number sign (#) and terminated by the end of a line. Comments do not nest. Significant in re- served words (all are lower-case). This is actually a benefit, because if a host name happens to conflict with a reserved word, you can use the host name in upper-case. Must begin with a let- ter but may contain digits, minus signs (-), dots ( . ), and un- derscores (_ ). The same is true of network, subnet, and net- mask names. Hosts can also be identified by their IP address, in dotted quad notation (for example, ``128.45.40.15''). May be in decimal or in hex (0x0 notation). Octal notation is not al- lowed. Decimal notation is the preferred method. Specified as they are found in /etc/protocols. These can also be given as numbers. For TCP or UDP, specified as they are in /etc/ser- vices. These can also be given as numbers (host byte order). Must be chosen from the following list, or given as numbers: echo echoreply sourcequench redi- rect unreachable timeexceeded parameterprob- lem timestamp timestampreply informationrequest in- formationreply addressmaskrequest addressmaskreply All white space is the same (including newlines). General syntax rules: The configuration file consists of specifications terminated by semicolons. There are three kinds of specifications: There should only be one of these (the last one is the one that counts); it specifies what action to take if no action specification matches a packet. Specifies the subnet mask used for a given network. Specifies a class of packets and the action to take when such a packet is received. Specifications can appear in any order, but the evaluation order of action specifications is the order in which they appear in the file. In BNF, this is: <configuration-file> ::= \ { <specification> | <con- figuration-file> <specification> } <specification> ::= \ { <default-ac- tion> | <subnet-spec> | <action-spec> } The syntax for a default-action specification is: <default-action> ::= default {accept | reject} [notify] [log]; Note that default accept notify; is not legal. If not specified, the default-action is reject. The syntax for subnet mask specifications is: <subnet-spec> ::= for <network> netmask is <maskval>; The <network> is either a network name or a dotted-quad address, such as ``36.0.0.0''. The number ``36'' is not a reasonable value. <Maskval> is either a name (treated as a hostname) or a dotted-quad ad- dress, such as ``255.255.255.0'' (bits are on for the network and sub- net fields.) The syntax for action specifications is: <action-spec> ::= \ from <ob- ject> to <object> {accept | reject} [notify] [log]; Such a specification says that packets flowing this way between this pair of objects (defined below) should either be accepted or rejected. If notify is specified, when a packet is rejected an ICMP error message is returned to the source. If log is specified, this packet and its disposition are logged. Conceptually, for each packet the action specifications are searched in the order they appear in the configuration file, until one matches. The specified action is then performed. If no specification matches, the default action is performed. To simplify the configuration file, the following syntax may be used to indicate that the same action should be performed on packets flowing in either direction between the specified pair of objects: <action-spec> ::= \ between <object> and <object> {accept | reject} [notify] [log] ; Note that this has the same effect as specifying the two unidirectional rules, with the forward direction listed first. An object is a specification of the source or destination of a packet. The syntax for object specifications is somewhat complex, since certain fields are optional: <object> ::= { <address-spec> | <port-spec> | \ <address-spec> <port-spec> } If the <address-spec> is not given, any host will match. If the <port- spec> is not given, any protocol and port will match. <address-spec> ::= { <net-spec> | <subnet-spec> | <host-spec> | any } <net-spec> ::= { net <name-or-addr> | net-not <name-or-addr> } <subnet-spec> ::= \ { subnet <name-or-addr> | subnet-not <name-or-addr> } <host-spec> ::= { host <name-or-addr> | host-not <name-or-addr> } The -not convention means that the object specification matches if the specified field does not have the specified value. In the following example, packets not from nic.ddn.mil are dropped. from host-not nic.ddn.mil to host any reject; The ``subnet'' and ``subnet-not'' forms match against the entire ad- dress under the subnet mask (for example, if the netmask for net 36 is ``255.255.0.0'', then ``subnet 36.8.0.0'' matches a packet address of 36.8.0.1). <name-or-addr> ::= { <name> | <dotted-quad> | any } <port-spec> ::= { proto <proto-name-or-number> \ | icmp type <type-name-or-number> \ | icmp type-not <type-name-or-number> \ | tcp port <port-name-or-number> \ | tcp port-not <port-name-or-number> \ | udp port <port-name-or-number> \ | udp port-not <port-name-or-number> } <proto-name-or-number> ::= { <name> | <number> } <type-name-or-number> ::= { <name> | <number> | any | infotype } <port-name-or-number> ::= \ { <name> | <number> | any | reserved | xserver } ``Reserved'' ports are those reserved by 4.2BSD Unix for privileged processes. ``Xserver'' ports are those used by X11 window system servers. ``Infotype'' ICMP packets are those that are purely informa- tional: echo, timestamp, information, and addressmask requests, and the corresponding replies. RULE NUMBERS If the -r option is given, log records contain a notation of the rule number responsible for the action being logged. A rule is a ``from ... to ...'' specification in the configuration file; rules are numbered in order starting with zero. Note that ``between ... and ...'' specifica- tions expand to two ``from ... to ... '' rules, each numbered individu- ally. The default action, whether explicitly stated or not, is not num- bered; it is referred to distinctively in the log. DIAGNOSTICS During argument processing and configuration file parsing, various di- agnostics may be issued. During normal operation, only serious inter- nal inconsistencies result in diagnostics. (See the Restrictions sec- tion about warning messages in some borderline cases.) Except in debug mode (-d), most diagnostics are logged using syslogd(8). Once an hour, a statistics report is made using syslogd(8) that shows the number of packets processed since the program was started, the hit rate of an internal cache buffer, and the number of packets dropped be- cause they arrived too rapidly. FILES Default configuration file RELATED INFORMATION Functions: screen(2) Commands: screenmode(8), screenstat(8) delim off screend(8)