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Revision: 1.13
Committed: Sat Mar 26 03:16:23 2005 UTC (19 years, 2 months ago) by pcg
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rel-1_9
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File Contents

# Content
1 =head1 NAME
2
3 gvpe.conf - configuration file for the GNU VPE daemon
4
5 =head1 SYNOPSIS
6
7 udp-port = 407
8 mtu = 1492
9 ifname = vpn0
10
11 node = branch1
12 hostname = 1.2.3.4
13
14 node = branch2
15 hostname = www.example.net
16 udp-port = 500 # this host uses a different udp-port
17
18 node = branch3
19 connect = ondemand
20
21 =head1 DESCRIPTION
22
23 The gvpe config file consists of a series of lines that contain C<variable
24 = value> pairs. Empty lines are ignored. Comments start with a C<#> and
25 extend to the end of the line. They can be used on their own lines, or
26 after any directives. Whitespace is allowed around the C<=> sign or after
27 values, but not within the variable names or values themselves.
28
29 The only exception to the above is the "on" directive that can prefix any
30 C<name = value> setting and will only "execute" it on the named node, or
31 (if the nodename starts with "!") on all nodes except the named one.
32
33 name = value
34 on branch1 loglevel = noise
35 on !branch2 connect = ondemand
36
37 All settings are executed "in order", that is, later settings of the same
38 variable overwrite earlier ones.
39
40 =head1 ANATOMY OF A CONFIG FILE
41
42 Usually, a config file starts with global settings (like the udp port to
43 listen on), followed by node-specific sections that begin with a C<node =
44 nickname> line.
45
46 Every node that is part of the network must have a section that starts
47 with C<node = nickname>. The number and order of the nodes is important
48 and must be the same on all hosts. It is not uncommon for node sections to
49 be completely empty - if the default values are right.
50
51 Node-specific settings can be used at any time. If used before the first
52 node section they will set the default values for all following nodes.
53
54 =head1 CONFIG VARIABLES
55
56 =head2 GLOBAL SETTINGS
57
58 Global settings will affect the behaviour of the running gvpe daemon, that
59 is, they are in some sense node-specific (config files can set different
60 values on different nodes using C<on>), but will affect the behaviour of
61 the gvpe daemon and all connections it creates.
62
63 =over 4
64
65 =item dns-forw-host = hostname/ip
66
67 The dns server to forward dns requests to for the DNS tunnel protocol
68 (default: C<127.0.0.1>, changing it is highly recommended).
69
70 =item dns-forw-port = port-number
71
72 The port where the C<dns-forw-host> is to be contacted (default: C<53>,
73 which is fine in most cases).
74
75 =item dns-max-outstanding = integer-number-of-requests
76
77 The maximum number of outstanding DNS transport requests
78 (default: C<100>). GVPE will never issue more requests then the given
79 limit without receiving replies. In heavily overloaded situations it might
80 help to set this to a low number (e.g. C<3> or even C<1>) to limit the
81 number of parallel requests.
82
83 The default should be working ok for most links.
84
85 =item dns-overlap-factor = float
86
87 The DNS transport uses the minimum request latency (B<min_latency>) seen
88 during a connection as it's timing base. This factor (default: C<0.5>,
89 must be > 0) is multiplied by B<min_latency> to get the maximum sending
90 rate (= minimum send interval), i.e. a factor of C<1> means that a new
91 request might be generated every B<min_latency> seconds, which means on
92 average there should only ever be one outstanding request. A factor of
93 C<0.5> means that GVPE will send requests twice as often as the minimum
94 latency measured.
95
96 For congested or picky dns forwarders you could use a value nearer to or
97 exceeding C<1>.
98
99 The default should be working ok for most links.
100
101 =item dns-send-interval = send-interval-in-seconds
102
103 The minimum send interval (= maximum rate) that the DNS transport will
104 use to send new DNS requests. GVPE will not exceed this rate even when
105 the latency is very low. The default is C<0.01>, which means GVPE will
106 not send more than 100 DNS requests per connection per second. For
107 high-bandwidth links you could go lower, e.g. to C<0.001> or so. For
108 congested or rate-limited links, you might want to go higher, say C<0.1>,
109 C<0.2> or even higher.
110
111 The default should be working ok for most links.
112
113 =item dns-timeout-factor = float
114
115 Factor to multiply the C<min_latency> (see C<dns-overlap-factor>) by to
116 get request timeouts. The default of C<8> means that the DNS transport
117 will resend the request when no reply has been received for longer than
118 eight times the minimum (= expected) latency, assuming the request or
119 reply has been lost.
120
121 For congested links a higher value might be necessary (e.g. C<30>). If the
122 link is very stable lower values (e.g. C<2>) might work nicely. Values
123 near or below C<1> makes no sense whatsoever.
124
125 The default should be working ok for most links.
126
127 =item if-up = relative-or-absolute-path
128
129 Sets the path of a script that should be called immediately after the
130 network interface is initialized (but not neccessarily up). The following
131 environment variables are passed to it (the values are just examples).
132
133 Variables that have the same value on all nodes:
134
135 =over 4
136
137 =item CONFBASE=/etc/gvpe
138
139 The configuration base directory.
140
141 =item IFNAME=vpn0
142
143 The network interface to initialize.
144
145 =item IFTYPE=native # or tincd
146
147 =item IFSUBTYPE=linux # or freebsd, darwin etc..
148
149 The interface type (C<native> or C<tincd>) and the subtype (usually the
150 OS name in lowercase) that this GVPE was configured for. Can be used to
151 select the correct syntax to use for network-related commands.
152
153 =item MTU=1436
154
155 The MTU to set the interface to. You can use lower values (if done
156 consistently on all hosts), but this is usually ineffective.
157
158 =item NODES=5
159
160 The number of nodes in this GVPE network.
161
162 =back
163
164 Variables that are node-specific and with values pertaining to the node
165 running this GVPE:
166
167 =over 4
168
169 =item IFUPDATA=string
170
171 The value of the configuration directive C<if-up-data>.
172
173 =item MAC=fe:fd:80:00:00:01
174
175 The MAC address the network interface has to use.
176
177 Might be used to initialize interfaces on platforms where GVPE does not
178 do this automatically. Please see the C<gvpe.osdep(5)> manpage for
179 platform-specific information.
180
181 =item NODENAME=branch1
182
183 The nickname of the node.
184
185 =item NODEID=1
186
187 The numerical node ID of the node running this instance of GVPE. The first
188 node mentioned in the config file gets ID 1, the second ID 2 and so on.
189
190 =back
191
192 In addition, all node-specific variables (except C<NODEID>) will be
193 available with a postfix of C<_nodeid>, which contains the value for that
194 node, e.g. the C<MAC_1> variable contains the MAC address of node #1, while
195 the C<NODENAME_22> variable contains the name of node #22.
196
197 Here is a simple if-up script:
198
199 #!/bin/sh
200 ip link set $IFNAME up
201 [ $NODENAME = branch1 ] && ip addr add 10.0.0.1 dev $IFNAME
202 [ $NODENAME = branch2 ] && ip addr add 10.1.0.1 dev $IFNAME
203 ip route add 10.0.0.0/8 dev $IFNAME
204
205 More complicated examples (using routing to reduce arp traffic) can be
206 found in the etc/ subdirectory of the distribution.
207
208 =item ifname = devname
209
210 Sets the tun interface name to the given name. The default is OS-specific
211 and most probably something like C<tun0>.
212
213 =item ifpersist = yes|true|on | no|false|off
214
215 Should the tun/tap device be made persistent, that is, should the device
216 stay up even when gvpe exits? Some versions of the tunnel device have
217 problems sending packets when gvpe is restarted in persistent mode, so
218 if the connections can be established but you cannot send packets from
219 the local node, try to set this to C<off> and do an ifconfig down on the
220 device.
221
222 =item ip-proto = numerical-ip-protocol
223
224 Sets the protocol number to be used for the rawip protocol. This is a
225 global option because all hosts must use the same protocol, and since
226 there are no port numbers, you cannot easily run more than one gvpe
227 instance using the same protocol, nor can you share the protocol with
228 other programs.
229
230 The default is 47 (GRE), which has a good chance of tunneling through
231 firewalls (but note that the rawip protocol is not GRE compatible). Other
232 common choices are 50 (IPSEC, ESP), 51 (IPSEC, AH), 4 (IPIP tunnels) or 98
233 (ENCAP, rfc1241)
234
235 =item http-proxy-host = hostname/ip
236
237 The C<http-proxy-*> family of options are only available if gvpe was
238 compiled with the C<--enable-http-proxy> option and enable tunneling of
239 tcp connections through a http proxy server.
240
241 C<http-proxy-host> and C<http-proxy-port> should specify the hostname and
242 port number of the proxy server. See C<http-proxy-loginpw> if your proxy
243 requires authentication.
244
245 Please note that gvpe will still try to resolve all hostnames in the
246 configuration file, so if you are behind a proxy without access to a dns
247 server better use numerical IP addresses.
248
249 To make best use of this option disable all protocols except tcp in your
250 config file and make sure your routers (or all other hosts) are listening
251 on a port that the proxy allows (443, https, is a common choice).
252
253 If you have a router, connecting to it will suffice. Otherwise tcp must be
254 enabled on all hosts.
255
256 Example:
257
258 http-proxy-host = proxy.example.com
259 http-proxy-port = 3128 # 8080 is another common choice
260 http-proxy-auth = schmorp:grumbeere
261
262 =item http-proxy-port = proxy-tcp-port
263
264 The port where your proxy server listens.
265
266 =item http-proxy-auth = login:password
267
268 The optional login and password used to authenticate to the proxy server,
269 seperated by a literal colon (C<:>). Only basic authentication is
270 currently supported.
271
272 =item keepalive = seconds
273
274 Sets the keepalive probe interval in seconds (default: C<60>). After this
275 many seconds of inactivity the daemon will start to send keepalive probe
276 every 5 seconds until it receives a reply from the other end. If no reply
277 is received within 30 seconds, the peer is considered unreachable and the
278 connection is closed.
279
280 =item loglevel = noise|trace|debug|info|notice|warn|error|critical
281
282 Set the logging level. Connection established messages are logged at level
283 C<info>, notable errors are logged with C<error>. Default is C<info>.
284
285 =item mtu = bytes
286
287 Sets the maximum MTU that should be used on outgoing packets (basically
288 the MTU of the outgoing interface) The daemon will automatically calculate
289 maximum overhead (e.g. udp header size, encryption blocksize...) and pass
290 this information to the C<if-up> script.
291
292 Recommended values are 1500 (ethernet), 1492 (pppoe), 1472 (pptp).
293
294 This value must be the minimum of the mtu values of all hosts.
295
296 =item node = nickname
297
298 Not really a config setting but introduces a node section. The nickname is
299 used to select the right configuration section and must be passed as an
300 argument to the gvpe daemon.
301
302 =item node-up = relative-or-absolute-path
303
304 Sets a command (default: no script) that should be called whenever a
305 connection is established (even on rekeying operations). In addition to
306 all the variables passed to C<if-up> scripts, the following environment
307 variables will be set:
308
309 =over 4
310
311 =item DESTNODE=branch2
312
313 The name of the remote node.
314
315 =item DESTID=2
316
317 The node id of the remote node.
318
319 =item DESTIP=188.13.66.8
320
321 The numerical IP address of the remote host (gvpe accepts connections from
322 everywhere, as long as the other host can authenticate itself).
323
324 =item DESTPORT=655 # deprecated
325
326 The UDP port used by the other side.
327
328 =item STATE=UP
329
330 Node-up scripts get called with STATE=UP, node-down scripts get called
331 with STATE=DOWN.
332
333 =back
334
335 Here is a nontrivial example that uses nsupdate to update the name => ip
336 mapping in some dns zone:
337
338 #!/bin/sh
339 {
340 echo update delete $DESTNODE.lowttl.example.net. a
341 echo update add $DESTNODE.lowttl.example.net. 1 in a $DESTIP
342 echo
343 } | nsupdate -d -k $CONFBASE:key.example.net.
344
345 =item node-down = relative-or-absolute-path
346
347 Same as C<node-up>, but gets called whenever a connection is lost.
348
349 =item pid-file = path
350
351 The path to the pid file to check and create
352 (default: C<LOCALSTATEDIR/run/gvpe.pid>).
353
354 =item private-key = relative-path-to-key
355
356 Sets the path (relative to the config directory) to the private key
357 (default: C<hostkey>). This is a printf format string so every C<%> must
358 be doubled. A single C<%s> is replaced by the hostname, so you could
359 use paths like C<hostkeys/%s> to fetch the files at the location where
360 C<gvpectrl> puts them.
361
362 Since only the private key file of the current node is used and the
363 private key file should be kept secret per-host to avoid spoofings, it is
364 not recommended to use this feature.
365
366 =item rekey = seconds
367
368 Sets the rekeying interval in seconds (default: C<3600>). Connections are
369 reestablished every C<rekey> seconds.
370
371 =back
372
373 =head2 NODE SPECIFIC SETTINGS
374
375 The following settings are node-specific, that is, every node can have
376 different settings, even within the same gvpe instance. Settings that are
377 executed before the first node section set the defaults, settings that are
378 executed within a node section only apply to the given node.
379
380 =over 4
381
382 =item compress = yes|true|on | no|false|off
383
384 Wether to compress data packets sent to this host (default: C<yes>).
385 Compression is really cheap even on slow computers and has no size
386 overhead at all, so enabling this is a good idea.
387
388 =item connect = ondemand | never | always | disabled
389
390 Sets the connect mode (default: C<always>). It can be C<always> (always
391 try to establish and keep a connection to the given host), C<never>
392 (never initiate a connection to the given host, but accept connections),
393 C<ondemand> (try to establish a connection on the first packet sent, and
394 take it down after the keepalive interval) or C<disabled> (node is bad,
395 don't talk to it).
396
397 =item dns-domain = domain-suffix
398
399 The DNS domain suffix that points to the DNS tunnel server for this node.
400
401 The domain must point to a NS record that points to the I<dns-hostname>,
402 i.e.
403
404 dns-domainname = tunnel.example.net
405 dns-hostname = tunnel-server.example.net
406
407 Corresponds to the following DNS entries in the C<example.net> domain:
408
409 tunnel.example.net. NS tunnel-server.example.net.
410 tunnel-server.example.net. A 13.13.13.13
411
412 =item dns-hostname = hostname/ip
413
414 The address to bind the DNS tunnel socket to, similar to the C<hostname>,
415 but for the DNS tunnel protocol only. Default: C<0.0.0.0>, but that might
416 change.
417
418 =item dns-port = port-number
419
420 The port to bind the DNS tunnel socket to. Must be C<53> on DNS tunnel servers.
421
422 =item enable-dns = yes|true|on | no|false|off
423
424 See gvpe.protocol(7) for a description of the DNS transport
425 protocol. Avoid this protocol if you can.
426
427 Enable the DNS tunneling protocol on this node, either as server or as
428 client. Support for this transport protocol is only available when gvpe
429 was compiled using the C<--enable-dns> option.
430
431 =item enable-icmp = yes|true|on | no|false|off
432
433 See gvpe.protocol(7) for a description of the ICMP transport protocol.
434
435 Enable the ICMP transport using icmp packets of type C<icmp-type> on this
436 node.
437
438 =item enable-rawip = yes|true|on | no|false|off
439
440 See gvpe.protocol(7) for a description of the RAW IP transport protocol.
441
442 Enable the RAW IPv4 transport using the C<ip-proto> protocol
443 (default: C<no>).
444
445 =item enable-tcp = yes|true|on | no|false|off
446
447 See gvpe.protocol(7) for a description of the TCP transport protocol.
448
449 Enable the TCPv4 transport using the C<tcp-port> port
450 (default: C<no>). Support for this transport protocol is only available
451 when gvpe was compiled using the C<--enable-tcp> option.
452
453 =item enable-udp = yes|true|on | no|false|off
454
455 See gvpe.protocol(7) for a description of the UDP transport protocol.
456
457 Enable the UDPv4 transport using the C<udp-port> port (default: C<no>,
458 unless no other protocol is enabled for a node, in which case this
459 protocol is enabled automatically).
460
461 NOTE: Please specify C<enable-udp = yes> if you want t use it even though
462 it might get switched on automatically, as some future version might
463 default to another default protocol.
464
465 =item icmp-type = integer
466
467 Sets the type value to be used for outgoing (and incoming) packets sent
468 via the ICMP transport.
469
470 The default is C<0> (which is C<echo-reply>, also known as
471 "ping-replies"). Other useful values include C<8> (C<echo-request>, a.k.a.
472 "ping") and C<11> (C<time-exceeded>), but any 8-bit value can be used.
473
474 =item if-up-data = value
475
476 The value specified using this directive will be passed to the C<if-up>
477 script in the environment variable C<IFUPDATA>.
478
479 =item inherit-tos = yes|true|on | no|false|off
480
481 Wether to inherit the TOS settings of packets sent to the tunnel when
482 sending packets to this node (default: C<yes>). If set to C<yes> then
483 outgoing tunnel packets will have the same TOS setting as the packets sent
484 to the tunnel device, which is usually what you want.
485
486 =item max-retry = positive-number
487
488 The maximum interval in seconds (default: C<3600>, one hour) between
489 retries to establish a connection to this node. When a connection cannot
490 be established, gvpe uses exponential backoff capped at this value. It's
491 sometimes useful to set this to a much lower value (e.g. C<120>) on
492 connections to routers that usually are stable but sometimes are down, to
493 assure quick reconnections even after longer downtimes.
494
495 =item router-priority = 0 | 1 | positive-number>=2
496
497 Sets the router priority of the given host (default: C<0>, disabled). If
498 some host tries to connect to another host without a hostname, it asks
499 the router host for it's IP address. The router host is the one with the
500 highest priority larger than C<1> that is currently reachable.
501
502 Make sure all hosts always connect (C<connect = always>) to the router
503 hosts, otherwise connecting to them might be impossible.
504
505 The special value C<1> allows other hosts to route through the router
506 host, but they will never route through it by default. The value C<0>
507 disables routing. The idea behind this is that some hosts can, if
508 required, bump the C<router-priority> setting to higher than C<1> in their
509 local config to route through specific hosts. If C<router-priority> is
510 C<0>, then routing will be refused, so C<1> serves as a "enable, but do
511 not use by default" switch.
512
513 =item tcp-port = port-number
514
515 Similar to C<udp-port> (default: C<655>), but sets the TCP port number.
516
517 =item udp-port = port-number
518
519 Sets the port number used by the UDP protocol (default: C<655>, not
520 officially assigned by IANA!).
521
522 =back
523
524 =head1 CONFIG DIRECTORY LAYOUT
525
526 The default (or recommended) directory layout for the config directory is:
527
528 =over 4
529
530 =item X<gvpe.conf>
531
532 The config file.
533
534 =item X<if-up>
535
536 The if-up script
537
538 =item X<node-up>, X<node-down>
539
540 If used the node up or node-down scripts.
541
542 =item X<hostkey>
543
544 The private key (taken from C<hostkeys/nodename>) of the current host.
545
546 =item X<pubkey/nodename>
547
548 The public keys of the other nodes, one file per node.
549
550 =back
551
552 =head1 SEE ALSO
553
554 gvpe(5), gvpe(8), gvpectrl(8).
555
556 =head1 AUTHOR
557
558 Marc Lehmann <gvpe@plan9.de>
559