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Keywords: stops, hangs, dies

We're getting strange firewall freezes for certain machines at random
times.  We've been using IPCHAINS for only a few months (I set it up to
use Ian Hall-Beyer's IPCHAINS-FIREWALL script) and it's been trouble ever
since.  (With our old machine, we were running ipfwadm and never had these
sort of problems -- just another problem due to time-outs of masqueraded
connections.)

At first, I thought it was the NIC.  Then, I thought it was the switch.
Now, I think it has something to do with IPCHAINS and its masquerading and
filtering.

Here's the symptom.  One of the users within the firewall has an SSH
connection and an XEmacs connection (running on Linux RedHat 6.1).  His
connection will freeze.  From my computer (running Debian GNU/Linux), I
can reach the firewall machine (via SSH) with no problem.  From the
firewall machine (10.1.1.1), when I try ping-ing his computer, it says:

>From firewall (10.1.1.1): Destination Host Unreachable

After about 1 minute, pings suddenly start working, but the connection
remains frozen for about 1 minute.  After that, his connection unfreezes
and packets go through fine.

I did an "ipchains -n -M -L" and saw his connection stayed up through the
whole ordeal.

Also, very strangely, the freezing problem seems to go away immediately
when I unplug the patch cable and plug it back in.  (That's why I thought
it was a hardware problem at first.)

I disabled the "ip_masq_portfw" and "ip_masq_autofw" modules, in case that
was the problem.

The modifications I made to the Ian Hall-Beyer's original IPCHAINS-FIREWALL
script seemed rudimentary:

1) Changed LOCALIF from "ppp0" to "eth1".
2) Changed INTERNALNET to "10.1.1.0/24".
3) Changed the timeouts to
   $IPCHAINS -M -S 61200 0 7200
   just before the "-j MASQ" stuff.
4) Enabled the "$IPCHAINS . . . LOCALNET 22" line to allow SSH
   connections.
5) Enabled the "$IPCHAINS . . . LOCALNET 113" line to allow identd
   connections.

(I needed #3 due to our back-up software.)

Sophisticated masqueraded  network connections like RealAudio and
IRC all work fine most of the time.

The firewall machine is running Linux RedHat 6.1, which is 2.2.14-5.0 of
the kernel.

Anyone have any ideas how to stop this freezing problem?

-- 
Robert Brown                | Links2Go/Continuum Software, Inc.
Programmer                  |  800 West Cummings Park, Ste 2900
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] |             Woburn, MA 01801-6504
voice: 781-932-8400 x100    |                 fax: 781-932-2558


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