Ubuntu Manpage: uif — Tool for generating optimized packetfilter rules

NAME

     uif — Tool for generating optimized packetfilter rules

SYNOPSIS

     uif [-6] [-dptW] [-b base] [-c config_file] [-C config_file] [-D bind_dn] [-r ruleset]
         [-R ruleset] [-s server] [-T time] [-w password]

DESCRIPTION

     This manual page documents  the uif command. It is used to generate optimized iptables(8)
     packetfilter rules, using a simple description file specified by the user. Generated rules
     are provided in iptables-save(8) style.  uif can be used to read or write rulesets from or
     to LDAP servers in your network, which provides a global storing mechanism. (LDAP support is
     currently broken, note that you need to include the uif.schema to your slapd configuration
     in order to use it.)

     uif.conf(5) provides an easy way to specify rules, without exact knowledge of the iptables
     syntax. It provides groups and aliases to make your packetfilter human readable.

     Keep in mind that uif is intended to assist you when designing firewalls, but will not tell
     you what to filter.

Options

The options are as follows:

-6 Turn on IPv6 mode so as to manipulate ip6tables rules. Default configuration file
is changed to /etc/uif/uif6.conf see -c below. It should be noted that nat rules are
silently ignored if -6 is used.

-b base
Specify the base to act on when using LDAP based firewall configuration. uif will
look in the subtree ou=filter, ou=sysconfig, base for your rulesets.

-c config_file
This option specifies the configuration file to be read by uif. See uif.conf(5) for
detailed information on the fileformat. It defaults to /etc/uif/uif.conf.

-C config_file
When reading configuration data from other sources than specified with -c you may
want to convert this information into a textual configuration file. This options
writes the parsed config back to the file specified by config_file.

-d Clears all firewall rules immediatly.

-D bind_dn
If a special account is needed to bind to the LDAP database, the account dn can be
specified at this point. Note: you should use this when writing an existing
configuration to the LDAP. Reading the configuration may be done with an anonymous
bind.

-p Prints rules specified in the configuration to stdout. This option is mainly used
for debugging the rule simplifier.

-r ruleset
Specifies the name of the ruleset to load from the LDAP database. Remember to use
the -b option to set the base. Rulesets are stored using the following dn: cn=name,
ou=rulesets, ou=filter, ou=sysconfig, base, where name will be replaced by the
ruleset specified.

-R ruleset
Specifies the name of the ruleset to write to the LDAP database. This option can be
used to convert i.e. a textual configuration to a LDAP based ruleset. Like using -r
you've to specify the LDAP base to use. Target is cn=name, ou=rulesets, ou=filter,
ou=sysconfig, base, where name will be replaced by the ruleset specified.

-s server
This option specified the LDAP server to be used.

-t This option is used to validate the packetfilter configuration without applying any
rules. Mainly used for debugging.

-T time
When changing your packetfiltering rules remotely, it is useful to have a test
option. Specify this one to apply your rules for a period of time (in seconds).
After that the original rules will be restored.

-w password
When connecting to the LDAP server, you may need to authenticate via passwords. If
you really need to specify a password, use this option, otherwise use -W and enter
it interactivly.

-W Activate interactive password query for LDAP authentication.

uif is meant to leave the packetfilter rules in a defined state, so if something went wrong
during the initialisation, or uif is aborted by the user, the rules that were active before
starting will be restored.

Normally you will not need to call this binary directly. Use the init script instead, since
it does the most common steps for you.

FILES

     Configuration files are located in /etc/uif.

AUTHOR