How to userspace l7 filter on Ubuntu

L7-filter is a classifier for Linux's Netfilter that identifies packets based on application layer data. It can classify packets as Kazaa, HTTP, Jabber, Citrix, Bittorrent, FTP, Gnucleus, eDonkey2000, etc., regardless of port. It complements existing classifiers that match on IP address, port numbers and so on. L7 filter is usefull if you want to limit or monitor different network protocols in your network. This article assumes that you have the basic knowledge how to use the terminal and set up a linux router.

This how to describes the step by step installation of Userspace L7 filter on Ubuntu Linux.

Installation

1. Method:

Add my PPA to you repository

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kuscsik/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/kuscsik/ubuntu hardy main

and install l7-filter-userspace l7-protocols

2. Method:

• Add the universe repositories to your sources list.
• Install some necessary packages
  
sudo apt-get install g++ build-essential
sudo apt-get install libnetfilter-conntrack-dev libnetfilter-conntrack1 libnetfilter-queue-dev libnetfilter-queue1


• Download the source package of userspace l7 filter and the archive of the protocol definitions.
• Unpack the protocol definitions and install it by
  
  sudo make install
  
  
• Unpack the userspace l7 filter, compile and install it
  
# tar -xzf l7-filter-userspace-v0.10.tar.gz
# cd l7-filter-userspace-v0.10/


• Download this patch

# wget http://kuscsik.com/download/patch_l7_Zoltan_Kuscsik.patch

# cd l7-filter-userspace-v0.10
# patch -p1 < ../patch_l7_Zoltan_Kuscsik.patch
  # /configure
# make


• Load a necessary kernel module and add to the automatically loaded modules
  
# sudo modprobe ip_conntrack_netlink
# sudo bash -c "echo ip_conntrack_netlink >> /etc/modules"

  

Testing

Let assume that you have a Ubuntu server with two network devices with WAN device eth0 and LAN device eth1. With iptables we redirect forwarded packages to the userspace

# sudo iptables -A FORWARD -j NFQUEUE --queue-num 0

Create a l7 config file in your favorite editor

sudo vi /etc/l7_filter.conf

and add some protocols

ssh 5
bittorrent 6

The list of all supported protocols can be found here. From the config we can read that l7 filter will assign the mark 5 to the packets of ssh protocol and it will sign with mark 6 the bittorrent packets.

Start l7 filter in debuging mode

l7-filter -vv -f /etc/l7_filter.conf

On your LAN client run a bittorrent session or make an ssh connection to an external server. If everything goes fine l7-filter will recognize your traffic and inform you trough the standard output.

Usage

Now, we are able to mark the connections. The next step is to set up the traffic control. For this you can use the HTB packet sheduller.
[to be improved...]

You can set up the start of l7-filter automatically by adding a line to /etc/rc.local

nohup /usr/local/bin/l7-filter -f /etc/l7-filter.conf &

Warning! This is a dangerous solution on a production server. If the program terminates unexpectedly your users will be cut off from the internet. You should set up some kind of monitoring for the l7-filter process.
You will notice, that the filter uses significant amount of system resources. You can save some computation time and memory by improving the forwarding rule.
For example, if you plan to shape the outgoing peer-to-peer connections it is a good idea to add some port specific selection to the userspace redirection rule

sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 1024: -j NFQUEUE --queue-num 0

which will pass to the filter only the packets targeting higher ports than 1024.

I will improve this article, so please subscribe to the feed. If
you have any question or comments don't hesitate to drop me a message.

Please read the home page of Layer 7 Userspace

http://l7-filter.sourceforge.net/HOWTO-userspace

Especially the section why it is a bad idea to use the packet filtering for service blocking.