strongSwan Manager » History » Version 16

Version 15 (Martin Willi, 01.04.2008 09:26) → Version 16/27 (Martin Willi, 02.04.2008 15:35)

= strongSwan Manager =

'''strongSwan Manager''' is a web application which interacts with the IKEv2 daemon [wiki:charon] via an XML interface running the [wiki:SMP] information query and control protocol.

'''''strongSwan Manager is still under heavy development and not intended for production use! '''''

== Building strongSwan Manager ==

The manager is based on a FastCGI application and uses the !ClearSilver templating engine to build the web sites. Thus you will need
* !ClearSilver including headers (Debian: clearsilver-dev)
* FastCGI headers and library (Debian: libfcgi-dev)
* SQLite3 with headers (Debian: libsqlite3-dev)

The FastCGI communicates through a Unix socket, which is group-writable. So the FastCGI user has to be in the group under which the daemon runs.
As you don't want to add that user to group 0, it's highly recommended to run strongSwan under a [wiki:nonRoot non-root] group. Create a group for that purpose:
groupadd vpn

To build the manager, add the following options to ./configure
--enable-smp --enable-manager --with-gid=`id -g vpn`

== Setting up Apache 2 ==
As the manager uses FastCGI, any web server may be used to host the application. Here we look at the configuration of Apache2 using ''mod-fastcgi''.

In addition to the Apache2 web server itself, you'll need
* mod-fastcgi (Debian: libapache2-mod-fastcgi)

Make sure to enable the new module and that the following fastcgi option is set (e.g. in mods-enabled/fastcgi.conf):
AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
Static files are directly served by Apache, everything else is served by the FastCGI application. Add these two lines to your website:
Alias /manager/static /usr/local/libexec/ipsec/templates/static
ScriptAlias /manager /usr/local/libexec/ipsec/manager.fcgi
Adapt these paths according to your ''--prefix'' or ''--libexecdir'' [wiki:InstallationDocumentation installation] settings.

Now you'll need to add the FastCGI user to group which is used by strongSwan:
usermod -a -G vpn www-data
This setup is only recommended if you don't run other websites, as it allows the apache user to control strongSwan. You really should consider a more
secure setup (e.g. separate user for Manager, suexec, etc.)!

== Configure the manager ==

The manager uses a small database to do user authorization and gateway management. We have no frontend yet, so you'll need to set up this database yourself. It is tested with SQLite, but MySQL should work if you set up the database properly.

The manager uses the ''strongswan.conf'' configuration file form ''/usr/local/libexec/ipsec'':
manager {
# path to your database
database = sqlite:///usr/local/libexec/ipsec/manager.db
# disable libfast debugging
debug = false
# number of threads to create in libfast
threads = 5
# session timeout
timeout = 600
# socket, if you want to run manager on console to debug. No socket lets apache create manager instances
#socket = /var/lib/apache2/fastcgi/manager
To create the database tables and some test data, have a look at the [browser:/trunk/src/manager/sqlite.sql SQLite SQL script]. This script creates a user ''strongSwan'' with the password ''strongSwan''.
To create a SQLite database, use something like:
wget -q -O - | sqlite3 /usr/local/libexec/ipsec/manager.db
chmod g+w /usr/local/libexec/ipsec/manager.db
chgrp vpn /usr/local/libexec/ipsec/manager.db
The password is hashed in the configuration database. To update it to ''USERNAME'' and ''PASSWORD'' use something like this (on bash):
echo "update users set username = 'USERNAME'", password = "'`echo -n "USERNAMEPASSWORD" \
| sha1sum | awk '{ print $1 }'`';" | sqlite3 /usr/local/libexec/ipsec/manager.db
Don't forget to set up write permissions for the apache user.

== Logging in ==

Surf to
and have fun.