This is an stunnel module that provides support for multiple tunnels, each with its own initscript.
stunnel is software that enables you to add an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to an existing TCP service, re-presenting the service on a different TCP port, but wrapped in SSL. stunnel also allows you to create a secure tunnel between two different computers so that a TCP service that is present on one computer appears on the other computer. This allows you to securely split onto two computers, a TCP client and server that are currently working on a single computer, without having to reconfigure either the client or the server.
stunnel is a system service that is automatically re-established if the tunnel software crashes. This makes it more robust than a manually-created SSH tunnel.
In order to create a tunnel using stunnel, you must first create a digital
certificate. This can be done using the shell openssl command
(See http://www.openssl.org/). Here is an example:
openssl genrsa -out key.pem 2048
openssl req -new -x509 -key key.pem -out cert.pem -days 1095
Country: AU
State: South Australia
Locality: Adelaide
Organisation: Megacorp Pty Ltd
Common Name: db.megacorp.com
Email Address: blackhole@megacorp.com
cat key.pem cert.pem >> stunnel.pem
For more information, see https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-an-ssl-tunnel-using-stunnel-on-ubuntu or go crazy Googling.
Install the .pem file in the Files directory of your Puppet module. You can then
instruct Puppet to install it anywhere you like. Here is an example of how to use
Puppet to install it in the /etc/ssl/certs directory:
file { '/etc/ssl/certs/mysql_stunnel.pem':
ensure => 'file',
owner => 'root',
group => 'root',
mode => 700,
source => 'puppet:///modules/mymodule/mysql_stunnel.pem',
before => Stunnel::Tun['mysql_stunnel'],
}
The before attribute ensures that the `.pem' file is present before
Puppet attempts to create a tunnel.
This example shows how to use stunnel to take an unencrypted imap email
service on TCP port 143, and present it as an encrypted imap email service
on TCP port 993. The encrypted connection employs the digital certificate
at /etc/certs/stunnel-imaps.pem. Here is the Puppet configuration to do this:
include stunnel
stunnel::tun { 'imaps':
accept => '993',
connect => 'localhost:143',
options => ['NO_SSLv2', 'NO_SSLv3'],
cert => '/etc/certs/stunnel-imaps.pem',
client => false,
}
This example shows how to create an stunnel tunnel between two different computers. In particular, this example shows the common case of creating a secure connection between a MySQL client on one computer (the "client computer") and a MySQL server on a second computer (the "server computer"). However, you should be able to adapt the example to work for any non-MySQL TCP connection.
In this example, an stunnel service is installed on the client computer and also
separately on the server computer. The same .pem certificate file is provided
to each of them. The two services communicate with each other to establish the
connection from a port on the client computer to a port on the server computer.
In this example, a MySQL client connects to the MySQL server by connecting to
TCP port 3306 on the client computer, just as if the MySQL server were running
on the client computer. The stunnel client service on the client computer then
accepts the connection and connects to TCP port 3307 on the server computer
using an encrypted protocol that employs the certificate in the .pem file on
the server computer. On the server computer, an stunnel server service accepts
the connection to TCP port 3307 and connects to TCP port 3306 on the server
computer where the MySQL database server is waiting to accept the connection.
The result is that the client thinks that the server is on its computer, and
the server thinks that the client is on its computer.
For the purposes of this example, we assume that the .pem certificate file
has been installed at
/etc/ssl/certs/mysql_stunnel.pem
on the server computer. See an earlier section for how to generate a certificate file.
To create the tunnel, we install an stunnel client service on the client computer
and an stunnel server service on the server computer. Here is the Puppet configuration
to establish the stunnel service on the client computer. This configuration should
only be applied to the client computer. Substitute the name, or IP address, of your
server computer for db.domain.com.
include stunnel
stunnel::tun { 'mysql_stunnel':
accept => '3306', # The stunnel client will listen to this port.
connect => "db.domain.com:3307", # The stunnel client will connect to this port.
options => ['NO_SSLv2, 'NO_SSLv3'],
client => true,
}
Here is the Puppet configuration to establish the stunnel service on the server computer. This configuration should only be applied to the server computer.
include stunnel
stunnel::tun { 'mysql_stunnel':
accept => '3307', # The stunnel server will listen to this port.
connect => '3306', # The stunnel server will connect to this port.
# Note: I tried 'localhost:3306', but the 'localhost' stopped it from working.
options => ['NO_SSLv2', 'NO_SSLv3'],
cert => '/etc/ssl/certs/mysql_stunnel.pem',
client => false,
}
In this two-computer example, the client attribute distinguishes an stunnel client installation from an stunnel server installation. This is critical because stunnel clients and servers do asymmetric things. The stunnel client on the client computer accepts MySQL connections on TCP port 3306 and creates an encrypted connection to TCP port 3307 on the server computer. The stunnel server on the server computer accepts the encrypted TCP connection on TCP port 3307 and has an encrypted conversation. It connects to local TCP port 3306 and transmits the decrypted data.
A significant advantage of using stunnel in this way is that neither the MySQL client on the client computer, nor the MySQL server on the server computer need to be configured any differently to make it work. This means that if you have a MySQL client process and a MySQL server process working on a single computer, you can use stunnel to split them over two computers without compromising security.
In the two-computer example above, the solution is presented as an stunnel client/server pair as if they are bound together. In fact, stunnel clients and servers operate independently as clients and servers. This means that you can have several different client computers, each configured with an stunnel client as shown above, and each connecting to the same server computer running an stunnel server.
So long as you provide a distinct resource name (mysql\_stunnel in the above
examples) and use distinct TCP ports for each tunnel, you can use this Puppet
package to create as many tunnels as you like, with a single computer
implementing clients and servers for several different tunnels. Just
declare a different stunnel::tun resource for each stunnel client or server.
Specify the port (and optionally IP address) on which stunnel should listen for connections.
For an stunnel client, this will typically be the standard port for a service (e.g. 3306 for MySQL), as the tunnel is presenting the port to its user software.
For an stunnel server, this will typically be a non-standard port that is being used to construct the tunnel (3307 is often used for MySQL as it is next to 3306).
accept => '993', # Listen on all IPv4 addresses on port 993.
accept => '3307', # Listen on all IPv4 addresses on port 3307.
accept => '192.168.0.2:3306' # Listen only on IPv4 address 192.168.0.2 on port 3306.
accept => ':::993', # Listen on all IPv6 addresses on port 993.
This attribute must be specified.
This attribute controls the accept service-level option in the stunnel configuration file.
For more information on this attribute, see the stunnel documentation
Specify the location of the cafile.
cafile => '/etc/pki/tls/certs/cafile.crt'
Specify the location of the certificate file. See an earlier section for how to create and install a certificate file.
cert => '/etc/ssl/certs/mysql_stunnel.pem',
This attribute controls the cert service-level option in the stunnel configuration file.
The behaviour when this parameter is not specified depends on the value of the
client parameter. If client is false, the cert option will be set to look
for certs that match the service name in the /etc/stunnel/certs directory. If
client is true, the cert option will be omitted in the stunnel
configuration file.
Specify whether the installation of stunnel that you are configuring is an stunnel client (true) or an stunnel server (false).
client => false,
client => true,
This attribute must be specified.
This attribute controls the client service-level option in the stunnel configuration file.
Specify the level of detail that you want in the log file. Specify 0 for the least logging, and 7 for the most logging.
debug => '0', # emerg
debug => '1', # alert
debug => '2', # crit
debug => '3', # err
debug => '4', # warning
debug => '5', # notice
debug => '6', # info
debug => '7', # debug
This attribute is optional and defaults to '5'.
See also the output attribute which specifies where the logfile is.
This attribute controls the debug service-level option in the stunnel configuration file.
Specify the failover strategy when using multiple back-end servers.
This attribute does not have any effect if you are not specifying multiple backend servers (as an array) as connect value.
Valid options are rr (round-robin) or prio (priority/failover, where stunnel will try to connect
to the first backend, then second, etc.).
This attribute defaults to rr.
Specify any global options that you wish to appear in the stunnel configuration file, but which this Puppet module does not support. By "global" is meant options that are specific to the stunnel installation as a whole, rather than to a specific tunnel.
global_opts => { 'setuid' => '32', 'setgid' => '104' },
This attribute is optional and defaults to the empty hash {}.
This attribute can be used to control arbitrary global options in the stunnel configuration file.
Support for assigning multiple global opts as an array is also available.
global_opts => { 'socket' => ['l:TCP_NODELAY=1', 'r:TCP_NODELAY=1'] }
For information on stunnel global options, see the stunnel documentation
Specify whether you want this stunnel Puppet module to install stunnel as a system service. Installing as a service currently places a sysvinit style initscript for each tunnel inside of /etc/init.d/stunnel-<name>.
install_service => false,
install_service => true,
This attribute is optional and defaults to true.
This attribute controls the installation of the init-script for this tunnel. If set to true, the init script will be installed. If set to false, the init-script will be removed.
Specify any options that you want to pass to OpenSSL.
options => ['NO_SSLv2', 'NO_SSLv3'], # SSLv2 is turrible. See: http://osvdb.org/56387
# So is SSLv3. See https://www.openssl.org/~bodo/ssl-poodle.pdf
This attribute is optional and defaults to the empty array []. For backwards compatability, a single option can be passed as a string.
For more information on this attribute, see the stunnel documentation
Specify the location of the stunnel log file.
output => '/var/log/stunnel/mysql_stunnel.log', # The stunnel log file.
This attribute is optional and defaults to either /var/log/stunnel/$name (EL based systems) or /var/log/stunnel4/$name (Debian based systems).
See also the debug attribute which specifies the level of detail in the stunnel
log file.
This attribute controls the output service-level option in the stunnel configuration file.
Specify any service-level options that you wish to appear in the stunnel configuration file, but which this Puppet module does not support. By "service-level" is meant options that are specific to a particular tunnel configuration rather than the whole stunnel installation.
service_opts => { 'protocol' => 'imap', 'TIMEOUTbusy' => '60' },
This attribute is optional and defaults to the empty hash {}.
This attribute can be used to control arbitrary service-level options in the stunnel configuration file.
For information on stunnel service-level options, see the stunnel documentation
Specify a Puppet ERB template for the stunnel configuration file.
template => template('megacorp_stunnel/stunnel.cfg.erb'),
This attribute is optional and defaults to a template with sensible default values.
This attribute controls the overall form of the stunnel configuration file.
Specify the number of seconds that stunnel will allow a connection to be idle before terminating it.
If you set this attribute too low, then you will experience seemingly spurious disconnections that might cause havoc. If you set this attribute too high, stunnel will keep open connections to zombie clients. Given that idle connections do not use up many resources, it's probably best to err on the high side, which is why the default is 12 hours.
timeoutidle => '10', # Ten seconds.
timeoutidle => '60', # One minute.
timeoutidle => '3600', # One hour.
timeoutidle => '43200', # 12 hours.
timeoutidle => '86400', # One day.
timeoutidle => '604800', # One week.
This attribute is optional and defaults to 43200 (12 hours).
This attribute controls the TIMEOUTidle service-level option of
the stunnel configuration file.
This stunnel Puppet package restarts the stunnel service if a configuration change has been made.
The package installs a configuration file at:
/etc/stunnel/conf.d/mysql_stunnel.conf
where mysql\_stunnel is the name of your stunnel::tun resource as above.
This Puppet package also generates an init service configuration script at:
/etc/init.d/stunnel-mysql_stunnel
where stunnel-mysql\_stunnel is the name of your stunnel::tun resource
with stunnel- prepended to it.
Once you've established your stunnel, you can inspect its state using the following shell commands:
/etc/init.d/stunnel-mysql_stunnel status
/etc/init.d/stunnel-mysql_stunnel start
/etc/init.d/stunnel-mysql_stunnel restart
/etc/init.d/stunnel-mysql_stunnel stop
where stunnel-mysql\_stunnel is the name of your stunnel::tun resource
with stunnel- prepended to it.
If you get the error:
Error: Could not install module 'arusso-stunnel' (latest: v1.0.0)
Installation would overwrite /etc/puppet/modules/stunnel
Currently, 'puppetlabs-stunnel' (v0.0.1) is installed to that directory
Use `puppet module install --target-dir <DIR>` to install modules elsewhere
Use `puppet module install --force` to install this module anyway
then uninstall the Puppet stunnel model and install the arusso one as follows:
puppet module uninstall stunnel
puppet module install arusso-stunnel
If you find that the tunnel isn't working, look in the log file. If you see:
connect_blocking: s_poll_wait
then one reason why this might be happening is if your firewall is blocking the tunnel.
stunnel is picky about the certs. You can find more information about it
here in the CERTIFICATES
section.
If you don't want to mess with rebuilding your cert each time the certs you base
it off of get updated, you can use the stunnel::cert class to your benefit:
stunnel::cert { 'imaps':
components => [ '/etc/pki/tls/private/private.key',
'/etc/pki/tls/certs/public.crt' ],
}
This will generate a cert /etc/stunnel/certs/imaps.pem that is the
concatenation of the $components array provided, with a single line in between
each certificate to make stunnel happiest.
Since by default, the cert parameter looks for certs that match the service
name in the /etc/stunnel/certs/ directory, we can omit the cert parameter
if we use the stunnel::cert class. Here's a full example:
include stunnel
stunnel::tun { 'imaps':
accept => '993',
connect => '143',
options => ['NO_SSLv2', 'NO_SSLv3'],
}
stunnel::cert { 'imaps':
components => [ '/etc/pki/tls/certs/public-cert.crt',
'/etc/pki/tls/private/private.key' ],
}
- https://www.stunnel.org/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunnel
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Sockets_Layer
- https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-an-ssl-tunnel-using-stunnel-on-ubuntu
See LICENSE file
Copyright © 2013 The Regents of the University of California
- Yann Vigara
- Ross Williams
- John Cooper
- Francois Gouteroux
- Stephen Hoekstra
Aaron Russo arusso@berkeley.edu
Please log tickets and issues at the Projects site