PfSense newbie configuration problem

vdecristofaro

Ok here is the thing - you mention your in a large network right.

Large networks quite often do a few things for security reasons. 1 they normally only allow a proxy internet access, so to get to the internet you have to use that proxy. Direct internet access is blocked - only the proxy is allowed internet access.

Right!

@johnpoz:

2 they normally block dns, your local dns you point to - ie those 10.182 and 10.254 IPs more than likely don't even resolve public domains. quick enough to check, using nslookup or dig - do a query to them directly for outside something, www.google.com, ftp.freebsd.org, etc. Along with not allowing the local nameservers to resolve public domains they normally do not allow you to query outside dns, ie the those googledns you have there at 8.8.8.8

I dont really know how to read dig results but here is the result of that command when executed inside the pfSense VM

@johnpoz:

This is common practice for corp networks. Why you would need to run a router/firewall inside your corp network without support and details from corp IT is beyond me.
But unless you bounce off your corp proxy is more than likely your never getting off the corp network.

The reason is quick explained. I dont mind about the firewall. I have several VM (5/6) that resemble networks and that I use to develop software solutions. Having a software router for those "virtual labs", which is the only thing I need, has a couple of advantages for me. First of all I have a network lab that is really very similar to the production environment. In addition having 5/6 VM running inside my laptop, every one with two NIC (1 for internal network and one for the internet, will completely jeopardize my host NIC…
For those reasons I just thought that having a "software router" would be a solution. Maybe this solution does not apply on the network where I am now and will work without any further configuration if I would have DIRECT access to the Internet.

@johnpoz:

So does your workstation have internet access? If so look to see what proxy your browser is pointing to.

Yes. I can browse the internet from my host using a proxy. I have statically (in /etc/csh.cshrc) setup the same proxy inside the pfSense.
but unfortunately, even if I follow stephenw10 suggestion I cannot get to the record because of the same "No address record" error.

@johnpoz:

you state

"Now i am able to traceroute any public server"

Lets see this! And what are you using for your dns? You doing this from your PC or pfsense? Please post the details of where you doing this traceroute ip address, gateway and nameserves - along with the full trace to www.google.com – here is example

Well I have just posted the result of doing dig in the pfSense VM. So let's see how the host and the VM in the Virtual network behaves.

When I execute nslookup from the host PC I get these results

C:\>nslookup www.google.com
Server:  usdnsl201-ficus.usinet.it
Address:  10.182.209.132

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    www.google.com
Addresses:  2a00:1450:400c:c06::6a
          74.125.132.106
          74.125.132.147
          74.125.132.99
          74.125.132.103
          74.125.132.104
          74.125.132.105

Finally this is the result when I execute nslookup from a windows PC/server inside the virtual network

C:\>nslookup www.google.com
1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.ip6.arpa
        primary name server = 1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.
0.0.0.0.0.0.0.ip6.arpa
        responsible mail addr = (root)
        serial  = 0
        refresh = 28800 (8 hours)
        retry   = 7200 (2 hours)
        expire  = 604800 (7 days)
        default TTL = 86400 (1 day)
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  ::1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    www.google.com
Addresses:  2a00:1450:400c:c06::63
          74.125.132.106
          74.125.132.147
          74.125.132.99
          74.125.132.103
          74.125.132.104
          74.125.132.105

johnpoz

Well your vm there it asked itself for dns on the ipv6 loopback, so is then forwarding or looking up direct from roots?

Same thing with your pfsense - it asked its dns forwarding process for that address, you don't actually know which dns server it asked for that. I believe it asks all of them and uses the one that answers first? Or does it ask in order? There was a thread back a while back that went over this - but I don't recall the details on that.

So clearly you can do outside dns queries - but if your having to use a proxy to actually get outbound access, the ability to do dns doesn't help much ;)

Now in
System: Advanced: Miscellaneous

There is a way to point to an upstream proxy to allow pfsense access - but not sure on how that actually functions, does that mean that need to be using proxy on pfsense? Or does pfsense just route all that traffic to that proxy?

vdecristofaro

@johnpoz:

Well your vm there it asked itself for dns on the ipv6 loopback, so is then forwarding or looking up direct from roots?

Same thing with your pfsense - it asked its dns forwarding process for that address, you don't actually know which dns server it asked for that. I believe it asks all of them and uses the one that answers first? Or does it ask in order? There was a thread back a while back that went over this - but I don't recall the details on that.

So clearly you can do outside dns queries - but if your having to use a proxy to actually get outbound access, the ability to do dns doesn't help much ;)

Now in
System: Advanced: Miscellaneous

There is a way to point to an upstream proxy to allow pfsense access - but not sure on how that actually functions, does that mean that need to be using proxy on pfsense? Or does pfsense just route all that traffic to that proxy?

I did already setup proxy as you're suggesting. Me too, I dont have idea on how this works. In the next days I will try this setup in a network with direct access just to verify that in effect this can be a problem caused by the presence of the proxy.

For now, I would like to thank all the people that spent some of it's time trying to help.
:)

stephenw10

There is no need to add the proxy information to pfSense, you only need to do that as a convenience for machines behind pfSense and to enable the box itself to have web access. You can just add the proxy to the clients behind pfSense as would for boxes in front it. You won't be able to update from the webgui.
It maybe that the upstream proxy has a problem with NATed clients connecting to it perhaps by design. It would seem reasonable for your network admin to not won't people running their own routers.

Steve

johnpoz

How would proxy know they are natted? Shouldn't all the traffic look like it is coming from pfsense wan interface that is on the network just like a normal client?

stephenw10

Multiple clients logging in with the same credentials? Too many simultaneous sessions?
I'm speculating. I agree it seems unlikely.

Steve

vdecristofaro

@stephenw10:

There is no need to add the proxy information to pfSense, you only need to do that as a convenience for machines behind pfSense and to enable the box itself to have web access. You can just add the proxy to the clients behind pfSense as would for boxes in front it. You won't be able to update from the webgui.
It maybe that the upstream proxy has a problem with NATed clients connecting to it perhaps by design. It would seem reasonable for your network admin to not won't people running their own routers.

Steve

Well even if I remove the proxy informations I am not able to navigate the web from the pfSense machine.
This continue to appear very strange to me and I am still convinced of a configuration problem….

Look at this screenshot (taken from the pfSense machine) to understand why I am saying this...

How it is possible that I can do nslookup without any problem and getting "No address record" when using fetch??

podilarius

If you do a fetch with the IP, does it work? (fetch http://173.194.65.105)
I think generally you want to be file specific with fetch so you don't get to much. Perhaps:
fetch http://files.chi.pfsense.org/jimp/foo/shiny/ehrmagerd/pfSense-Full-Update-2.0.2-RELEASE-i386-20121004-1028.tgz

stephenw10

If you have removed the upstream proxy settings from pfSense then this won't work. Assuming the network admin has blocked non proxied http access.

Steve

johnpoz

So do you need a proxy to get out?? This has been verified right? Have you set this for fetch to use?

I believe you can view this with the echo of the $HTTP_PROXY variable

echo $HTTP_PROXY
HTTP_PROXY: Undefined variable.

also what is in your /etc/resolv.conf file

Do you have any limitation on dns in any of your rules or the dns server your trying to use?

This proxy on your network - how is it implemented. Do you have to set it explicit, is wccp used? Is a transparent proxy? Is there any sort of captive portal setup where you have to auth or agree to something before you get access using the proxy?

vdecristofaro

@podilarius:

If you do a fetch with the IP, does it work? (fetch http://173.194.65.105)
I think generally you want to be file specific with fetch so you don't get to much. Perhaps:
fetch http://files.chi.pfsense.org/jimp/foo/shiny/ehrmagerd/pfSense-Full-Update-2.0.2-RELEASE-i386-20121004-1028.tgz

@stephenw10:

If you have removed the upstream proxy settings from pfSense then this won't work. Assuming the network admin has blocked non proxied http access.

Steve

Yes I have removed the configuration. But I am just trying to get to the internet from the pfsense shell…

@johnpoz:

So do you need a proxy to get out?? This has been verified right? Have you set this for fetch to use?

I believe you can view this with the echo of the $HTTP_PROXY variable

echo $HTTP_PROXY
HTTP_PROXY: Undefined variable.

also what is in your /etc/resolv.conf file

@johnpoz:

Do you have any limitation on dns in any of your rules or the dns server your trying to use?

This proxy on your network - how is it implemented. Do you have to set it explicit, is wccp used? Is a transparent proxy? Is there any sort of captive portal setup where you have to auth or agree to something before you get access using the proxy?

There is an internal DNS server in a Windows 2008 VM which is running at 192.168.83.11 and which serves the clients of the virtual network 192.168.83.0.
On this server I also have configured to forward queries to 192.168.83.1 (the pfSense router). As you can see from the previous screenshot, the pfSense router has DNS of my host network in resolve.conf.
I dont really know how to verify if there are any limitations.

The proxy it is a Squid 2.7v9 with Basic Authentication. On our client pc's we can configure it directly using the sintax I've used above or even with a wpad autoconfiguration script which provides load balancing. It does'nt make any difference for the clients.
It is not a transparent proxy. We dont have wccp.

johnpoz

So from that http_proxy output fetch would be using that proxy to resolve dns would it not? When using a proxy, normally proxy does the dns lookup. Looks like your putting username and password in the proxy url.

Does your proxy allow that? Have you tried this method with fetch

HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:8080
HTTP_PROXY_AUTH=basic:*:<user>: <pwd>You sure pfsense is even resolving the fqdn you have in there for your proxy? If its an internal fqdn, why are you hiding it?</pwd></user>

vdecristofaro

@johnpoz:

So from that http_proxy output fetch would be using that proxy to resolve dns would it not? When using a proxy, normally proxy does the dns lookup.

Right! I was almost sure but unfortunately I have just verified that the pfsense VM does not resolve the name of the proxy server.
This is just very strange because the wan configuration is exactly the same as my host machine (!!!).
I did change the HTTP_PROXY environment variable to use the IP address instead of the name and now "fetch" works :)

@johnpoz:

Looks like your putting username and password in the proxy url.

Does your proxy allow that? Have you tried this method with fetch

HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:8080
HTTP_PROXY_AUTH=basic:*:<user>:</user>

Both methods works

@johnpoz:

You sure pfsense is even resolving the fqdn you have in there for your proxy? If its an internal fqdn, why are you hiding it?

pfSense was not resolving the name (that is understandable for me). I am hiding the name of the server just because of the privacy. In that name there are reference to the name of the customer I am working for and I do not wish to cause any problem to anyone…

Now that I am able to browse the web from the router itself I am still unable to browse the web from internal network guests which are simply configured to have the router IP as their gateway...

podilarius

Well it cannot be simply pointing a server to a router an expecting it to work when there is a proxy involved. The proxy setup you did was just for pfSense to get version information and packages installed. This is not for everything else behind it. If you want to do that, you are going to have to setup pfSense with Squid to be a proxy itself, and a transparent one at that. Alternatively, you can just setup the proxy the same as everything else, even the same as pfSense, and pfsense will route traffic on port 3128 to that proxy.
Hope that made since.

vdecristofaro

@podilarius:

Well it cannot be simply pointing a server to a router an expecting it to work when there is a proxy involved. The proxy setup you did was just for pfSense to get version information and packages installed. This is not for everything else behind it.

what you say confirms what I said at the this thread. that is I am a beginner and that my knowledge about it is very poor :'(

@podilarius:

If you want to do that, you are going to have to setup pfSense with Squid to be a proxy itself, and a transparent one at that. Alternatively, you can just setup the proxy the same as everything else, even the same as pfSense, and pfsense will route traffic on port 3128 to that proxy.
Hope that made since.

Ok. I need to read a little bit to implement the "clean" solution with Squid.
But for the "easy" way, do you mean that I can configure the guests behind the router to use http://<router_ip>:3128 as proxy?</router_ip>

podilarius

Yes. the same proxy you used with pfsense and your workstation.

vdecristofaro

@podilarius:

Yes. the same proxy you used with pfsense and your workstation.

Ok! Finally I have got my target ;D ;D

I have installed and enabled Squid to be a transparent proxy against internal network.
I have also enabled Squid to use an upstream proxy (the one of the network I am in).

It seems that everything is working. Thank you so much for helping