SSL certs handling and HAproxy

[lewis]

Yes, I did and I've disabled that now.
From public, nmap shows port 443 filtered so no response what so ever.

[lewis]

The thing is, if I don't enable the certs on the server, then it won't respond to port 443.
It cannot respond to port 80 because that's forwarded to port 443.

[stephenw10]

If 443 shows as filtered that implies HAProxy is not listening on it. Or there are no firewall rules to pass it?

Where are you forwarding port 80 to port 443? That should never happen. You can redirect it to enforce https use but that's not a forward.

[lewis]

Wait, you just told me to remove the pfsense port forwards :).
The NAT rules were to forward incoming connections to that virtual IP to the web server LAN IP.

As mentioned, I do see HAproxy in the dashboard showing port 80 and it's live.

The 80 to 443 is a redirect in the httpd.conf, forwarding port 80 connections to https.

[stephenw10]

You should not have any port forwards. HAProxy listens on the interfaces directly. You especially shouldn't forward port 80 to port 443 because it always fail. http redircets are OK but you should not have them here because HAProxy is connecting with http.

[lewis]

I've tested with all combinations as mentioned in this post.
I've had the server set to http only without redirects and both http and https but nothing gets to it.

I'm a little confused about the port forwards now however.
I've had haproxy load balancing web servers for years and those have NAT rules to allow incoming traffic to get to the servers.
It must be working, I've seen countless times where we'd had a server or two down and the others were taking connections.

[stephenw10]

Forwarding to a pool perhaps? If you have NAT rules on WAN forwarding traffic to the servers then HAProxy never sees that traffic. Maybe those rules are not actually matching the traffic. Or they are forwarding traffic to some address on the firewall where HAProxy is listening, which would be unnecessary.

What are those NAT rules?

[lewis]

I'll try to explain how things are set up then.

I have frontend and backend set up for three web servers for example.
I see haproxy showing all three servers in the dashboard.
If one server goes down, it shows in the dashboard.
If I reboot one of those servers, the others get the traffic.

The NAT rules are for taking incoming public 80/443 connections to a virtual IP and sending that traffic to the web servers.
The web servers are also defined in an alias which has the three LAN IP addresses for them.

Does that explain it?

[stephenw10]

If those NAT rule are catching incoming web traffic on both ports 80 and 443 and forwarding it to the internal server IPs directly then HAProxy never sees it.

You should not have any port forward rules. HAProxy should be able to listen on port 80 and 443 on that virtual IP directly.

[lewis]

How does the firewall know to send the incoming connections to the three web servers then? I've always had that rule.
The NAT IP is set to the alias I mentioned and it works.

Of course, I learned that setup from reading many articles so now I'm even more confused that that has been working.

[lewis]

@lewis said in SSL certs handling and HAproxy:

How does the firewall know to send the incoming connections to the three web servers then? I've always had that rule.
The NAT IP is set to the alias I mentioned and it works.

What I mean is that the IP for the destination web server is the alias that has three IPs in it. I see traffic to all three web servers.

[kiokoman]

@lewis

that's what a frontend is need for

443/80 -> wan -> Haproxy frontend -> haproxy backend

no nat is needed

if the ip you mentioned are virtual ip of pfsense you just need to cconfigure haproxy to listen to that ip

Listen adress

[lewis]

Yes, I've understood all that's being said but why does it seem that it's been working as I've explained above?
Yes, HAproxy is definitely listening on the correct interface so I'm there in terms of that part.

Also, I cannot change that until I can solve the SSL issue since the web servers are using their SSL cert over a SAN share.
I need to solve the issue with being able to use pfsense, ACME and HAproxy then I can fix this new thing that's come up.

So, if we can focus on getting just one web server working with ACME/HAproxy, that will show me how to do the rest.

[stephenw10]

Do you actually see any traffic in HAProxy in other installs though?

You need firewall rules on WAN to allow traffic to HAProxy of course.

I imagine it's working by just bypassing HAProxy on other systems. But then you don't get any of the HAProxy features like SSL off loading.

I would approach this the other way. Remove the forwards and get HAProxy functioning in a basic form before adding back the SSL features. Whatever testing you have done until now appears to be invalid since nothing was actually hitting HAProxy.

Unless we have misunderstood your description of those NAT rules. You have a screenshot?

[lewis]

Do you actually see any traffic in HAProxy in other installs though?

I don't have haproxy on any other install, just this one firewall.

You need firewall rules on WAN to allow traffic to HAProxy of course.

I had NAT rules but now I'm told those aren't needed, HAproxy knows about the incoming traffic over the selected interface.

I imagine it's working by just bypassing HAProxy on other systems. But then you don't get any of the HAProxy features like SSL off loading.

This is the first time I'm trying to use ACME on the firewall. HAproxy is in use to load balance web servers. That's always worked.

I would approach this the other way. Remove the forwards and get HAProxy functioning in a basic form before adding back the SSL features.

I'll have to set it up as a test on another pfsense as I cannot disrupt services on this one I've been trying to get working.

Whatever testing you have done until now appears to be invalid since nothing was actually hitting HAProxy.

But the weird thing is, I do get fail over. And more than that, the IP for the rule was set with the alias that has three web servers and all three get traffic so, something else is goofy here.

Unless we have misunderstood your description of those NAT rules. You have a screenshot?

Where do I start? I'll get back on this tomorrow and nab a bunch of screen shots.

[stephenw10]

Ah, sorry I thought you meant you had other installs running with HAProxy.

Ok so disable or remove those NAT rules. Make sure there are firewall pass rules to allow the incoming traffic to access HAProxy. Check the HAProxy status to see what's happening.

Grab screenshots.

[lewis]

I'll work on this shortly but the post is getting a bit confused.

I wanted to work on one single host, not load balanced, just using ACME/HAProxy setup to see it working.
Then I could move on to what is happening with this load balancing thing that's come up.

In terms of the load balanced ones, I did run a quick test for the load balanced servers.
As soon as I disabled the rule, traffic stopped to the web servers.
I monitored two of them and both stopped receiving connections.

As mentioned, I have an alias that contains the three web servers LAN IPs.
That's what you see in the rule, FoxHAP

Now, I'm moving back to the tests I've been doing using just one server.
This is the rule when I enable it;

Then the front end of HAProxy;

Then the back end;

The load balanced servers aren't using ACME, they share their SSL certs over a SAN share.

What I'd like to accomplish is to see the single server I initially wanted to learn from working.
So, that one server has a virtual IP.
I have HAProxy set up with frontend and backend.
The ACME certificate is installed on pfsense. I also have them installed on the web server itself. I enable/disable while testing.

On the frontend, I have the external IP (virtual IP) selected and I've tried 80 and 443, SSL offloading on/off.
In the ACL, I have a unique name, I've set to 'Host matches' and the value is the fqdn.
In the actions, table, I have s unique ACL name I created.
In the Default Backend, I have the backend name.
On the backend, I do have the client certificate selected.
In Additional certificates, I have the ACME cert selected for this domain. and 'Add ACL for certificate subject alternative names' selected.

These are from what ever I've been reading that keeps changing. One article says this, another says that, nothing has been consistent enough to get this working.

That's why I posted asking if someone might have a current, up to date, known to work article/doc that I could following because after a while, it becomes a bunch of mixed up settings that will never work, which is where I'm at now. Again, not thinking about the load balanced servers yet.

[lewis]

@stephenw10 said in SSL certs handling and HAproxy:

Make sure there are firewall pass rules to allow the incoming traffic to access HAProxy.

Wait, do you mean some other kind of rule and not NAT rule?

Check the HAProxy status to see what's happening.

What am I looking for here, there's a lot of information.

[lewis]

I was going to edit the previous but my extra notes might be missed.

Yes, I do see haproxy status page.
I also notice that other than many columns, there's little data in there which makes me think haproxy is in fact being bypassed.
I'm not sure what part of that page would be useful to share.

[kiokoman]

@lewis
normal firewall rules on WAN. not a NAT
destination should be "this firewall (self)" if you want haproxy to intercept the traffic
like my print screen