Scheduled blocks won't work without manual states reset
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Searching the forum I ran into this thread. Seems my post from this morning relates to this issue.
In my case even a (UDP) state returns after manual kill of state enabling Skype to keep running. Please have a look at: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=125534.0Earlier in this thread I read about same issue (Skype keeps running).
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Good luck, I have been chasing this for months..
I find the rules work until you modify the schedule portion of the rule.. If you manually clear states for the target IP after changing the schedule, they do re-establish, even though people on this forum swear this shouldn't happen.
I find the only way to fix is to try to reset all states and if that doesn't fix, reboot.
Seems to be something broken with the schedules and how they relate to the rules.
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So in my hunting it would appear that setting up a schedule with pfsense isn't very likely to happen? I'm messing with this here at home first, as I have a customer with a similar request. So at home my daughters ipod has become the guinea pig.
Basically I have created a static mapping for her device. I've also created a schedule. I've created a block rule for the IP of the ipod, as well as an allow rule, which has the schedule selected. It appears to be working for the most part, however imessage continues to work.
I downloaded the cron package, and I was going to use the pfctl -F command. Is this going to work, or am I beating a dead horse here with this setup?
-RYknow
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I have had hit and miss success with the cron task and filtering Steam.
My setup is to BLOCK the ALIAS and then place an ALLOW rule with schedule ABOVE the BLOCK rule in the LAN tab.
The wheels fall off if I modify a schedule. I find clearing states does not work as expected and a full reboot is required to get things back on track after adjusting the schedule.
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I'll need to double check how I have things setup.
I'm wondering if my issue is IPv6 related? Does that make any sense?
-RYknow
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Possibly but I have blocked IPv6 on my network.
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That's my next step. I'll just block it and see if it fixes my problem.
EDIT: IPv6 seems to have been the ticket. Since disabling IPv6 traffic on my network, all the devices are working correctly with the above mentioned schedule.
-RYknow
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That's my next step. I'll just block it and see if it fixes my problem.
EDIT: IPv6 seems to have been the ticket. Since disabling IPv6 traffic on my network, all the devices are working correctly with the above mentioned schedule.
-RYknow
Have you modified schedules, waited until the next schedule change and found the states remain on some UDP packets?
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Yes. I was never able to get it to work correctly with the ipod. I ended up just creating the schedule via the unifi software… but I would like to get it sorted at the router level instead.
-RYknow
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The thing that surprises me the most is how long this issue has been floating around without being addressed.. Surely there would be others who could use this feature?
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Yeah, you triggered my memory about this and I went and played with it last night… I set an ipod up with just strickly a block rule, (picked block... and chose the IP). and imessage still works... I have I have ipv6 disabled, as I was thinking maybe the traffic was using ipv6.... but imessage still works. Very strange.
-RYknow
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Yeah, I can get this working on a test laptop reliably with a cron task to kill off states after the schedule expires but it doesn't work on the existing rules.
I will delete all the rules and start fresh.
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Did you have any limiters on your rules for the Ipod?
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I don't have any limiters on the iPod. Initially I was using a schedule I had created. At this point for testing I've gotten rid of the schedule completely, and I'm just using the block rule. When I disable it for any length of time, and re-enable it, the imessage stuff still works.
I'm going to test it some more over the weekend, I moved the ipod block to be the very first rule in the list. See if that makes much of a difference.
-RYknow
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I am really confused now, I deleted all pass/block rules and now the schedule works on one host but not the other?
I even copied the rule and just changed the alias to suit the new rules…
I'm going to default my router one more time and if that doesn't fix it, I'm going to try another product.
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I've tried several variations I found online for using a Cron job to kill the states after a rule becomes active and none of them work. The only way to ensure Skype and active game sessions get killed after the scheduled block rules kick in is to manually reset the states in the Diagnostics menu. It's a brand new install.
If someone can suggest the exact spelling with the full path of the Cron job other than what I already tried or maybe a different way other than Cron jobs if there is a way? I've tried the following Cron commands:
/sbin/pfctl -F state
/sbin/pfctl -k >IP on the block list< -
I can confirm:
/sbin/pfctl -F state works sometimes (cron task)
pfctl -F state works sometimes (cron task)/sbin/pfctl -k >IP on the block list<works sometimes="" (cron="" task)<br="">pfctl -k >IP on the block list <works sometimes="" (cron="" task)<br="">Both also seem to work in the Diagnostics/Command Prompt however, nothing reliably clears established UDP states.
After the PASS schedule expires, all states are cleared and then a few (Steam and Teamspeak in my case) immediately re-establish.</works></works>
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Thanks to alot of my own trial and error I have figured out why it doesn't work for me and how I can make it work.
If I have the schedule block at 10pm at night and schedule the cron job to clear a specific IP states at 10:01pm it doesn't work.
If I change the cron job to run at 1 minute past the hour for every hour, it works!
To confirm the obvious, yes my computer time and pfsense times are correct and i've run the test several times. I've run now at 4pm scheduled block with cron to block at 1 minute past every hour and it worked immediately. I had it try before at 3pm scheduled block with 3:01pm run same cron job. It doesn't work.
So for some reason, cron doesn't recognize the specific hour! It's in 24 hour clock military time. I haven't checked if I can do 12 hour clock time if it's possible. But I obviously have the Cron job programmed correctly and everything else correct as the only difference that makes it work is specify to run the job every hour at 1 minute past the hour, rather than at the specific time. This is not a good solution as it can cause interrupts every hour.
I expect to be the first person to find the solution to this as no one has an answer anywhere I could find. Please prove me wrong and beat me to it.
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I managed to get cron to work without saying * for the hour. I found out that although the schedule runs at 1800 hours (6pm) I have to schedule Cron to run at 2201 hours for it to think it is 1 minute past the hour. It then successfully runs the cron job 1 minute after the scheduled job and clears the state table. So for Cron to run the job 1 minute after the scheduled rule, I have to actually program Cron to run 4 hours and 1 minute after the scheduled rule.
My question now is why does Cron think it is 2200 hours when it is 1800 hours? In other words, why does Cron think the time is 4 hours ahead of what the schedule does?
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I managed to get cron to work without saying * for the hour. I found out that although the schedule runs at 1800 hours (6pm) I have to schedule Cron to run at 2201 hours for it to think it is 1 minute past the hour. It then successfully runs the cron job 1 minute after the scheduled job and clears the state table. So for Cron to run the job 1 minute after the scheduled rule, I have to actually program Cron to run 4 hours and 1 minute after the scheduled rule.
My question now is why does Cron think it is 2200 hours when it is 1800 hours? In other words, why does Cron think the time is 4 hours ahead of what the schedule does?
Have you set the timezone correctly? - System/General Setup.
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I managed to get cron to work without saying * for the hour. I found out that although the schedule runs at 1800 hours (6pm) I have to schedule Cron to run at 2201 hours for it to think it is 1 minute past the hour. It then successfully runs the cron job 1 minute after the scheduled job and clears the state table. So for Cron to run the job 1 minute after the scheduled rule, I have to actually program Cron to run 4 hours and 1 minute after the scheduled rule.
My question now is why does Cron think it is 2200 hours when it is 1800 hours? In other words, why does Cron think the time is 4 hours ahead of what the schedule does?
Have you set the timezone correctly? - System/General Setup.
Yes, the time zone is correct in General setup.
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I saw another discussion someone wrote to use the following code but it doesn't work for me.
pfctl -k x.x.x.x/24 ; pfctl -k 0.0.0.0/0 -k x.x.x.x/24
I assume if my pfsense box is 192.168.1.1 that the x.x.x.x should be that IP address? Or is there something else I should be doing? That threat is closed to comments or I'd ask there.
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Since killing the state table by IP, even manually pressing the button, is unreliable and the only method is resetting the entire firewall state table manually, I've set a scheduled reboot using Cron which works perfectly. I know it's not the idea solution rebooting the server every night, but I need results and this is the only reliable method.
/sbin/shutdown -r nowI hope pfsense will have a patch to fix clearing the state tables by ip address.
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Since killing the state table by IP, even manually pressing the button, is unreliable and the only method is resetting the entire firewall state table manually, I've set a scheduled reboot using Cron which works perfectly. I know it's not the idea solution rebooting the server every night, but I need results and this is the only reliable method.
/sbin/shutdown -r nowI hope pfsense will have a patch to fix clearing the state tables by ip address.
I can't believe we are the only people who want this 'feature', I would expect pfsense to be capable of what the $100 routers seem to do quite well.
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You are not alone and this is a very old problem on pfsense… only this thread is 3 years old.
In time what you can't fix you learn to live with that or if you can't, then you will try to find a solution that work to your needs.This is how it finally work for my kids, see the attachment:
- allow DHCP only to this VLAN/firewall.
- allow DNS & NTP only to this firewall.
- deny access to this firewall for all client except admin IP...
legend:
inet lucia = Mon-Sun 12:00-12:30 / Mon-Fri 19:00-20:30 / Mon-Sun 14:30-17:00 ( school )
vacanta = every day 06-23 ( no school )
zilnic = every day 06-22:15p.s.
extra cron script to kill states,
don't forget to make the script x
...
15-30 22 * * * root /usr/local/bin/pf_stop_tablete_copii.sh#!/bin/sh /sbin/pfctl -K 192.168.101.111 /sbin/pfctl -K 192.168.101.112
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@ecfx:
You are not alone and this is a very old problem on pfsense… only this thread is 3 years old.
In time what you can't fix you learn to live with that or if you can't, then you will try to find a solution that work to your needs.This is how it finally work for my kids, see the attachment:
- allow DHCP only to this VLAN/firewall.
- allow DNS & NTP only to this firewall.
- deny access to this firewall for all client except admin IP...
legend:
inet lucia = Mon-Sun 12:00-12:30 / Mon-Fri 19:00-20:30 / Mon-Sun 14:30-17:00 ( school )
vacanta = every day 06-23 ( no school )
zilnic = every day 06-22:15p.s.
extra cron script to kill states,
don't forget to make the script x
...
15-30 22 * * * root /usr/local/bin/pf_stop_tablete_copii.sh#!/bin/sh /sbin/pfctl -K 192.168.101.111 /sbin/pfctl -K 192.168.101.112
Thanks, I'm not sure this all makes sense to me but it looks like an uppercase K where I was using a lowercase k?
Also, to specify allowe DHCP, DNS, NTP only to this firewall, i'm not sure where to set those rules? -
see the attachment.
I have also a DNS server in another lan 192.168.22.16 for kids that filter dns with pihole and forward requests to opendns ( family shield… adult content... ) so I had to allow also open DNS directly just in case my server is offline.
Local DNS/NTP is your LAN interface IP and 127.0.0.1
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Odd thing, my router didn't reboot tonight at 10:05pm as scheduled (which I put 2:05am because it was working 4 hours in ahead previously). I tried setting the correct time and now it works. It seems to have fixed itself. Very weird but thought I'd share that problem is solved.
Just need to test more with rules to avoid rebooting. -
Have you tried Opnsense? It has the latest BSD.
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Have you tried Opnsense? It has the latest BSD.
I haven't tried Opnsense, but honestly I just setup pfsense and want to give it a fair shot. I switched from ipfire which was having more problems. pfsense seems much better than ipFire so far, although it has the same challenges with removing states after scheduled blocks without rebooting. The good news is with pfsense I can at least schedule a reboot where ipfire I couldn't do that.
With more time I'll learn more tricks I can share. :)
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Have you tried Opnsense? It has the latest BSD.
With more time I'll learn more tricks I can share. :)
Looking forward to it as I am almost out of hair! ;)
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Have you tried Opnsense? It has the latest BSD.
I haven't tried Opnsense, but honestly I just setup pfsense and want to give it a fair shot. I switched from ipfire which was having more problems. pfsense seems much better than ipFire so far, although it has the same challenges with removing states after scheduled blocks without rebooting. The good news is with pfsense I can at least schedule a reboot where ipfire I couldn't do that.
With more time I'll learn more tricks I can share. :)
Anything new?
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I tried everything in this thread.
This is still not fixed.
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I have a combo solution which works well (so far). Set your schedules for allowing instead of blocking with scheduled cron jobs (example: /usr/bin/nice -n20 /sbin/pfctl -k 192.168.1.10) for flushing states, say in every 60min, followed by a blocking rule.
this is how my rules look like on the LAN interface
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Wow this new forums software is horrible. Doesn't work right with noscript at all, and i had to switch to chrome (Spew)....
that said, i have stumbled upon this "bug" and am obviously trying to do the same thing as you all. I noticed that my schedule was applying, and new connections are being filtered, but if a user has a voice channel open (Discord i think), then the connection is not terminated till i do a full state reset.
Sorry that i dont have anything new to add except that pfsense should fix this OBVIOUS BUG....
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and still current on 2.4.4-RELEASE (amd64)
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Checkout https://forum.netgate.com/topic/134145/blocking-scheduling-not-quite-working/16
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Hey mr gertjan, it think you are saying that the command "/sbin/pfctl -K x.x.x.x." should be working but for me it does not work. I used an upper case -K as a switch though. I think because of the nature of this particular connection it stays established somehow. its a voice connection, discord. all other connections terminate fine with the schedule. But the non discord ones are most likely trying to establish new connections that are then blocked by the firewall (web browsing, game setup, etc)
i was able to download the cron package from the package manager and i was able to run a command at the time of my choosing, but the -K commands do not seem to work.
The only thing i can do that reliably works is to reboot the firewall :( . as you can imagine this is the nuclear option but what can i say, it does work.I dont have the default block or whatever you mention in that post either. Anyways if you can provide a concise description of the exact thing that works i will try it next week. pfctl does not seem to do it by itself.
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A little late but as the threads on this are so old...
There is a slightly less nuclear option that seems to work
cron this instead, where the bit confined in the braces is the description you gave the allow rulepfctl -k label -k 'USER_RULE: <description>:'
eg
/usr/local]# pfctl -sr | grep TV | sed -e "s/192.*)/XXXXXXXXXX/" | head -3 pass in quick on LAN reply-to (LAN XXXXXXXXXX inet from <TVThings> to any flags S/SA keep state label "USER_RULE: Grownups:" pass in quick on LAN inet6 from <TVThings> to any flags S/SA keep state label "USER_RULE: Grownups:" block return in quick on LAN reply-to (LAN XXXXXXXXXX inet from <TVThings> to any label "USER_RULE: Oh no bad boys" /usr/local]# pfctl -ss | wc -l ; pfctl -k label -k 'USER_RULE: Grownups:' ; pfctl -ss | wc -l 998 killed 29 states 969
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@kraduk said in Scheduled blocks won't work without manual states reset:
pfctl -k label -k 'USER_RULE: <description>:'
Drop the trailing colon, unless you actually have that in your rule description:
[2.4.4-RELEASE][admin@localhost]/root: pfctl -k label -k 'USER_RULE: Allowed direct WAN access:' killed 0 states
[2.4.4-RELEASE][admin@localhost]/root: pfctl -k label -k 'USER_RULE: Allowed direct WAN access' killed 1 states