Bringing the TUN device and the .fips DNS responder up and taking them down is host-side work, but the bodies sat inline in the node's supervisor arms, and their handles were eight loose fields on the supervisor. Move the bodies to ipv6tun::lifecycle and gather the handles into one Handles struct there, held by the supervisor. The supervisor arms, their order and the child-exit reporting are unchanged; each arm now calls into ipv6tun. The TUN start is two calls so the node can refresh its MSS ceiling between them, exactly where it did before: open_tun creates and logs the device, then spawn_tun creates the macOS/FreeBSD shutdown pipe and starts the writer and reader threads. A failure to create the device still continues without a TUN, and a pipe or writer failure still fails the node's start. stop_tun and stop_dns carry the teardown unchanged, including the shutdown-pipe write that wakes the reader on macOS and FreeBSD. The TUN device name moves into Handles as well, so the teardown up-set can ask ipv6tun whether each child is up. A TUN counts as up when it has a device name, not when it has a sender, so an app-owned TUN still produces no TUN teardown; DNS counts as up while its task handle exists. Node::tun_name, tun_tx, dns_local_addr and enable_app_owned_tun keep their behaviour and now read or write the handles. Node::mesh_ifindex had no caller left outside a test and is replaced by the same method on Handles. Tests install a TUN sender through a test-only Node::install_tun. The moved log lines now log under fips::ipv6tun::lifecycle instead of fips::node::lifecycle. Add that target to the NAT harness and its trace overlay, and to the harnesses that relied on fips::node=debug, and note the rename in the changelog.
Firewall Baseline Test
End-to-end exercise of the production fips0 nftables baseline at
packaging/common/fips.nft. Closes the v0.3.0 audit gap that the
default-deny + conntrack + drop-in semantics had no integration coverage.
What this exercises
The fips.nft baseline polices ONLY the fips0 mesh interface and
implements default-deny inbound. This suite asserts the four behaviors
documented in the file's header are actually true on a live mesh:
- (a) Unallowed inbound on fips0 is dropped
- (b) Outbound-initiated flows get their reply via the
ct state established,related acceptrule - (c) ICMPv6 echo-request is accepted (ping6 reachability)
- (d) A drop-in
.nftfile under/etc/fips/fips.d/adds an allowlisted port and that port is accepted
A drop-counter check after case (a) confirms the connection was actively DROP'd by the fips chain (not silently unrouted).
Topology
Two FIPS nodes peered over UDP on a Docker bridge network:
| Container | Hostname | Firewall |
|---|---|---|
fips-fw-container-a |
host-a |
none (probe) |
fips-fw-container-b |
host-b |
fips.nft + drop-in |
The bridge network requests no subnet, so docker assigns one from its own address pool and two concurrent runs never contend for a fixed range. No node's IPv4 address is therefore known before startup, and the generated peer stanzas address each other by docker hostname, resolved through the container's dnsmasq to docker's embedded DNS. The firewall assertions themselves are unaffected: they run over the fips0 overlay, whose addresses are derived from the node npubs.
node-b mounts the production packaging/common/fips.nft read-only at
/etc/fips/fips.nft, plus a drop-in at /etc/fips/fips.d/services.nft
containing tcp dport 22 accept. node-a is unfirewalled and serves
as the probe origin.
Both containers run the unified test image's default mode, which
starts dnsmasq + sshd (port 22) + iperf3 + python http.server on
port 8000 + the FIPS daemon.
fips-firewall.service activation
The production unit's ExecStart is:
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nft -f /etc/fips/fips.nft
The unified test image does not run systemd, so test.sh invokes the
same nft -f command directly inside node-b after fips0 is up and
peering has converged. The deb-install harness covers the systemd
unit-enablement path under real systemd separately.
Run
Build the Linux binaries and test image:
./testing/scripts/build.sh --no-docker
Run the suite:
./testing/firewall/test.sh
test.sh regenerates fixtures automatically before starting Docker.
Use --skip-build to reuse the existing release binaries and the
existing test image: the suite then neither builds nor pulls the image
named by FIPS_TEST_IMAGE (default fips-test:latest), so that image
must already exist. Use --keep-up to leave the containers running for
inspection.
Expected output shape
=== Generating firewall fixtures
=== Starting firewall harness
=== Waiting for fips0 on both nodes
=== Waiting for peer convergence
=== Resolving fips0 addresses
node-a: fd97:...
node-b: fd97:...
=== Activating fips-firewall on fips-fw-container-b
PASS: fips-fw-container-b: fips.nft baseline + drop-in loaded
=== Case (c): ICMPv6 echo-request to firewalled node
PASS: (c) ICMPv6 ping node-a → node-b accepted
=== Case (a): unallowed inbound TCP/8000 from node-a → node-b
PASS: (a) inbound TCP/8000 dropped (curl rc=28, timed out as expected)
=== Case (b): node-b initiates outbound TCP, expects reply via conntrack
PASS: (b) outbound from node-b got HTTP 200 via conntrack reply path
=== Case (d): drop-in allowlisted TCP/22 from node-a → node-b
PASS: (d) drop-in allowlisted TCP/22 reachable
=== Drop counter incremented (case a should have ticked it)
PASS: drop counter = N (case a was actually dropped, not just unrouted)
=== Firewall integration test passed
Inspect the loaded ruleset
docker exec fips-fw-container-b nft list table inet fips
Stop and clean up
docker compose -f testing/firewall/docker-compose.yml down
Generated fixture location
testing/firewall/generated-configs/ (gitignored), or
generated-configs<suffix>/ when FIPS_CI_NAME_SUFFIX is set, which is how
concurrent runs keep their fixtures apart.