barf.8

This a good VPN source

.TH IPSEC_BARF 8 "17 March 2002"
.\" RCSID $Id: barf.8,v 1.23 2004/12/04 16:34:57 ken Exp $
.SH NAME
ipsec barf \- spew out collected IPsec debugging information
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B ipsec
.B barf
[
.B \-\-short
.B \-\-maxlines <100>
]
.sp
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Barf
outputs (on standard output) a collection of debugging information
(contents of files, selections from logs, etc.)
related to the IPsec encryption/authentication system.
It is primarily a convenience for remote debugging,
a single command which packages up (and labels) all information
that might be relevant to diagnosing a problem in IPsec.
.PP
.PP
The
.B \-\-short
option limits the length of
the log portion of
.IR barf 's
output, which can otherwise be extremely voluminous
if debug logging is turned on.
.PP
.B \-\-maxlines <100>
option sets the length of some bits of information, 
currently netstat -rn.  Usefull on boxes where the routing
table is thousands of lines long.  Default is 100.
.PP
.I Barf
censors its output,
replacing keys
and secrets with brief checksums to avoid revealing sensitive information.
.PP
Beware that the output of both commands is aimed at humans,
not programs,
and the output format is subject to change without warning.
.PP
.I Barf
has to figure out which files in
.I /var/log
contain the IPsec log messages.
It looks for KLIPS and general log messages first in
.IR messages
and
.IR syslog ,
and for Pluto messages first in
.IR secure ,
.IR auth.log ,
and
.IR debug .
In both cases,
if it does not find what it is looking for in one of those ``likely'' places,
it will resort to a brute-force search of most (non-compressed) files in
.IR /var/log .
.SH FILES
.nf
/proc/net/*
/var/log/*
/etc/ipsec.conf
/etc/ipsec.secrets
.fi
.SH HISTORY
Written for the Linux FreeS/WAN project
<http://www.freeswan.org>
by Henry Spencer.
.SH BUGS
.I Barf
uses heuristics to try to pick relevant material out of the logs,
and relevant messages
which are not labelled with any of the tags that
.I barf
looks for will be lost.
We think we've eliminated the last such case, but one never knows...
.PP
Finding
.I updown
scripts (so they can be included in output) is, in general, difficult.
.I Barf
uses a very simple heuristic that is easily fooled.
.PP
The brute-force search for the right log files can get expensive on
systems with a lot of clutter in
.IR /var/log .