Shadow mode: Housecarl beside the firewall in force, changing nothing

shadow.enabled in housecarl.yaml loads Housecarl's ruleset so that it
blocks, rejects and translates nothing: drops and rejects count and
accept (an accept only ends Housecarl's chain), policies accept and log
what they would drop, NAT only counts, MSS clamping and the flowtable
are left out, and raw rules that do more than accept, drop or reject are
left out with a warning. Comments mark what would happen ([would drop]).
Filter chains run after the other firewall's (+10) or before (-10); NAT
chains always first. Every change is checked by nftables in both forms.
No probation; takeovers and closing connections are refused. The boot
fallback filters nothing. internal/tablewatch puts the table back after
a flush ruleset. Mode in status, healthz, whoami, the web UI, the log
and the tracer; hc ruleset --enforcing. docs/shadow.md.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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abrown38andClaude Opus 5.5 committed 2026-10-20 18:11:01 +01:00
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@@ -8,6 +8,29 @@ All notable changes to Housecarl are documented here. The format follows
### Added
- **Shadow mode** (`shadow.enabled` in housecarl.yaml; docs/shadow.md):
Housecarl's ruleset is loaded beside the firewall you have but blocks,
rejects and translates nothing. Drops and rejects are counted and accept
instead (an accept only ends Housecarl's chain), policies accept and
always log what they would drop, NAT only counts, MSS clamping and the
flowtable are left out, and raw rules that do more than accept, drop or
reject are left out with a warning (`shadow_raw_left_out`). Comments
mark what would happen (`[would drop]`). `shadow.position`: Housecarl's
filter chains run after the other firewall's (`filter + 10`, the
default: what it would drop is what switching would break) or before
(`- 10`); its NAT chains always first. Every change is checked by
nftables in both forms, so leaving shadow mode can't fail. No
probation; takeovers and closing connections are refused (409). The
boot ruleset is the shadow one, and its fallback filters nothing. When
a reload (`flush ruleset`) deletes Housecarl's table, housecarld puts it
back (it listens to nftables' netlink notifications). `mode` in
`/status`, `/healthz` and `/auth/whoami`; a banner in the web UI;
would-be drops marked in the log (`shadow`) and the tracer
(`would_drop`); `hc ruleset --enforcing` (`GET /ruleset?enforcing=1`)
shows the ruleset for after. `shadow_unprotected` warns when no other
table filters the input hook; `nftables_service` and `takeover_pending`
aren't raised in shadow mode. The e2e test imports in shadow mode
before taking over.
- **Zone names at import:** `hc import --zone enp2s0=lan` (repeat;
interfaces given one name share a zone; Zone names on the Import
page), and a note listing each zone and where its name came from.