FAQ's
I am getting a 'License file not valid' error when logging into fBuilder. Why?
The file I downloaded has a tar.tar extension and will not extract using the typical tar -xf syntax. Why?
fBuilder keeps asking me to login over and over. Why?
When attempting to access fBuilder, I receive a 'License not found'error
What will you do with the Email address that I provided when I downloaded fBuilder?
I am getting 'Couldn't open .interfaces: Permission denied at PERL2EXE_STORAGE/fbuilderLib.pm
line 418' when I try setting the interfaces on the wizard. Why?
How do I start my firewall at boot time?
How can I maintain my firewall once it is created?
How do I view my firewall logs in fBuilder?
When attempting to start Boa, I get a 'could not open mime.types file' error. Why?
How can I have log reports or alert sent to me?
How can I create a basic rule?
What happens when I leave a field blank when adding rules?
How do I create a NAT rule?
Does fBuilder work with Apache?
My Demo has expired. How can I purchase fBuilder?
How can I uninstall fBuilder?
Where can I get more help?
The questions listed to not substitute for reading the documentation. In fact, you should read the corresponding
documentation for each section mentioned in these questions so that you understand the fields, what they mean, and
what they do. In some instances, this section may just refer you to other areas of the documentation.
I am getting a 'License file not valid' error when logging into
fBuilder. Why?
This can be caused by ^M characters being appended to the license
file. This can happen when the file is received on many web based mail
readers or if the machine you received the license on was a Windows
based machine, or even if the email passed through a Windows server like Exchange!
You can remove these ^M characters by changing to the /usr/local/fbuilder directory and typing the
following while logged in as root:
perl -pi.bak -e 's/\cM//g' fbuilder.lic
The file I downloaded has a tar.tar extension and will not extract using the typical tar -xf syntax. Why?
More information: After trying tar -xf the system returneds: "THIS DOES NOT LOOK LIKE A TAR ARCHIVE SKIPPING TO
NEXT HEADER ARCHIVE CONTAINS OBSOLESCENT BASE-64 HEADER ERROR EXIT
DELAYED FROM PREVIOUS ERRORS".
For some reason Windows machines are changing the name of the file
when it is downloaded. The file SHOULD be a tar.gz file and should untar
clean with a tar -xzvf.
fBuilder keeps asking me to login over and over. Why?
When you install fBuilder you are asked for the name of the
machine. You MUST use a qualified name (such as
yourmachine.yourdomain.com) and NOT the IP address of the machine. This
information will be saved to the .hosts file. When you browse to
fBuilder, you will use the same name as is referred to in this file. If
you attempt to browse to the IP address of the machine, the session
cookie will not work correctly. Also, you must accept cookies in your web browser.
When attempting to access fBuilder, I receive a 'License not found'error
This can happen for a couple of reasons. A file called fbuilder.lic
is emailed to the address that was provided when you downloaded the
product. If you do not receive this license (but provided a valid email
address when downloading) please contact support. Once you receive the
license, you must copy it to /usr/local/fbuilder for the product to
work. If you continue to get the error after copying the file, try to
kill the boa process by typing 'ps -awux | grep boa' to get the process
id and then type 'kill '. Once boa has been stopped, you can start it
again by typing '/usr/local/fbuilder/boa'.
What will you do with the Email address that I provided when I downloaded fBuilder?
InnerTek uses the email addresses as an 'Individual Identifier' so we can count how many individuals have
downloaded our products. This is very useful as many people may download multiple products and we can group
all of their downloads as coming from one person (as long as they used the same email address each time).
InnerTek will NEVER sell your names to other companies nor will we NEVER use our list to send unsolicited
email (SPAM). The only people that will recieve email from InnerTek are those who explicitly ask for it on the
download form. This information comes in the form of information about product updates for InnerTek products only.
If you would like to stop this information from coming to you at any time, you can just put the word 'Remove'
in the subject line and your record will be updated in our database.
I am getting 'Couldn't open .interfaces: Permission denied at
PERL2EXE_STORAGE/fbuilderLib.pm line 418' when I try setting the
interfaces on the wizard. Why?
This can happen if the /usr/local/fbuilder directory is not owned
by the fbuilder:fbuilder user:group. To remedy this, type:
chown fbuilder:fbuilder /usr/local/fbuilder
You may also have to rm /usr/local/fbuilder/.interfaces if the file
exists, kill the boa process, and restart boa before trying again.
How do I start my firewall at boot time?
Please refer to the section about this topic in the Miscellaneous documentation.
How can I maintain my firewall once it is created?
There are many ways to do this in fBuilder. If you just want to add an additional service after running
the 'Firewall Wizard', you can just run it again and chose the service that you missed the first time. The
Wizard saves your settings from the last time you ran it so that you do not have to enter everything again.
If you have made changes manually, you will not want to use the Wizard again or you will lose your custom rules.
If you want to insert/edit/delete/move any of the rules in your live firewall, you can
do it through the "View Options >> View Firewall' screen. Clicking the arrows will shift
the rule up or down. Clicking Insert will allow you to insert a rule and clicking Edit will
allow you to edit or delete a rule.
If you want to add a rule to an empty chain or want to append a rule to the bottom of
a chain, you can click 'New Rule' from the 'Edit firewall' menu and create your new
rule.
Remember, fBuilder will add, edit, or delete your rules in real time. You do NOT need to save the firewall and
then click 'Install Firewall' to make your changes active. As soon as you click a submit button in fBuilder, the
change is active. Once all of your changes have been made, however, you should go back to the 'View Firewall' screen and
click 'Save Firewall' and then 'Export to rc.firewall' so that you don't lose your changes after a reboot. The Export to
rc.firewall generates a script that can be used at boot time to start your firewall.
How do I view my firewall logs in fBuilder?
Please refer to the section about the 'Log Viewer' in the Tools documentation.
When attempting to start Boa, I get a 'could not open mime.types
file' error. Why?
You will need to look in your boa.conf file and look for a variable
called 'MimeTypes'. By default, this is set to "etc/mime.types". If your
mime.types file does not reside in this location, you will need to point
the variable to the location of your mime.types file.
How can I have log reports or alert sent to me?
Please refer to the section about 'Reporting' in the Tools documentation.
How can I create a basic rule?
You have two options for creating a new rule with fBuilder. You can use the 'New Rule' function or the
'Insert' function on the View Firewall screen. For this example, we will assume that this machine is acting
as a router and has created the basic firewall through the 'Firewall Wizard'. For the example, we will allow
port 80 (Web traffic) through the firewall for the users of the internal network (192.168.1.0/24).
- Click the View Firewall option
- Scroll down to the FORWARD chain
- Somewhere in the middle of chain, click 'Insert'
- Once inside the Insert function fill in the following fields:
- Source IP Address = 192.168.1.0/24 (This will allow the entire 192.168.1.0-255 subnet through)
- Source Ports = 1024:65535 (unregistered port range)
- Destination IP Address = 0.0.0.0/0 (Anywhere)
- Destination Port = 80 (Web traffic)
- Target = ACCEPT
- Protocol = TCP
- Click Insert Rule
As soon as you click Insert Rule, your rule is live. In this example we mentioned that we were assuming that the
firewall was created with the Firewall Wizard. Why? Because in order for this rule to work, you will also need a
state checking rule that allows the traffic back in to the internal network. If you look at your firewall, you will
notice a rule near the top of the FORWARD chain that has EST,REL in the Flags column. This is the state checking rule
that will allow the traffic back in. If you created the firewall without the Wizard, you will need to add this type of
rule. Also, notice that we did NOT check any of the boxes next to Source and Destination information. These check boxes
are used to invert the selection. Please refer to the Edit Firewall documentation for more
information on 'New Rule' options and the basics documentation for some iptables information.
What happens when I leave a field blank when adding rules?
In most places, fBuilder handles this and defines a default value that would be the equivalent of
'ALL'. In other words, if you leave a IP Address field blank, you will be saying 0.0.0.0/0 (This is not the case
for the NAT To IP address field). If you leave a port field blank, it is like saying 'all ports' (this DOES work
for the NAT To Ports field).
How do I create a NAT rule?
For this example, we will suppose that your external interface (facing the internet) is 111.111.111.111 and you
want to NAT port 80 (web) traffic through to your internal web server running on 192.168.1.100
If this is the first NAT rule in the PREROUTING chain, you will want to use the 'New Rule' option. If you already
have NAT rules, you can choose 'Insert' from the View Firewall screen inside the PREROUTING Chain. Once inside either
of these screens, you will want to enter the following information:
- Source IP Address = 0.0.0.0/0 (Anyone can come to your web server)
- Source Ports = 1024:65535 (unregistered port numbers)
- Destination IP Address = 111.111.111.111 (Your external IP address)
- Destination Port = 80 (Web traffic)
- NAT To IP Address = 192.168.1.100 (Your internal Web server)
- Nat To Port = 80 (The port your server is listening on)
- Rule Type = PREROUTING
- Target = DNAT
- Protocol = TCP
- Click 'Add New Rule' or 'Insert New Rule' depending on what screen you are entering the information.
Now it would seem that you are done, right? Wrong. You will now need to ACCEPT that packet through the FORWARD
chain on your firewall. This is because the FORWARD chain is filtering all traffic that is passing through the
firewall. In this senerio, you would need to ACCEPT packets that are heading to 192.168.1.100 on port 80 to
finish adding the NAT rule.
Does fBuilder work with Apache?
In order to get fBuilder running with Apache, you'll need to set
up Apache to allow execution of cgi scripts in what ever directory you
put fBuilder in... Depending on your version of Apache, there may be a
number of files to edit. In the latest stable version of Apache (1.3.12
as of this writing) the default file for everything you'll need to do is
httpd.conf. Basically you are looking for the following lines:
AddHandler .cgi
If it's commented out with a pound (#) sign before it, uncomment it by
removing the pound (#) sign.
There will also be access permissions to set up so that Apache will
allow execution of cgi scripts in a non cgi-bin directory. Set up the
following directive somewhere in the httpd.conf file:
AllowOverride All
Options ExecCGI
If your web server is running as 'nobody', you will need to change the
permissions on the fbuilder directory so that it's owned by nobody and
you will also need to change the ownership of the fw-init file.
chown nobody.nobody /path/to/fbuilder
chown nobody.nobody /path/to/fbuilder/fw-init
If you get any "permission denied" errors while using fBuilder in this
configuration, find out what was trying to be accessed by viewing your
apache error log, then change the owner of that file to nobody...
There are a couple fo files which you should NOT change the permissions
or ownership of, most notable is fBuilder_chains, execute_script.pl and
fParse.cgi. These files need to be owned by root with permissions set to
04755 (-rwsr-xr-x).
That should be all there is to setting up fBuilder with Apache...
My Demo has expired. How can I purchase fBuilder?
fBuilder can be purchased from the download page on the
InnerTek Software web site. After filling out the form, you will be
transfered to a secure server where you can enter your credit card information. For questions regarding
volume license purchases or reselling fBuilder, please contact sales
with any questions.
How can I uninstall fBuilder?
Please look at the list of files installed by fBuilder in the Miscellaneous documentation and
delete them. You will also want to kill the boa process if it is still running.
Where can I get more help?
There are several locations where you can turn for more help with fBuilder. First, you can check our web site
for more updated documentation, more FAQ's, and a disscussion forum. If you do not find your answers there, you
can contact support at support@innertek.com and we will be happy to
assist. Please remember to view all documentation before contacting support and provide information that will
help the support department with your issue. "fBuilder is broken" is not something that we can work with. Please
provide the steps you are taking, any error messages you are seeing, the browser you are using, your distribution
information (i.e. RedHat 8.0), version of iptables (can be found by typing iptables -V when logged in as root),
your kernel version, what you expected would happen, and what is actually happening.
Clients that have purchased fBuilder recieve priority support as well as free upgrades to fBuilder 2.4.x.
As always, thank you for using InnerTek Products.