Keywords and special characters that the parser expects exactly are displayed using this font. Parameters are specified with this font. Square brackets and are used to show optional keywords and parameters. Note that you have to pay attention when this manual is describing port numbers. The port number is always enclosed by and In this case, the port number is not an optional keyword. If it is possible to omit the port number, the expression becomes The vertical bar is used to indicate a choice between optional parameters. Parentheses and are used to group keywords and parameters when necessary. Major parameters are listed below.

number

means a hexadecimal or a decimal number. The former must be prefixed with

string

path

file

means any string enclosed in

address

means IPv6 and/or IPv4 address.

port

means a TCP/UDP port number. The port number is always enclosed by and

timeunit

is one of following: sec , secs , second , seconds , min , mins , minute , minutes , hour , hours .

privsep { statements }

specifies privilege separation parameters. When enabled, these enable racoon() to operate with an unprivileged instance doing most of the work, while a privileged instance takes care of performing the following operations as root: reading PSK and private keys, launching hook scripts, and validating passwords against system databases or against PAM.

user user ;

The user to which the unprivileged instance of racoon(8) , should switch. This can be a quoted user name or a numeric UID.

group group ;

The group to which the unprivileged instance of racoon(8) , should switch. This can be a quoted group name or a numeric GID.

chroot path ;

A directory to which the unprivileged instance of racoon() should chroot(2) . This directory should hold a tree where the following files must be reachable:

/dev/random

/dev/urandom

the certificates

the file containing the Xauth banner

The PSK file, the private keys, and the hook scripts are accessed through the privileged instance of racoon() and do not need to be reachable in the chroot(2) Ap ed tree.

This section specify various paths used by racoon. When running in privilege separation mode, certificate and script paths are mandatory.

path include path ;

specifies a path to include a file. See

path pre_shared_key file ;

specifies a file containing pre-shared key(s) for various ID(s). See

path certificate path ;

racoon() will search this directory if a certificate or certificate request is received. If you run with privilege separation, racoon() will refuse to use a certificate stored outside of this directory.

path backupsa file ;

specifies a file to which SA information which is negotiated by racoon should be stored. racoon() will install SA(s) from the file when started with the -B flag. The file is growing because racoon() simply adds SAs to it. You should maintain the file manually.

path script path ;

racoon() will search this directory for scripts hooks. If you run with privilege separation, racoon() will refuse to execute a script stored outside of this directory.

path pidfile file ;

specifies file where to store PID of process. If path starts with / it is treated as an absolute path, otherwise relative to VARRUN directory specified at compilation time. Default is racoon.pid .

include file

other configuration files can be included.

is obsolete. It must be defined at each remote directive.

timer { statements }

specifies various timer values.

counter number ;

the maximum number of retries to send. The default is 5.

interval number timeunit ;

the interval to resend, in seconds. The default time is 10 seconds.

persend number ;

the number of packets per send. The default is 1.

phase1 number timeunit ;

the maximum time it should take to complete phase 1. The default time is 15 seconds.

phase2 number timeunit ;

the maximum time it should take to complete phase 2. The default time is 10 seconds.

natt_keepalive number timeunit ;

interval between sending NAT-Traversal keep-alive packets. The default time is 20 seconds. Set to 0s to disable keep-alive packets.

listen { statements }

If no listen directive is specified, racoon() will listen on all available interface addresses. The following is the list of valid statements:

isakmp address Bq Bq port ;

If this is specified, racoon() will only listen on address . The default port is 500, which is specified by IANA. You can provide more than one address definition.

isakmp_natt address Bq port ;

Same as isakmp but also sets the socket options to accept UDP-encapsulated ESP traffic for NAT-Traversal. If you plan to use NAT-T, you should provide at least one address with port 4500, which is specified by IANA. There is no default.

strict_address ;

require that all addresses for ISAKMP must be bound. This statement will be ignored if you do not specify any address.

The listen section can also be used to specify the admin socket mode and ownership, if racoon was built with support for admin port.

adminsock path [owner group mode ;]

path , owner , and group are the socket path, owner, and group; they must be quoted. Defaults are /var/racoon/racoon.sock , UID 0, and GID 0. mode is the access mode in octal, default is 0600.

adminsock disabled ;

This directive tells racoon to not listen on the admin socket.

gss_id_enc enctype ;

Older versions of racoon() used ISO-Latin-1 as the encoding of the GSS-API identifier attribute. For interoperability with Microsoft Windows' GSS-API authentication scheme, the default encoding has been changed to UTF-16LE. The gss_id_enc parameter allows racoon() to be configured to use the old encoding for compatibility with existing racoon() installations. The following are valid values for enctype :

utf-16le

Use UTF-16LE to encode the GSS-API identifier attribute. This is the default encoding. This encoding is compatible with Microsoft Windows.

latin1

Use ISO-Latin-1 to encode the GSS-API identifier attribute. This is the encoding used by older versions of racoon(8) .

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remote ( address | anonymous ) { statements } specifies the parameters for IKE phase 1 for each remote node. The default port is 500. If anonymous is specified, the statements apply to all peers which do not match any other remote directive. Sections with inherit parent statements (where parent is either address or a keyword anonymous ) have all values predefined to those of a given parent . In these sections it is enough to redefine only the changed parameters. The following are valid statements.

exchange_mode ( main | aggressive | base ) ;

defines the exchange mode for phase 1 when racoon is the initiator. It also means the acceptable exchange mode when racoon is responder. More than one mode can be specified by separating them with a comma. All of the modes are acceptable. The first exchange mode is what racoon uses when it is the initiator.

doi ipsec_doi ;

means to use IPsec DOI as specified in RFC 2407. You can omit this statement.

situation identity_only ;

means to use SIT_IDENTITY_ONLY as specified in RFC 2407. You can omit this statement.

identifier idtype ;

is obsolete. Instead, use my_identifier .

my_identifier idtype ... ;

specifies the identifier sent to the remote host and the type to use in the phase 1 negotiation. address, fqdn , user_fqdn , keyid , and asn1dn can be used as an idtype . Use them in the following way:

my_identifier address Bq address ;

the type is the IP address. This is the default type if you do not specify an identifier to use.

my_identifier user_fqdn string ;

the type is a USER_FQDN (user fully-qualified domain name).

my_identifier fqdn string ;

the type is a FQDN (fully-qualified domain name).

my_identifier keyid file ;

the type is a KEY_ID.

my_identifier asn1dn Bq string ;

the type is an ASN.1 distinguished name. If string is omitted, racoon() will get the DN from the Subject field in the certificate.

xauth_login Bq string ;

specifies the login to use in client-side Hybrid authentication. It is available only if racoon() has been built with this option. The associated password is looked up in the pre-shared key files, using the login string as the key id.

peers_identifier idtype ... ;

specifies the peer's identifier to be received. If it is not defined then racoon() will not verify the peer's identifier in ID payload transmitted from the peer. If it is defined, the behavior of the verification depends on the flag of verify_identifier . The usage of idtype is the same as my_identifier except that the individual component values of an asn1dn identifier may specified as * to match any value (e.g. "C=XX, O=MyOrg, OU=*, CN=Mine"). Alternative acceptable peer identifiers may be specified by repeating the peers_identifier statement.

verify_identifier (on off) ;

If you want to verify the peer's identifier, set this to on. In this case, if the value defined by peers_identifier is not the same as the peer's identifier in the ID payload, the negotiation will failed. The default is off.

certificate_type certspec ;

specifies a certificate specification. certspec is one of followings:

x509 certfile privkeyfile ;

certfile means a file name of a certificate. privkeyfile means a file name of a secret key.

ca_type cacertspec ;

specifies a root certificate authority specification. cacertspec is one of followings:

x509 cacertfile ;

cacertfile means a file name of the root certificate authority. Default is /etc/openssl/cert.pem

mode_cfg (on off) ;

Gather network information through ISAKMP mode configuration. Default is off.

peers_certfile ( dnssec | certfile ) ;

If dnssec is defined, racoon() will ignore the CERT payload from the peer, and try to get the peer's certificate from DNS instead. If certfile is defined, racoon() will ignore the CERT payload from the peer, and will use this certificate as the peer's certificate.

script script phase1_up

script script phase1_down

Shell scripts that get executed when a phase 1 SA goes up or down. Both scripts get either phase1_up or phase1_down as first argument, and the following variables are set in their environment:

LOCAL_ADDR

The local address of the phase 1 SA.

LOCAL_PORT

The local port used for IKE for the phase 1 SA.

REMOTE_ADDR

The remote address of the phase 1 SA.

REMOTE_PORT

The remote port used for IKE for the phase 1 SA.

The following variables are only set if mode_cfg was enabled:

INTERNAL_ADDR4

An IPv4 internal address obtained by ISAKMP mode config.

INTERNAL_NETMASK4

An IPv4 internal netmask obtained by ISAKMP mode config.

INTERNAL_DNS4

Internal DNS server IPv4 address obtained by ISAKMP mode config.

INTERNAL_NBNS4

Internal WINS server IPv4 address obtained by ISAKMP mode config.

send_cert (on off) ;

If you do not want to send a certificate for some reason, set this to off. The default is on.

send_cr (on off) ;

If you do not want to send a certificate request for some reason, set this to off. The default is on.

verify_cert (on off) ;

If you do not want to verify the peer's certificate for some reason, set this to off. The default is on.

lifetime time number timeunit ;

Define a lifetime of a certain time which will be proposed in the phase 1 negotiations. Any proposal will be accepted, and the attribute(s) will be not proposed to the peer if you do not specify it (them). They can be individually specified in each proposal.

ike_frag (on off) ;

Enable receiver-side IKE fragmentation, if racoon() has been built with this feature. This extension is there to work around broken firewalls that do not work with fragmented UDP packets. IKE fragmentation is always enabled on the sender-side, and it is used if the peer advertises itself as IKE fragmentation capable.

esp_frag fraglen ;

This option is only relevant if you use NAT traversal in tunnel mode. Its purpose is to work around broken DSL routers that reject UDP fragments, by fragmenting the IP packets before ESP encapsulation. The result is ESP over UDP of fragmented packets instead of fragmented ESP over UDP packets (i.e., IP:UDP:ESP:frag(IP) instead of frag(IP:UDP:ESP:IP)). fraglen is the maximum size of the fragments. 552 should work anywhere, but the higher fraglen is, the better is the performance. Note that because PMTU discovery is broken on many sites, you will have to use MSS clamping if you want TCP to work correctly.

initial_contact (on off) ;

enable this to send an INITIAL-CONTACT message. The default value is on . This message is useful only when the implementation of the responder chooses an old SA when there are multiple SAs with different established time, and the initiator reboots. If racoon did not send the message, the responder would use an old SA even when a new SA was established. The KAME stack has the switch in the system wide value net.key.preferred_oldsa. when the value is zero, the stack always uses a new SA.

passive (on off) ;

If you do not want to initiate the negotiation, set this to on. The default value is off . It is useful for a server.

proposal_check level ;

specifies the action of lifetime length and PFS of the phase 2 selection on the responder side, and the action of lifetime check in phase 1. The default level is strict . If the level is:

obey

the responder will obey the initiator anytime.

strict

If the responder's length is longer than the initiator's one, the responder uses the initiator's one. Otherwise it rejects the proposal. If PFS is not required by the responder, the responder will obey the proposal. If PFS is required by both sides and if the responder's group is not equal to the initiator's one, then the responder will reject the proposal.

claim

If the responder's length is longer than the initiator's one, the responder will use the initiator's one. If the responder's length is shorter than the initiator's one, the responder uses its own length AND sends a RESPONDER-LIFETIME notify message to an initiator in the case of lifetime (phase 2 only). For PFS, this directive behaves the same as strict .

exact

If the initiator's length is not equal to the responder's one, the responder will reject the proposal. If PFS is required by both sides and if the responder's group is not equal to the initiator's one, then the responder will reject the proposal.

support_proxy (on off) ;

If this value is set to on, then both values of ID payloads in the phase 2 exchange are always used as the addresses of end-point of IPsec-SAs. The default is off.

generate_policy (on off) ;

This directive is for the responder. Therefore you should set passive to on in order that racoon() only becomes a responder. If the responder does not have any policy in SPD during phase 2 negotiation, and the directive is set to on, then racoon() will choose the first proposal in the SA payload from the initiator, and generate policy entries from the proposal. It is useful to negotiate with clients whose IP address is allocated dynamically. Note that an inappropriate policy might be installed into the responder's SPD by the initiator, so other communications might fail if such policies are installed due to a policy mismatch between the initiator and the responder. This directive is ignored in the initiator case. The default value is off .

nat_traversal (on off force) ;

This directive enables use of the NAT-Traversal IPsec extension (NAT-T). NAT-T allows one or both peers to reside behind a NAT gateway (i.e., doing address- or port-translation). Presence of NAT gateways along the path is discovered during phase 1 handshake and if found, NAT-T is negotiated. When NAT-T is in charge, all ESP and AH packets of a given connection are encapsulated into UDP datagrams (port 4500, by default). Possible values are:

on

NAT-T is used when a NAT gateway is detected between the peers.

off

NAT-T is not proposed/accepted. This is the default.

force

NAT-T is used regardless if a NAT is detected between the peers or not.

Please note that NAT-T support is a compile-time option. Although it is enabled in the source distribution by default, it may not be available in your particular build. In that case you will get a warning when using any NAT-T related config options.

dpd_delay delay ;

This option activates the DPD and sets the time (in seconds) allowed between 2 proof of liveness requests. The default value is 0 , which disables DPD monitoring, but still negotiates DPD support.

dpd_retry delay ;

If dpd_delay is set, this sets the delay (in seconds) to wait for a proof of liveness before considering it as failed and send another request. The default value is 5 .

dpd_maxfail number ;

If dpd_delay is set, this sets the maximum number of proof of liveness to request (without reply) before considering the peer is dead. The default value is 5 .

nonce_size number ;

define the byte size of nonce value. Racoon can send any value although RFC2409 specifies that the value MUST be between 8 and 256 bytes. The default size is 16 bytes.

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proposal { sub-substatements }

encryption_algorithm algorithm ;

specify the encryption algorithm used for the phase 1 negotiation. This directive must be defined. algorithm is one of following: des , 3des , blowfish , cast128 , aes for Oakley. For other transforms, this statement should not be used.

hash_algorithm algorithm ;

define the hash algorithm used for the phase 1 negotiation. This directive must be defined. algorithm is one of following: md5, sha1, sha256, sha384, sha512 for Oakley.

authentication_method type ;

defines the authentication method used for the phase 1 negotiation. This directive must be defined. type is one of: pre_shared_key , rsasig , gssapi_krb , hybrid_rsa_server , or hybrid_rsa_client .

dh_group group ;

define the group used for the Diffie-Hellman exponentiations. This directive must be defined. group is one of following: modp768 , modp1024 , modp1536 , modp2048 , modp3072 , modp4096 , modp6144 , modp8192 . Or you can define 1, 2, 5, 14, 15, 16, 17, or 18 as the DH group number. When you want to use aggressive mode, you must define the same DH group in each proposal.

lifetime time number timeunit ;

define lifetime of the phase 1 SA proposal. Refer to the description of the lifetime directive defined in the remote directive.

gss_id string ;

define the GSS-API endpoint name, to be included as an attribute in the SA, if the gssapi_krb authentication method is used. If this is not defined, the default value of is used, where hostname is the value returned by the hostname() command.

The policy directive is obsolete, policies are now in the SPD. racoon() will obey the policy configured into the kernel by setkey(8) , and will construct phase 2 proposals by combining sainfo specifications in , and policies in the kernel.

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sainfo ( source_id destination_id | anonymous ) [ from idtype [ string ] ] { statements } defines the parameters of the IKE phase 2 (IPsec-SA establishment). source_id and destination_id are constructed like: address address ul_proto or subnet address ul_proto or idtype string It means exactly the content of ID payload. This is not like a filter rule. For example, if you define 3ffe:501:4819::/48 as source_id . 3ffe:501:4819:1000:/64 will not match. In case of longest prefix (selecting single host) address instructs to send ID type of ADDRESS, while subnet instructs to send ID type of SUBNET. Otherwise these instructions are identical.

pfs_group group ;

define the group of Diffie-Hellman exponentiations. If you do not require PFS then you can omit this directive. Any proposal will be accepted if you do not specify one. group is one of following: modp768 , modp1024 , modp1536 , modp2048 , modp3072 , modp4096 , modp6144 , modp8192 . Or you can define 1, 2, 5, 14, 15, 16, 17, or 18 as the DH group number.

lifetime time number timeunit ;

define how long an IPsec-SA will be used, in timeunits. Any proposal will be accepted, and no attribute(s) will be proposed to the peer if you do not specify it(them). See the proposal_check directive.

my_identifier idtype ... ;

is obsolete. It does not make sense to specify an identifier in the phase 2.

racoon() does not have a list of security protocols to be negotiated. The list of security protocols are passed by SPD in the kernel. Therefore you have to define all of the potential algorithms in the phase 2 proposals even if there are algorithms which will not be used. These algorithms are define by using the following three directives, with a single comma as the separator. For algorithms that can take variable-length keys, algorithm names can be followed by a key length, like racoon() will compute the actual phase 2 proposals by computing the permutation of the specified algorithms, and then combining them with the security protocol specified by the SPD. For example, if des , 3des , hmac_md5 , and hmac_sha1 are specified as algorithms, we have four combinations for use with ESP, and two for AH. Then, based on the SPD settings, racoon() will construct the actual proposals. If the SPD entry asks for ESP only, there will be 4 proposals. If it asks for both AH and ESP, there will be 8 proposals. Note that the kernel may not support the algorithm you have specified.

encryption_algorithm algorithms ;

des , 3des , des_iv64 , des_iv32 , rc5 , rc4 , idea , 3idea , cast128 , blowfish , null_enc , twofish , rijndael , aes

authentication_algorithm algorithms ;

des , 3des , des_iv64 , des_iv32 , hmac_md5 , hmac_sha1 , hmac_sha256, hmac_sha384, hmac_sha512, non_auth

compression_algorithm algorithms ;

deflate

log level ;

define logging level. level is one of following: notify , debug , and debug2 . The default is notify . If you set the logging level too high on slower machines, IKE negotiation can fail due to timing constraint changes.

padding { statements }

specified padding format. The following are valid statements:

randomize (on off) ;

enable using a randomized value for padding. The default is on.

randomize_length (on off) ;

the pad length is random. The default is off.

maximum_length number ;

define a maximum padding length. If randomize_length is off, this is ignored. The default is 20 bytes.

exclusive_tail (on off) ;

means to put the number of pad bytes minus one into the last part of the padding. The default is on.

strict_check (on off) ;

means to constrain the peer to set the number of pad bytes. The default is off.

mode_cfg { statements }

Defines the information to return for remote hosts' ISAKMP mode config requests. Also defines the authentication source for remote peers authenticating through hybrid auth. The following are valid statements:

auth_source (system radius pam) ;

Specify the source for authentication of users through hybrid auth. system means to use the Unix user database. This is the default. radius means to use a RADIUS server. It works only if racoon() was built with libradius support, and the configuration is done in radius.conf(5) . pam means to use PAM. It works only if racoon() was built with libpam support.

conf_source (local radius) ;

Specify the source for IP addresses and netmask allocated through ISAKMP mode config. local means to use the local IP pool defined by the network4 and pool_size keywords. This is the default. radius means to use a RADIUS server. It works only if racoon() was built with libradius support, and the configuration is done in radius.conf(5) . RADIUS configuration requires RADIUS authentication.

accounting (none radius pam) ;

Enable or disable accounting for Xauth logins and logouts. Default is none , which disable accounting. radius enable RADIUS accounting. It works only if racoon() was built with libradius support, and the configuration is done in radius.conf(5) . RADIUS accounting require RADIUS authentication. pam enable PAM accounting. It works only if racoon() was built with libpam support. PAM accounting requires PAM authentication.

pool_size size

Specify the size of the IP address pool, either local or allocated through RADIUS. conf_source selects the local pool or the RADIUS configuration, but in both configurations, you cannot have more than size users connected at the same time. The default is 255.

network4 address ;

netmask4 address ;

The local IP pool base address and network mask from which dynamically allocated IPv4 addresses should be taken. This is used if conf_source is set to local or if the RADIUS server returned 255.255.255.254 . Default is 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0 .

dns4 address ;

The IPv4 address for a DNS server.

nbns4 address ;

The IPv4 address for a WINS server.

banner path ;

The path of a file displayed on the client at connection time. Default is /etc/motd .

auth_throttle delay ;

On each failed Xauth authentication attempt, refuse new attempts for delay more seconds. This is to avoid dictionary attacks on Xauth passwords. Default is one second. Set to zero to disable authentication delay.

pfs_group group ;

Sets the PFS group used in the client proposal (Cisco VPN client only). Default is 0.

save_passwd (on | off) ;

Allow the client to save the Xauth password (Cisco VPN client only). Default is off.

complex_bundle (on off) ;

defines the interpretation of proposal in the case of SA bundle. Normally is proposed as The interpretation is more common to other IKE implementations, however, it allows very limited set of combinations for proposals. With the option enabled, it will be proposed as The default value is off .

The pre-shared key file defines pairs of identifiers and corresponding shared secret keys which are used in the pre-shared key authentication method in phase 1. The pair in each line is separated by some number of blanks and/or tab characters like in the hosts() file. Key can include blanks because everything after the first blanks is interpreted as the secret key. Lines starting with are ignored. Keys which start with are interpreted as hexadecimal strings. Note that the file must be owned by the user ID running racoon() and must not be accessible by others.