kea/doc/guide/hooks.xml

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  <chapter id="hooks-libraries">
    <title>Hooks Libraries</title>
    <section id="hooks-libraries-introduction">
      <title>Introduction</title>
      <para>
      Although Kea offers a lot of flexibility, there may be cases where
      its behavior needs customisation.  To accommodate this possibility,
      Kea includes the idea of "Hooks".  This feature lets Kea load one
      or more dynamically-linked libraries (known as "hooks libraries")
      and, at various points in its processing ("hook points"), call
      functions in them.  Those functions perform whatever custom
      processing is required.
      </para>
      <para>
      Hooks libraries are attached to individual Kea processes, not to
      Kea as a whole.  This means (for example) that it is possible
      to associate one set of libraries with the DHCP4 server and a
      different set to the DHCP6 server.
      </para>
      <para>
      Another point to note is that it is possible for a process to
      load multiple libraries.  When processing reaches a hook point,
      Kea calls the hooks library functions attached to it.  If multiple
      libraries have attached a function to a given hook point, Kea calls
      all of them, in the order in which the libraries are specified in
      the configuration file. The order may be important: consult the
      documentation of the libraries to see if this is the case.
      </para>
      <para>
      The next section describes how to configure hooks libraries. If you
      are interested in writing your own hooks library, information can be
      found in the <ulink url="https://jenkins.isc.org/job/Fedora20_32_doxygen_doc/doxygen/">Kea
      Developer's Guide</ulink>.
      </para>
    </section> <!-- end Introduction -->
    <section>
      <title>Configuring Hooks Libraries</title>
      <para>
      The hooks libraries for a given process are configured using the
      <command>hooks-libraries</command> keyword in the
      configuration for that process. (Note that
      the word "hooks" is plural).  The value of the keyword
      is an array of map structures, each structure corresponding to a hooks
      library.  For example, to set up two hooks libraries for the DHCPv4
      server, the configuration would be:
<screen>
<userinput>"Dhcp4": {
    :
    "hooks-libraries": [
        {
            "library": "/opt/charging.so"
        },
        {
            "library": "/opt/local/notification.so",
            "parameters": {
                "mail": "spam@example.com",
                "floor": 13,
                "debug": false,
                "users": [ "alice", "bob", "charlie" ],
                "languages": {
                    "french": "bonjour",
                    "klingon": "yl'el"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
    :
}</userinput>
</screen>
      </para>

      <note><para>
        This is a change to the syntax used in Kea 0.9.2 and earlier, where
        hooks-libraries was a list of strings, each string being the name of
        a library.  The change was made in Kea 1.0 to facilitate the
        specification of library-specific parameters, a capability
        available in Kea 1.1.0 onwards.
      </para></note>

        <note>
          <para>
          The library reloading behavior has changed in Kea 1.1. Libraries are
          reloaded, even if their list hasn't changed. Kea does that, because
          the parameters specified for the library (or the files those
          parameters point to) may have changed.
          </para>
        </note>

      <para>
        Libraries may have additional parameters. Those are not mandatory in the
        sense that there may be libraries that don't require them. However, for
        specific library there is often specific requirement for specify certain
        set of parameters. Please consult the documentation for your library
        for details. In the example above, the first library has no parameters.
        The second library has five parameters, specifying mail (string
        parameter), floor (integer parameter), debug (boolean parameter) and
        even lists (list of strings) and maps (containing strings). Nested
        parameters could be used if the library supports it. This topic is
        explained in detail in the Hooks Developer's Guide in the "Configuring
        Hooks Libraries" section.
      </para>

      <para>
      Notes:
        <itemizedlist mark='bullet'>
          <listitem><para>
          The full path to each library should be given.
          </para></listitem>
          <listitem><para>
          As noted above, order may be important - consult the documentation for
          each library.
          </para></listitem>
          <listitem><para>
          An empty list has the same effect as omitting the
          <command>hooks-libraries</command> configuration element all together.
          </para>
          <note><para>
          There is one case where this is not true: if Kea
          is running with a configuration that contains a
          <command>hooks-libraries</command> item, and that item is
          removed and the configuration reloaded, the removal will be
          ignored and the libraries remain loaded.  As a workaround,
          instead of removing the <command>hooks-libraries</command>
          item, change it to an empty list.  This will be fixed in a
          future version of Kea.
          </para></note>
          </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
      </para>
      <para>
      At the present time, only the kea-dhcp4 and kea-dhcp6 processes support
      hooks libraries.
      </para>
    </section>

    <section>
      <title>Available Hooks Libraries</title>
      <para>
      As described above, the hooks functionality provides a way to customize
      a Kea server without modifying the core code.  ISC has chosen to take
      advantage of this feature to provide functions that may only be useful
      to a subset of Kea users.  To this end ISC has created some hooks
      libraries; these discussed in the following sections.
      </para>

      <note><para>
      Some of these libraries will be available with the base code while others
      will be shared with organizations supporting development of Kea
      , possibly as a 'benefit' or 'thank you' for helping to sustain
      the larger Kea project. If you would like to get access to those
      libraries, please consider taking out a support contract: this includes
      professional support, advance security notifications, input into our
      roadmap planning, and many other benefits, while helping
      making Kea sustainable in the long term.
      </para></note>

      <para>Currently the following libraries are available or planned from ISC:

        <table frame="all" id="hook-libs">
          <title>List of available hooks libraries</title>
          <tgroup cols='3'>
          <colspec colname='name' />
          <colspec colname='avail' />
          <colspec colname='description' />
          <thead>
            <row>
              <entry>Name</entry>
              <entry>Availability</entry>
              <entry>Since</entry>
              <entry>Description</entry>
            </row>
          </thead>

          <tbody>
            <row>
              <entry>user_chk</entry>
              <entry>Kea sources</entry>
              <entry>Kea 0.8</entry>
              <entry>Reads known users list from a file. Unknown users
              will be assigned a
              lease from the last subnet defined in the configuration file,
              e.g. to redirect them a captive portal. This demonstrates how an
              external source of information can be used to influence the Kea
              allocation engine. This hook is part of the Kea source code and is
              available in the src/hooks/dhcp/user_chk directory.</entry>
            </row>
            <row>
              <entry>Forensic Logging</entry>
              <entry>Support customers</entry>
              <entry>Kea 1.1.0</entry>
              <entry>This library provides hooks that record a detailed log of
              lease assignments and renewals into a set of log files. In many
              legal jurisdictions companies, especially ISPs, must record
              information about the addresses they have leased to DHCP
              clients. This library is designed to help with that
              requirement. If the information that it records is sufficient it
              may be used directly. If your jurisdiction requires that you save
              a different set of information, you may use it as a template or
              example and create your own custom logging hooks.</entry>
            </row>
            <row>
              <entry>Flexible Identifier</entry>
              <entry>Support customers</entry>
              <entry>Kea 1.2.0 beta</entry>
              <entry>Kea software provides a way to handle host reservations
              that include addresses, prefixes, options, client classes and
              other features. The reservation can be based on hardware address,
              DUID, circuit-id or client-id in DHCPv4 and using hardware address
              or DUID in DHCPv6. However, there are sometimes scenario where the
              reservation is more complex, e.g. uses other options that
              mentioned above, uses part of specific options or perhaps even a
              combination of several options and fields to uniquely identify a
              client. Those scenarios are addressed by the Flexible Identifiers
              hook application. It allows defining an expression, similar to
              the one used in client classification,
	      e.g. substring(relay6[0].option[37],0,6). Each incoming packet is
	      evaluated against that expression and its value is then searched
	      in the reservations database.
              </entry>
            </row>
          </tbody>
          </tgroup>
          </table>

      </para>
      <para>
        ISC hopes to see more hooks libraries become available as time
        progresses, both developed internally and externally. Since
        this list may evolve dynamically, we decided to keep it on a
        wiki page, available at this link: <ulink
        url="http://kea.isc.org/wiki/Hooks">http://kea.isc.org/wiki/Hooks</ulink>.
        If you are a developer or are aware of any hooks libraries not
        listed there, please send a note to the kea-users or kea-dev
        mailing lists and someone will update it.
      </para>
      <section>
        <title>user_chk: Checking User Access</title>
        <para>
          The user_chk library is the first hooks library published by ISC. It
          attempts to serve several purposes:

          <itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
              <para>To assign "new" or "unregistered" users to a
              restricted subnet, while "known" or "registered" users are assigned
              to unrestricted subnets.</para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
              <para>To allow DHCP response options or vendor option
              values to be customized based upon user identity. </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
              <para>To provide a real time record of the user registration
              activity which can be sampled by an external consumer.</para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
              <para> To serve as a demonstration of various capabilities
              possible using the hooks interface.</para>
            </listitem>
          </itemizedlist>
        </para>
        <para>
          Once loaded, the library allows segregating incoming requests into
          known and unknown clients. For known clients, the packets are
          processed mostly as usual, except it is possible to override certain
          options being sent. That can be done on a per host basis. Clients
          that are not on the known hosts list will be treated as unknown and
          will be assigned to the last subnet defined in the configuration file.
        </para>

        <para>
          As an example of use, this behavior may be used to put unknown users into a
          separate subnet that leads to a walled garden, where they can only
          access a registration portal. Once they fill in necessary data, their
          details are added to the known clients file and they get a proper
          address after their device is restarted.
        </para>

        <note><para>This library was developed several years before the host
        reservation mechanism has become available. Currently host reservation is
        much more
        powerful and flexible, but nevertheless the user_chk capability to consult
        and external source of information about clients and alter Kea's
        behavior is useful and remains of educational value.
        </para></note>

        <para>
          The library reads the /tmp/user_chk_registry.txt file while being
          loaded and each time an incoming packet is processed. The file is expected
          to have each line contain a self-contained JSON snippet which must
          have the following two entries:

          <itemizedlist>
            <listitem><para><command>type</command>, whose value
            is "HW_ADDR" for IPv4 users or "DUID" for IPv6
            users</para></listitem>
            <listitem><para><command>id</command>, whose value is
            either the hardware address or the DUID from the request
            formatted as a string of hex digits, with or without
            ":" delimiters.</para></listitem>
          </itemizedlist>

and may have the zero or more of the following entries:

          <itemizedlist>
            <listitem><para><command>bootfile</command> whose value
            is the pathname of the desired file</para></listitem>
            <listitem><para><command>tftp_server</command> whose
            value is the hostname or IP address of the desired
            server</para></listitem>
          </itemizedlist>

          A sample user registry file is shown below:

<screen>{ "type" : "HW_ADDR", "id" : "0c:0e:0a:01:ff:04", "bootfile" : "/tmp/v4bootfile" }
{ "type" : "HW_ADDR", "id" : "0c:0e:0a:01:ff:06", "tftp_server" : "tftp.v4.example.com" }
{ "type" : "DUID", "id" : "00:01:00:01:19:ef:e6:3b:00:0c:01:02:03:04", "bootfile" : "/tmp/v6bootfile" }
{ "type" : "DUID", "id" : "00:01:00:01:19:ef:e6:3b:00:0c:01:02:03:06", "tftp_server" : "tftp.v6.example.com" }</screen>

        </para>

        <para>As with any other hooks libraries provided by ISC, internals of the
        user_chk code are well documented. You can take a look at the  <ulink
        url="https://jenkins.isc.org/job/Fedora20_32_doxygen_doc/doxygen/d8/db2/libdhcp_user_chk.html">Kea Developer's Guide section dedicated to the user_chk library</ulink>
        that discusses how the code works internally. That, together with
        our general entries in <ulink
        url="https://jenkins.isc.org/job/Fedora20_32_doxygen_doc/doxygen/">Hooks
        Framework section</ulink> should give you some pointers how to extend
        this library and perhaps even write your own from scratch.</para>

      </section>
      <section>
        <title>legal_log: Forensic Logging Hooks</title>
        <para>
        This section describes the forensic log hooks library. This library
        provides hooks that record a detailed log of lease assignments
        and renewals into a set of log files.  Currently this library
        is only available to ISC customers with a support contract.
        </para>
        <para>
        In many legal jurisdictions companies, especially ISPs, must record
        information about the addresses they have leased to DHCP clients.
        This library is designed to help with that requirement.  If the
        information that it records is sufficient it may be used directly.
        If your jurisdiction requires that you save a different set of
        information you may use it as a template or example and create your
        own custom logging hooks.
        </para>
        <para>
        This logging is done as a set of hooks to allow it to be customized
        to any particular need.  Modifying a hooks library is easier and
        safer than updating the core code.  In addition by using the hooks
        features those users who don't need to log this information can
        leave it out and avoid any performance penalties.
        </para>
        <section>
        <title>Log File Naming</title>
          <para>
          The names for the log files have the following form:
          </para>
<screen>
path/base-name.CCYYMMDD.txt
</screen>
          <para>
          The &quot;path&quot; and &quot;base-name&quot; are supplied in the
          configuration as described below see
          <xref linkend="forensic-log-configuration"/>.  The next part of the name is
          the date the log file was started, with four digits for year, two digits
          for month and two digits for day.  The file is rotated on a daily basis.
          </para>
          <note><para>
          When running Kea servers for both DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 the log names must
          be distinct.  See the examples in <xref linkend="forensic-log-configuration"/>.
          </para></note>
        </section>
        <section>
        <title>DHCPv4 Log Entries</title>
          <para>
          For DHCPv4 the library creates entries based on DHCPREQUEST messages
          and corresponding DHCPv4 leases intercepted by lease4_select
          (for new leases) and lease4_renew (for renewed leases) hooks.
          </para>
          <para>
          An entry is a single string with no embedded end-of-line markers
          and has the following sections:
<screen>
address duration device-id {client-info} {relay-info}
</screen>
          </para>
          <para>
          Where:
          <itemizedlist>
            <listitem><para>
            address - the leased IPv4 address given out and whether it was
            assigned or renewed.
            </para></listitem>
            <listitem><para>
            duration - the lease lifetime expressed in days (if present),
            hours, minutes and seconds.  A lease lifetime of 0xFFFFFFFF will be
            denoted with the text &quot;infinite duration&quot;.
            </para></listitem>
            <listitem><para>
            device-id - the client's hardware address shown as numerical type
            and hex digit string.
            </para></listitem>
            <listitem><para>
            client-info - the DHCP client id option (61) if present, shown as
            a hex string.
            </para></listitem>
            <listitem><para>
            relay-info - for relayed packets the giaddr and the RAI circuit-id,
            remote-id and subscriber-id options (option 82 sub
            options: 1, 2 and 6) if present.
            The circuit id and remote id are presented as hex strings
            </para></listitem>
          </itemizedlist>
          </para>
          <para>
          For instance (line breaks added for readability, they would not
          be present in the log file).
<screen>
Address: 192.2.1.100 has been renewed for 1 hrs 52 min 15 secs to a device with
hardware address: hwtype=1 08:00:2b:02:3f:4e, client-id: 17:34:e2:ff:09:92:54
connected via relay at address: 192.2.16.33, identified by circuit-id:
68:6f:77:64:79 and remote-id: 87:f6:79:77:ef
</screen>
          </para>
        </section>
        <section>
        <title>DHCPv6 Log Entries</title>
          <para>
          For DHCPv6 the library creates entries based on lease management
          actions intercepted by the lease6_select (for new leases), lease6_renew
          (for renewed leases) and lease6_rebind (for rebound leases).
          </para>
          <para>
          An entry is a single string with no embedded end-of-line markers
          and has the following sections:
<screen>
address duration device-id {relay-info}*
</screen>
          </para>
          <para>
          Where:
          <itemizedlist>
            <listitem><para>
            address - the leased IPv6 address or prefix given out and whether
            it was assigned or renewed.
            </para></listitem>
            <listitem><para>
            duration - the lease lifetime expressed in days (if present),
            hours, minutes and seconds.  A lease lifetime of 0xFFFFFFFF will be
            denoted with the text "infinite duration".
            </para></listitem>
            <listitem><para>
            device-id - the client's DUID and hardware address (if present).
            </para></listitem>
            <listitem><para>
            relay-info - for relayed packets the content of relay agent
            messages, remote-id (code 37), subscriber-id (code 38) and
            interface-id (code 18) options if present. Note that
            interface-id option, if present, identifies the whole interface the
            relay agent received the message on. This typically translates to a
            single link in your network, but it depends on your specific network
            topology. Nevertheless, this is useful information to better scope
            down the location of the device, so it is being recorded, if present.
            </para></listitem>
          </itemizedlist>
          </para>
          <para>
          For instance (line breaks added for readability, they would not
          be present in the log file).
<screen>
Address:2001:db8:1:: has been assigned for 0 hrs 11 mins 53 secs to a device with
DUID: 17:34:e2:ff:09:92:54 and hardware address: hwtype=1 08:00:2b:02:3f:4e
(from Raw Socket) connected via relay at address: fe80::abcd for client on
link address: 3001::1, hop count: 1, identified by remote-id:
01:02:03:04:0a:0b:0c:0d:0e:0f and subscriber-id: 1a:2b:3c:4d:5e:6f
</screen>
          </para>
        </section>
        <section id="forensic-log-configuration">
        <title>Configuring the Forensic Log Hooks</title>
          <para>
          To use this functionality the hook library must be included in the
          configuration of the desired DHCP server modules. The legal_log
          library is installed alongside the Kea libraries in
          <filename>[kea-install-dir]/lib</filename> where
          <filename>kea-install-dir</filename> is determined by the
          &quot;--prefix&quot; option of the configure script.  It defaults to
          <filename>/usr/local</filename>.  Assuming the
          default value then, configuring kea-dhcp4 to load the legal_log
          library could be done with the following Kea4 configuration:
<screen>
"Dhcp4": { <userinput>
    "hooks-libraries": [
        {
            "library": "/usr/local/lib/libdhcp_legal_log.so",
            "parameters": {
                "path": "/var/kea/var",
                "base-name": "kea-forensic4"
            }
        },
        ...
    ] </userinput>
}
</screen>
          </para>
          <para>
          To configure it for kea-dhcp6, the commands are simply as shown below:
<screen>
"Dhcp6": { <userinput>
    "hooks-libraries": [
        {
            "library": "/usr/local/lib/libdhcp_legal_log.so",
            "parameters": {
                "path": "/var/kea/var",
                "base-name": "kea-forensic6"
            }
        },
        ...
    ] </userinput>
}
</screen>
          </para>
          <para>
          Two Hook Library parameters are supported:
          <itemizedlist>
            <listitem><para>
            path - the directory in which the forensic file(s) will be written.  The
            default value is
            <filename>[prefix]/kea/var</filename>.  The directory must exist.
            </para></listitem>
            <listitem><para>
            base-name - an arbitrary value which is used in conjunction with
            the current system date to form the current forensic file name.  It defaults
            to <filename>kea-legal</filename>.
            </para></listitem>
          </itemizedlist>
          </para>
        </section>
      </section>

      <section>
        <title>flex_id: Flexible Identifiers for Host Reservations</title>
        <para>
          This section describes a hook application dedicated to generate
          flexible identifiers for host reservation. Kea software provides a way
          to handle host reservations that include addresses, prefixes, options,
          client classes and other features. The reservation can be based on
          hardware address, DUID, circuit-id or client-id in DHCPv4 and using
          hardware address or DUID in DHCPv6. However, there are sometimes
          scenario where the reservation is more complex, e.g. uses other
          options that mentioned above, uses part of specific options or perhaps
          even a combination of several options and fields to uniquely identify
          a client. Those scenarios are addressed by the Flexible Identifiers
          hook application.</para>

	<para>The library allows defining an expression, using notation
	initially used for client classification only. See <xref
	linkend="classification-using-expressions" /> for detailed description
	of the syntax available. One notable difference is that for client
	classification the expression currently has to evaluate to either true
	or false, while the flexible identifier expression is expected to
	evaluate to a string that will be used as identifier. It is a valid case
	for the expression to evaluate to empty string (e.g. in cases where a
	client does not sent specific options). This expression is then
	evaluated for each incoming packet. This evaluation generates an
	identifier that is used to identify the client. In particular, there may
	be host reservations that are tied to specific values of the flexible
	identifier.</para>

	<para>
	  The library can be loaded in similar way as other hook libraries. It
	  takes one mandatory parameter identifier-expression:
<screen>
"Dhcp6": { <userinput>
    "hooks-libraries": [
        {
            "library": "/path/libdhcp_flex_id.so",
            "parameters": {
                "identifier-expression": "<userinput>expression</userinput>"
            }
        },
        ...
    ] </userinput>
}
</screen>
	</para>

	<para>
	  The flexible identifier library supports both DHCPv4 and DHCPv6.
	</para>

	<para>
	  EXAMPLE: Let's consider a case of an IPv6 network that has an
	  independent interface for each of the connected customers. Customers
	  are able to plug in whatever device they want, so any type of
	  identifier (e.g. a client-id) is unreliable. Therefore the operator
	  may decide to use an option inserted by a relay agent to differentiate
	  between clients. In this particular deployment, the operator verified
	  that the interface-id is unique for each customer facing
	  interface. Therefore it is suitable for usage as reservation. However,
	  only the first 6 bytes of the interface-id are interesting, because
	  remaining bytes are either randomly changed or not unique between
	  devices. Therefore the customer decided to use first 6 bytes of the
	  interface-id option inserted by the relay agent. This could be
	  achieved by using the following configuration:
<screen>
"Dhcp6": {
    "subnet6": [{ ..., // subnet definition starts here
    "reservations": [
        <userinput>"flex-id": "'port1234'"</userinput>, // value of the first 8 bytes of the interface-id
        "ip-addresses": [ "2001:db8::1" ]
    ],
    }], // end of subnet definitions
    "hooks-libraries": [
        {
            "library": "/path/libdhcp_flex_id.so",
            "parameters": {
                "identifier-expression": "<userinput>substring(relay6[0].option[18],0,8)</userinput>"
            }
        },
        ...
    ]
}
</screen>
	</para>

	<para>
	  NOTE: Care should be taken when adjusting the expression. If the
	  expression changes, then all the flex-id values may change, possibly
	  rendering all reservations based on flex-id unusable until they're
	  manually updated. Therefore it is strongly recommended to start with
	  the expression and a handful reservations, adjust the expression as
	  needed and only after it was confirmed the expression does exactly
	  what is expected out of it go forward with host reservations on any
	  broader scale.
	</para>

	<para>
	  flex-id values in host reservations can be specified in two
	  ways. First, they can be expressed as hex string, e.g. bar string
	  can be represented as 626174. Alternatively, it can be expressed
	  as quoted value (using double and single quotes), e.g. "'bar'".
	  The former is more convenient for printable characters, while hex
	  string values are more convenient for non-printable characters.
	</para>
      </section>

    </section>
    <section id="user-context">
      <title>User contexts</title>
      <para>Hook libraries can have their own configuration parameters. That is
      convenient if the parameter applies to the whole library. However,
      sometimes it is very useful if certain configuration entities are extended
      with additional configuration data. This is where the concept of user
      contexts comes in. A sysadmin can define an arbitrary set of data and
      attach it to Kea structures, as long as the data is specified as JSON map.
      In particular, it is possible to define fields that are integers, strings,
      boolean, lists and maps. It is possible to define nested structures of
      arbitrary complexity. Kea does not use that data on its own, simply stores
      and makes it available for the hook libraries.
      </para>
      <para>
        As of Kea 1.2, the only structures that allow user contexts are address
        and prefix pools, but it is expected to extend other structures with the
        user context capability.
      </para>
    </section>
   </chapter> <!-- hooks-libraries -->