SHOREWALL-LITE-VAR(5)

💖 SHOREWALL-LITE-VAR — the vardir glow-up guide 💖

okay bestie, welcome to shorewall-lite-var(5), the section-5 config-files page that tells you where Shorewall Lite keeps all its stuff. it's short, it's sweet, and it's lowkey deprecated, but we're gonna read it together anyway because knowledge is the vibe. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

vardir — the Shorewall Lite file, aka the little file that decides where your state lives 🏠

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

/etc/shorewall-lite/vardir

that's it. that's the whole path. iconic behavior honestly.

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so here's the tea ☕: this file does not exist by default. it's not just sitting there waiting for you. nope. you have to create it yourself, and you only do that if you want to change the directory that Shorewall Lite uses to store its state information — and yes, that includes the compiled firewall scripts. the whole brain of the operation. 🧠💅

the default directory it uses is /var/lib/shorewall-lite/. that's where everything goes unless you say otherwise.

inside the file, you put exactly one thing — a single variable assignment:

VARDIR=directory

where directory is the name of a directory. that's the whole assignment, bestie, one line, no drama.

⚠️ important: if you do add this file, you should copy the files from /var/lib/shorewall-lite over to your new directory before you perform a shorewall-lite restart. don't skip that step. it's giving "I forgot to move my stuff and now nothing works" and we are NOT doing that. 😭

Note — starting with Shorewall 4.5.2, using this file is deprecated in favor of specifying VARDIR in the shorewallrc file that gets used during installation of Shorewall Core. so like… this file still works, but the cool kids are doing it the other way now. 🙈 and here's the sneaky part: even though the variable name stays VARDIR, the meaning is slightly different. when you set it in shorewallrc, Shorewall Lite will create a directory under the specified path name to hold its state information. so it's a parent path, not the destination itself. iykyk. 🦋 example time: text VARDIR=/opt/var/lib/ and with that, the state directory for Shorewall Lite will be /opt/var/lib/shorewall-lite/. see how it appended the shorewall-lite part? yeah. that's the difference. ✨ meanwhile, when VARDIR is set in /etc/shorewall-lite/vardir, Shorewall Lite will save its state in the directory specified — as in, exactly the one you typed, no bonus subdirectory. 🎯

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🍓 EXAMPLE 🍓

VARDIR=/root/shorewall

slay. a whole example. put it in a file and go.

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🧚 FILES 🧚

• /etc/shorewall-lite/vardir

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• shorewall(8)
• shorewall-accounting(5)
• shorewall-actions(5)
• shorewall-blacklist(5)
• shorewall-hosts(5)
• shorewall-interfaces(5)
• shorewall-ipsec(5)
• shorewall-maclist(5)
• shorewall-masq(5)
• shorewall-nat(5)
• shorewall-netmap(5)
• shorewall-params(5)
• shorewall-policy(5)
• shorewall-providers(5)
• shorewall-proxyarp(5)
• shorewall-route_rules(5)
• shorewall-routestopped(5)
• shorewall-rules(5)
• shorewall.conf(5)
• shorewall-tcclasses(5)
• shorewall-tcdevices(5)
• shorewall-tcrules(5)
• shorewall-tos(5)
• shorewall-tunnels(5)
• shorewall-zones(5)

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🫶 this one lives in the Configuration Files manual section, dated 09/24/2020, and it's filed under the name SHOREWALL-LITE-VAR(5). go forth, set your VARDIR, move your files first, and stay slay. 💜💅🌸