I've recently migrated my firewall from a custom implementation based  
upon pebble--a small linux distro--to mOnowall. So far I have been very  
pleased with the ease of administration and added functionality like  
"Traffic Shaping".

The only real challenge in the migration was "populating" the  
respective host tables for "DNS forwarder" and for "DHCP". As I have  
roughly 50 hosts on the LAN, entering 100 separate records by hand was  
at best inelegant, and at worst error-prone. My solution was to write a  
small perl script (sorry, I don't know PHP) that would merge a  
previously generated "config.xml" file with a flat file database  
containing records for each host in the following format:

# NET                             IP                  HOST               
   DOMAIN                NOTE                 MAC
# [DMZ|LAN|OTHER]  ip-address   host-name        host-domain          
comments         mac-address

DMZ                               10.10.9.1     shire-DMZ         
whatever.com        router                  01:23:45:67:89:aa
DMZ                               10.10.9.5     saruman           
whatever.com        server-1-DMZ     01:23:45:67:89:ab
LAN                                10.10.10.1   shire                  
whatever.com        router                  01:23:45:67:89:ac
LAN                                10.10.10.4   aragorn             
whatever.com        Bob                     01:23:45:67:89:ad

The result is a new file "config_out.xml" that includes the xml records  
for each host in the "DNS forwarder" and "DHCP" tables. This new  
"config_out.xml" file can now be "Restored" to mOnOwall.

Note: This script makes no other changes to the original "config.xml"  
file.

The usual caveats apply. This is a very basic script. It includes  
minimal error checking. Back up everything before using it. Don't blame  
me if it doesn't work.

C. Bryan Daniels


<Instructions>
<Save script as "make_config_out.pl">
<Install perl "module XML::Simple">
<chmod +x make_config_out.pl>
<Script Follows>
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-------ù

#! /usr/bin/perl

# C. Bryan Daniels
# quendor at nandor dot net
# 8/28/04

# make_config_out.pl
#
# This merges 'config.xml', a backup configuration produced by mOnO and  
a
# host_map for a particular network
#
# Usage: make_cofig_out.pl config.xml host_map
# The resulting file is config_out.xml, which can be restored to  
mOnOwall
#
# host_map is assumed to have the following format:
#
# NET              IP           HOST            DOMAIN          NOTE     
     MAC
# [DMZ|LAN|OTHER]  ip-address   host-name       host-domain      
comments    mac-address
#

use XML::Simple;

die "Usage: make_cofig_out.pl config.xml host_map\n" if ($#ARGV != 1);
die "Usage: make_cofig_out.pl config.xml host_map
        config.xml *must* end in .xml\n" if not $ARGV[0] =~ /\.xml$/;

$config_in = $ARGV[0];
$ARGV[0] =~ s/\.xml$/_out.xml/;
$config_out = $ARGV[0];
open("OUT", ">$config_out");

while (<>) {
     chomp;
     ($net, $ip, $host, $domain, $note, $mac) = split(/\s+/);
     next if ($net =~ /\#/);
     next if ($net =~ /^$/);
     if ($mac =~ /^\w{1,2}:\w{1,2}:\w{1,2}:\w{1,2}:\w{1,2}:\w{1,2}$/) {
         if ($net eq 'LAN') {
         push(@lan_dhcp,
              {'descr' =>[$note], 'mac' =>[$mac], 'ipaddr' => [$ip] })};
         if ($net eq 'DMZ') {
         push(@dmz_dhcp,
              {'descr' =>[$note], 'mac' =>[$mac], 'ipaddr' => [$ip] })};
     };
     if ($ip =~ /^\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}$/) {
         push(@dns_masq,
              {'host' =>[$host], 'ip' =>[$ip], 'descr' => [$note] ,  
'domain' => [$domain]});
     };
}

$ref = XMLin("$config_in", ForceArray => 1);
$ref->{'dhcpd'}[0]{lan}[0]{staticmap} = [@lan_dhcp];
$ref->{'dhcpd'}[0]{opt1}[0]{staticmap} = [@dmz_dhcp];
$ref->{'dnsmasq'}[0]{hosts} = [@dns_masq];
print OUT XMLout($ref, XMLDecl => '<?xml version="1.0"?>', RootName =>  
'm0n0wall');

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
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-------