Linux FreeS/WAN Index file

Our HTML documents

Table of Contents for HTML documentation
Permuted index of HTML files
Setup and configuration
- installation and setup This also covers initial testing.
- configuration of the system, once the basic setup is done
- interaction between FreeS/WAN and firewall code
- problem reporting
- a (still rudimentary) FAQ document
Background information
- Project Overview: goals, protocols, and components
- Our project leader's rationale for starting this
- DES and its vulnerability to cracking.
- Export laws
- Web links for
  - Linux FreeS/WAN project
  - IPSEC protocols
  - Linux
  - Cryptography and security
- Mailing lists for this project and on related topics
- Glossary of terms and acronyms
- Bibliography
- List of IPSEC and other security RFCs
More detailed information on FreeS/WAN
- a list of FreeS/WAN man pages with links to HTML versions.
  They are also of course available via the man command.
- Troubleshooting using our ipsec_barf(8) and ipsec_look(8) tools and other tools such as tcpdump(8) and sniffers
- Compatibility information culled from the mailing list on using FreeS/WAN with:
  - Linux distibutions other than Redhat
  - CPUs other than Intel architecture
  - other IPSEC implementations
- Configuration for setups with unusual requirements such as:
  - extruded subnet (IP sees one network, but there are two or more physical sites involved).
  - Road Warrior support
  - dynamic interface (not up at boot time, e.g. PCMCIA) handling
- Lists of IPSEC features
  - implemented in Linux FreeS/WAN
  - not yet in Linux FreeS/WAN
- Roadmap, where things are in the distribution
- implementation notes on various topics
- cross-reference between various standards and the FreeS/WAN code and utilities

Documents from outside the FreeS/WAN team

Jean-Francois Nadeau's practical configurations document, covering several FreeS/WAN-to-FreeS/WAN configurations plus interoperation with PGPnet, IRE SoftPK and Windows 2000 IPSEC
Hans-Jorg Hoxer's interoperation HowTo for Linux FreeS/WAN, OpenBSD IPSEC, and PGPnet on Windows 98
an article by Kurt Seifried
a chapter in Kurt's Linux Administrator's Security Guide
a section of David Ranch's Trinity OS Guide
a VPN HowTo from Ilan and Josh

Our documents are intended to provide everything you will require, but you may find the others helpful as well. Check what version of FreeS/WAN they cover, though. The software is under active development and the current version may be significantly different from what an older document describes.

Distribution text files

Text files in the main distribution directory are README, INSTALL, CREDITS, CHANGES, and COPYING.

License and copyright information

All code and documentation written for this project is distributed under either the GNU General Public License (GPL) or the GNU Library General Public License. For details see COPYING.

Not all code in the distribution is ours, however. See CREDITS for details. In particular, note that the Libdes library has its own license

Printed documentation

Those who prefer documentation in printed form can, of course, print any of the HTML documents or man pages in the usual way, and are free to write whatever scripts they like to reformat them in the process. (We would like to see any interesting scripts you come up with. Please post them, or a suitable pointer, to the mailing list. Of course, if they have any code specifically related to cryptography, you must consult your local export laws first.)

We also provide three files designing for use with the "make book" command in the Amaya web browser/editor from the World Wide Web Consortium.

Going to any of these files with Amaya and clicking on the "make book" command will give you one large file, with an automatically generated table of contents, for browsing or printing:

These files are also usable without Amaya. Without Amaya, you cannot build the single large "book" file, but you can follow the links to its components.