Configuration fields

The available configuration fields are listed below. baseDirectory is available as a substitution value and contains the absolute path to the firewall’s base directory.

An optional configuration field that specifies whether the firewall can process requests sent by the Health Survey Tool. The default is true.

An optional configuration field that specifies directory from which SSL keys and truststore keys will be loaded. The default is baseDirectory/certificates.

An optional configuraton field that specifies the file from which SSL keys stores will be loaded. The default value is <certificatesDirectory>/sslkeystore.jks.

An optional configuration field that specifies the file from which truststore keys will be loaded. The default value is <certificatesDirectory>/truststore.jks.

Determines operating mode of the firewall. See Firewall operating modes.

The password to unlock the TLS keystore file (<workspace>/<certificatesDirectory>/sslkeystore.jks) containing the node certificate and private key. Due to limitations in the Artemis libraries, the private key password must be the same.

The password to unlock the truststore file (<workspace>/<certificatesDirectory>/truststore.jks) containing the Corda network root certificate. This is the non-secret value for the development certificates automatically generated during the first node run.

This a mandatory configuration field that only makes sense in case of SenderReceiver and BridgeInner modes.

This is the absolute file path to a copy of the network-parameters as copied from a node after it has fetched the latest version from the network-map via http.

It is used to correctly configure the maximum allowed message size. The maximum message size limit is already enforced by the P2P Artemis inside the node, but the bridge also enforces this before forwarding messages to remote peers.

Float learns about maximum message size from bridge and enforces this on received packets. If the size limit is breached these messages will be consumed and discarded, so that they are not replayed forever.

This field is used to configure the processing of outbound messages. It is required for SenderReceiver and BridgeInner modes and must be absent for FloatOuter mode. It contains the following fields:

The primary host and port for peer-to-peer Artemis broker. This may be running inside to the node, in which case it will hosted on the port of the p2pAddress, or the messagingServerAddress if that is defined and messagingServerExternal is false. Otherwise, it could be an independently run Artemis broker.

Optionally if there are multiple Artemis broker address (such as for hot-cold node deployment) then additional hosts and ports may be included in a list.

The default behaviour is that the outgoing TLS 1.2/AMQP 1.0 connections present certificate details from (<workspace>/<certificatesDirectory>/sslkeystore.jks) and validate against (<workspace>/<certificatesDirectory>/truststore.jks), using the passwords defined in the root configuration. However, distinct keystores may be configured in this field. It contains the following fields:

  • keyStorePassword: The password for the TLS keystore.

  • keyStorePrivateKeyPassword: Optional configuration field to lock the private keys within the keystore. If it is missing, it will be assumed that the private keys password is the same as keyStorePassword above.

  • trustStorePassword: The password for TLS truststore.

  • sslKeystore: The path to the keystore file to use in outgoing TLS 1.2/AMQP 1.0 connections.

  • trustStoreFile: The path to the truststore file to use in outgoing TLS 1.2/AMQP 1.0 connections.

This field is optionally present if outgoing peer connections should go via a SOCKS4, SOCKS5, or HTTP CONNECT tunnelling proxy. It contains the following fields:

  • version: Either SOCKS4, SOCKS5, or HTTP to define the protocol version used in connecting to the SOCKS proxy.

  • proxyAddress: Host and port of the proxy.

  • userName: Optionally a user name that will be presented to the proxy after connect.

  • password: Optionally, a password to present to the SOCKS5 or HTTP Proxy. It is not valid for SOCKS4 proxies and it should always be combined with userName.

  • proxyTimeoutMS: optionally, specify a timeout in milliseconds if the proxy is unusually slow to initate connections. The default value used is 10000.

This field is used to configure the properties of the listening port. It is required for SenderReceiver and FloatOuter modes and must be absent for BridgeInner mode. It contains the listeningAddress field.

The host and port to bind to as TLS 1.2/AMQP 1.0 listener. This may be a specific network interface on multi-homed machines.

It may also differ from the externally exposed public p2pAddress of the port if the firewalls, or load balancers transparently reroute the traffic.

This field is required for BridgeInner mode and configures the tunnel connection to the FloatOuter (s) in the DMZ. The field should be absent in SenderReceiver and FloatOuter modes. It contains the following fields:

The list of host and ports to connect the available FloatOuter instances. At least one must be present.

The active BridgeInner will round-robin over available FloatOuter addresses until it can connect and activate one.

The X500 Subject name that will be presented in client certificates from the remote FloatOuter instances.

It contains the following fields:

  • keyStorePassword: The password for the TLS keystore.

  • keyStorePrivateKeyPassword: Optional configuration field to lock the private keys within the keystore. If it is missing, it will be assumed that the private keys password is the same as keyStorePassword above.

  • trustStorePassword: The password for TLS truststore.

  • sslKeystore: The path to the keystore file to use in control tunnel connections.

  • trustStoreFile: The path to the truststore file to use in control tunnel connections.

This field is required for FloatOuter mode and configures the control tunnel listening socket. It should be absent for SenderReceiver and BridgeInner modes. It contains the following fields:

The host and port to bind the control tunnel listener socket to. This can be for a specific interface if used on a multi-homed machine.

The X500 Subject name that will be presented in client certificates from the BridgeInner when it connects to this FloatOuter instance.

It contains the following fields:

  • keyStorePassword: The password for the TLS keystore.

  • keyStorePrivateKeyPassword: Optional configuration field to lock the private keys within the keystore. If it is missing, it will be assumed that the private keys password is the same as keyStorePassword above.

  • trustStorePassword: The password for TLS truststore.

  • sslKeystore: The path to the keystore file to use in control tunnel connections.

  • trustStoreFile: The path to the truststore file to use in control tunnel connections.

Optionally the SenderReceiver and BridgeInner modes can be run in a hot-warm configuration, which determines the active instance using an external master election service. Currently, the leader election process can be delegated to Zookeeper, or the firewall can use the Bully Algorithm (see Bully algorithm on Wikipedia) via Publish/Subscribe messages on the artemis broker.

For production R3 recommends that a Zookeeper cluster be used as this will protect against network partitioning scenarios. However, the Bully Algorithm mode does not require any additional server processes.

Eventually other electors may be supported e.g. etcd.

This configuration field contains the following fields:

A string containing the connection details of the master electors as a comma delimited list of individual connection strings.

  • To use an external Zookeeper cluster each connection item should be in the format zk://<host>:<port>.

  • To use the Bully Algorithm running over artemis the single connection string should be set to bully://localhost.

The implementation uses a prioritise leader election algorithm, so that a preferred master instance can be set. The highest priority is 0 and larger integers have lower priority. At the same level of priority, it is random which instance wins the leader election. If a bridge instance dies another will have the opportunity to become master in instead.

Sets the zookeeper topic that the nodes used in resolving the election and must be the same for all bridge instances competing for master status. This is available to allow a single zookeeper cluster to be reused with multiple sets of bridges (e.g. in test environments).

The default value is bridge/ha and would not normally need to be changed if the cluster is not shared.

Both FloatOuter and BridgeInner components have an audit service which is currently outputting into the process log some traffic statistics. It contains the loggingIntervalSec field.

This is an integer value that controls how frequently, in seconds, statistics will be written into the logs.

If connection to the local Artemis server fails the initial reconnection attempt will be after artemisReconnectionIntervalMin ms. The default interval is 5000 ms. Subsequent retries will take be exponentially backed off until they reach artemisReconnectionIntervalMax ms.

The worst case Artemis retry period after repeated failure to connect is artemisReconnectionIntervalMax ms. The default interval is 60000 ms.

This is a performance tuning detail within the Artemis connection setup that controls the send acknowledgement behaviour.

Its value should only be modified from the default if suggested by R3 to resolve issues.

Set this developer flag to true if very detailed logs are required for connectivity debugging. Note that the logging volume is substantial, so do not enable in production systems.

An optional Health Check Phrase which if passed through the channel will cause AMQP Server to echo it back instead of doing normal pipeline processing.

This parameter can be used to facilitate F5 “TCP Echo” health-check monitor. Only when TCP posting starting with healthCheckPhrase in UTF-8 encoding is sent to application port the server will echo the same pass phrase back.

An optional list of strings of that will be compared to the remote IPv4/IPv6 source address of inbound socket connections.

If there is a match all logging for this connection will be reduced to TRACE level. The intention is to allow simple filtering of health check connections from load balancers and other monitoring components.

Allows a list of jvm argument overrides to be sent to the Corda firewall process spawned by the capsule wrapper.

For instance custom.jvmArgs = ["-Xmx2G"] in the configuration file will set 2GByte of memory for the firewall.

This is equivalent to specifying -Dcapsule.jvm.args="-Xmx2G" on the command line, but is easier to track with other configuration and does not risk accidentally setting the properties onto the capsule parent process (e.g. wasting 2Gbyte of memory).

See Setting JVM arguments for examples and details on the precedence of the different approaches to settings arguments.

An optional field that controls the way Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL) are handled for TLS connections. It contains the mode field.

Either SOFT_FAIL or HARD_FAIL or OFF or EXTERNAL_SOURCE

  • SOFT_FAIL Causes CRL checking to use soft fail mode. Soft fail mode allows the revocation check to succeed if the revocation status cannot be determined because of a network error. If the revocationConfig field is missing this will be the default method for all the modes except FloatOuter.

  • HARD_FAIL Rigorous CRL checking takes place. This involves each certificate in the certificate path being checked for a CRL distribution point extension, and that this extension points to a URL serving a valid CRL. This means that if any CRL URL in the certificate path is inaccessible, the connection with the other party will fail and be marked as bad. Additionally, if any certificate in the hierarchy, including the self-generated node SSL certificate, is missing a valid CRL URL, then the certificate path will be marked as invalid.

  • OFF : do not perform CRL check.

  • EXTERNAL_SOURCE only makes sense for Float component i.e. with firewallMode = FloatOuter. When mode = EXTERNAL_SOURCE is specified, Float component will fetch CRLs using tunnel connection it maintains with Bridge. This allows Float to correctly obtain CRLs without initiating direct outgoing connections to the Delivery Points specified in TLS certificates. If the revocationConfig field is missing this will be the default method in FloatOuter mode.

This is an optional crypto service configuration that will be used for HSM TLS signing when incoming P2P connection by external party attempted into Float. See Use of HSM in Corda Firewall for an overview.

Since Float is by design a lightweight component that does not store any sensitive information locally, when it comes to TLS signing, Float will talk to the Bridge for TLS signing to take place. Therefore, this option only makes sense for BridgeInner and SenderReceiver modes.

It contains the following fields:

The name of HSM provider to be used. E.g.: UTIMACO, GEMALTO_LUNA, etc. See Using an HSM with Corda Enterprise.

Absolute path to HSM provider specific configuration that will contain everything necessary to establish connection with HSM.

This is an optional crypto service configuration that will be used for HSM TLS signing when interacting with Artemis message bus. This option only makes sense for SenderReceiver and BridgeInner modes. In terms of structure it is very similar to p2pTlsSigningCryptoServiceConfig above. If this option is missing, local file system will be used to store private keys inside JKS keystores.

This is an optional crypto service configuration that will be used for HSM TLS signing during communication between Bridge and Float. This option only makes sense for BridgeInner and FloatOuter. In terms of structure it is very similar to p2pTlsSigningCryptoServiceConfig above. If this option is missing, local file system will be used to store private keys inside JKS keystores.

Time interval from establishing the Bridge AMQP client connection, the bridge to float tunnel connection and the float inbound connection after which the connection will be restarted, seconds. Used to refresh TLS symmetric sessions keys and ensure that CRL revocations are up to date. Disabled if set to 0. Default value is 0.

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