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Troubleshooting

BunkerWeb Panel

If you are unable to resolve your problems, you can contact us directly via our panel. This centralises all requests relating to the BunkerWeb solution.

Logs

When troubleshooting, logs are your best friends. We try our best to provide user-friendly logs to help you understand what's happening.

Please note that you can set LOG_LEVEL setting to info (default : notice) to increase the verbosity of BunkerWeb.

Here is how you can access the logs, depending on your integration :

List containers

To list the running containers, you can use the following command : 

docker ps

You can use the docker logs command (replace mybunker with the name of your container) : 

docker logs mybunker

Here is the docker-compose equivalent (replace mybunker with the name of the services declared in the docker-compose.yml file) : 

docker-compose logs mybunker

List containers

To list the running containers, you can use the following command : 

docker ps

You can use the docker logs command (replace mybunker and myautoconf with the name of your containers) : 

docker logs mybunker
docker logs myautoconf

Here is the docker-compose equivalent (replace mybunker and myautoconf with the name of the services declared in the docker-compose.yml file) : 

docker-compose logs mybunker
docker-compose logs myautoconf

List services

To list the services, you can use the following command : 

docker service ls

You can use the docker service logs command (replace mybunker and myautoconf with the name of your services) : 

docker service logs mybunker
docker service logs myautoconf

List pods

To list the pods, you can use the following command : 

kubectl get pods

You can use the kubectl logs command (replace mybunker and myautoconf with the name of your pods) : 

kubectl logs mybunker
kubectl logs myautoconf

For errors related to BunkerWeb services (e.g. not starting), you can use journalctl : 

journalctl -u bunkerweb --no-pager

Common logs are located inside the /var/log/bunkerweb directory : 

cat /var/log/bunkerweb/error.log
cat /var/log/bunkerweb/access.log

Permissions

Don't forget that BunkerWeb runs as an unprivileged user for obvious security reasons. Double-check the permissions of files and folders used by BunkerWeb, especially if you use custom configurations (more info here). You will need to set at least RW rights on files and RWX on folders.

Disable security checks

For debugging purposes, you may need to temporarily disable the security checks made by BunkerWeb. One quick way of doing it is by adding everyone in the whitelist (e.g. WHITELIST_IP=0.0.0.0/0).

ModSecurity

The default BunkerWeb configuration of ModSecurity is to load the Core Rule Set in anomaly scoring mode with a paranoia level (PL) of 1 :

  • Each matched rule will increase an anomaly score (so many rules can match a single request)
  • PL1 includes rules with fewer chances of false positives (but less security than PL4)
  • the default threshold for anomaly score is 5 for requests and 4 for responses

Let's take the following logs as an example of ModSecurity detection using default configuration (formatted for better readability) :

2022/04/26 12:01:10 [warn] 85#85: *11 ModSecurity: Warning. Matched "Operator `PmFromFile' with parameter `lfi-os-files.data' against variable `ARGS:id' (Value: `/etc/passwd' )
    [file "/usr/share/bunkerweb/core/modsecurity/files/coreruleset/rules/REQUEST-930-APPLICATION-ATTACK-LFI.conf"]
    [line "78"]
    [id "930120"]
    [rev ""]
    [msg "OS File Access Attempt"]
    [data "Matched Data: etc/passwd found within ARGS:id: /etc/passwd"]
    [severity "2"]
    [ver "OWASP_CRS/3.3.2"]
    [maturity "0"]
    [accuracy "0"]
    [tag "application-multi"]
    [tag "language-multi"]
    [tag "platform-multi"]
    [tag "attack-lfi"]
    [tag "paranoia-level/1"]
    [tag "OWASP_CRS"]
    [tag "capec/1000/255/153/126"]
    [tag "PCI/6.5.4"]
    [hostname "172.17.0.2"]
    [uri "/"]
    [unique_id "165097447014.179282"]
    [ref "o1,10v9,11t:utf8toUnicode,t:urlDecodeUni,t:normalizePathWin,t:lowercase"],
    client: 172.17.0.1, server: localhost, request: "GET /?id=/etc/passwd HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost"
2022/04/26 12:01:10 [warn] 85#85: *11 ModSecurity: Warning. Matched "Operator `PmFromFile' with parameter `unix-shell.data' against variable `ARGS:id' (Value: `/etc/passwd' )
    [file "/usr/share/bunkerweb/core/modsecurity/files/coreruleset/rules/REQUEST-932-APPLICATION-ATTACK-RCE.conf"]
    [line "480"]
    [id "932160"]
    [rev ""]
    [msg "Remote Command Execution: Unix Shell Code Found"]
    [data "Matched Data: etc/passwd found within ARGS:id: /etc/passwd"]
    [severity "2"]
    [ver "OWASP_CRS/3.3.2"]
    [maturity "0"]
    [accuracy "0"]
    [tag "application-multi"]
    [tag "language-shell"]
    [tag "platform-unix"]
    [tag "attack-rce"]
    [tag "paranoia-level/1"]
    [tag "OWASP_CRS"]
    [tag "capec/1000/152/248/88"]
    [tag "PCI/6.5.2"]
    [hostname "172.17.0.2"]
    [uri "/"]
    [unique_id "165097447014.179282"]
    [ref "o1,10v9,11t:urlDecodeUni,t:cmdLine,t:normalizePath,t:lowercase"],
    client: 172.17.0.1, server: localhost, request: "GET /?id=/etc/passwd HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost"
2022/04/26 12:01:10 [error] 85#85: *11 [client 172.17.0.1] ModSecurity: Access denied with code 403 (phase 2). Matched "Operator `Ge' with parameter `5' against variable `TX:ANOMALY_SCORE' (Value: `10' )
    [file "/usr/share/bunkerweb/core/modsecurity/files/coreruleset/rules/REQUEST-949-BLOCKING-EVALUATION.conf"]
    [line "80"]
    [id "949110"]
    [rev ""]
    [msg "Inbound Anomaly Score Exceeded (Total Score: 10)"]
    [data ""]
    [severity "2"]
    [ver "OWASP_CRS/3.3.2"]
    [maturity "0"]
    [accuracy "0"]
    [tag "application-multi"]
    [tag "language-multi"]
    [tag "platform-multi"]
    [tag "attack-generic"]
    [hostname "172.17.0.2"]
    [uri "/"]
    [unique_id "165097447014.179282"]
    [ref ""],
    client: 172.17.0.1, server: localhost, request: "GET /?id=/etc/passwd HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost"

As we can see, there are 3 different logs :

  1. Rule 930120 matched
  2. Rule 932160 matched
  3. Access denied (rule 949110)

One important thing to understand is that rule 949110 is not a "real" one : it's the one that will deny the request because the anomaly threshold is reached (which is 10 in this example). You should never remove the 949110 rule !

If it's a false-positive, you should then focus on both 930120 and 932160 rules. ModSecurity and/or CRS tuning is out of the scope of this documentation but don't forget that you can apply custom configurations before and after the CRS is loaded (more info here).

Bad Behavior

A common false-positive case is when the client is banned because of the "bad behavior" feature which means that too many suspicious HTTP status codes were generated within a time period (more info here). You should start by reviewing the settings and then edit them according to your web application(s) like removing a suspicious HTTP code, decreasing the count time, increasing the threshold, ...

IP unban

You can manually unban an IP which can be useful when doing some tests but it needs the setting USE_API set to yes (which is not the default) so you can contact the internal API of BunkerWeb (replace 1.2.3.4 with the IP address to unban) :

You can use the docker exec command (replace mybunker with the name of your container) : 

docker exec mybunker bwcli unban 1.2.3.4

Here is the docker-compose equivalent (replace mybunker with the name of the services declared in the docker-compose.yml file) : 

docker-compose exec mybunker bwcli unban 1.2.3.4

You can use the docker exec command (replace myautoconf with the name of your container) : 

docker exec myautoconf bwcli unban 1.2.3.4

Here is the docker-compose equivalent (replace myautoconf with the name of the services declared in the docker-compose.yml file) : 

docker-compose exec myautoconf bwcli unban 1.2.3.4

You can use the docker exec command (replace myautoconf with the name of your service) : 

docker exec $(docker ps -q -f name=myautoconf) bwcli unban 1.2.3.4

You can use the kubectl exec command (replace myautoconf with the name of your pod) : 

kubectl exec myautoconf bwcli unban 1.2.3.4

You can use the bwcli command (as root) : 

sudo bwcli unban 1.2.3.4

Whitelisting

If you have bots that need to access your website, the recommended way to avoid any false positive is to whitelist them using the whitelisting feature. We don't recommend using the WHITELIST_URI* or WHITELIST_USER_AGENT* settings unless they are set to secret and unpredictable values. Common use cases are :

  • Healthcheck / status bot
  • Callback like IPN or webhook
  • Social media crawler

Timezone

When using container-based integrations, the timezone of the container may not match the one of the host machine. To resolve that, you can set the TZ environment variable to the timezone of your choice on your containers (e.g. TZ=Europe/Paris). You will find the list of timezone identifiers here.

Web UI

In case you lost your UI credentials or have 2FA issues, you can connect to the database to retrieve access.

Access database

Install SQLite (Debian/Ubuntu) :

sudo apt install sqlite3

Install SQLite (Fedora/RedHat) :

sudo dnf install sqlite

Get a shell into your scheduler container :

Docker arguments

  • the -u 0 option is to run the command as root (mandatory)
  • the -it options are to run the command interactively (mandatory)
  • <bunkerweb_scheduler_container> : the name or ID of your scheduler container
docker exec -u 0 -it <bunkerweb_scheduler_container> bash

Install SQLite :

apk add sqlite

Access your database :

Database path

We assume that you are using the default database path. If you are using a custom path, you will need to adapt the command.

sqlite3 /var/lib/bunkerweb/db.sqlite3

You should see something like this :

SQLite version <VER> <DATE>
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
sqlite>

MariaDB / MySQL only

The following steps are only valid for MariaDB / MySQL databases. If you are using another database, please refer to the documentation of your database.

Credentials and database name

You will need to use the same credentials and database named used in the DATABASE_URI setting.

Access your local database :

mysql -u <user> -p <database>

Then enter your password of the database user and you should be able to access your database.

Access your database container :

Docker arguments

  • the -u 0 option is to run the command as root (mandatory)
  • the -it options are to run the command interactively (mandatory)
  • <bunkerweb_db_container> : the name or ID of your database container
  • <user> : the database user
  • <database> : the database name
docker exec -u 0 -it <bunkerweb_db_container> mysql -u <user> -p <database>

Then enter your password of the database user and you should be able to access your database.

Troubleshooting actions

Table schema

The schema of the bw_ui_users table is the following :

id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT
username VARCHAR(256) NOT NULL UNIQUE
password VARCHAR(60) NOT NULL
is_two_factor_enabled BOOLEAN NOT NULL DEFAULT 0
secret_token VARCHAR(32) DEFAULT NULL
method ("manual" or "ui") NOT NULL DEFAULT 'manual'

Execute the following command to extract data from the bw_ui_users table :

SELECT * FROM bw_ui_users;

You should see something like this : 

1|<username>|<password_hash>|1|<secret_totp_token>|(manual or ui)

You first need to hash the new password using the bcrypt algorithm.

Install the Python bcrypt library :

pip install bcrypt

Generate your hash (replace mypassword with your own password) :

python -c 'from bcrypt import hashpw, gensalt ; print(hashpw("mypassword".encode("utf-8"), gensalt(rounds=13)).decode())'

You can update your username / password executing this command :

UPDATE bw_ui_users SET username = <username>, password = <password_hash> WHERE id = 1;

If you check again your bw_ui_users table following this command :

SELECT * FROM bw_ui_users;

You should see something like this :

1|<username>|<password_hash>|0||(manual or ui)

You should now be able to use the new credentials to log into the web UI.

You can deactivate 2FA by executing this command :

UPDATE bw_ui_users SET is_two_factor_enabled = 0, secret_token = NULL WHERE id = 1;

If you check again your bw_ui_users table by following this command :

SELECT * FROM bw_ui_users;

You should see something like this :

1|<username>|<password_hash>|0||(manual or ui)

You should now be able to log into the web UI only using your username and password.

Upload plugin

It may not be possible to upload a plugin from the UI in certain situations:

  • Missing package to manage compressed files on your integration, in which case you will need to add the necessary packages
  • Safari browser : the 'safe mode' may prevent you from being able to add a plugin. You will need to make the necessary changes on your machine