Upgrading

General upgrade instructions

  • First, check below if there are specific upgrade instructions for your version.

  • When you're ready, update the code, if you're using git, you can checkout the latest tag:

( umask 0022 && cd /opt/bastion && git fetch && git checkout $(git tag | tail -1) )
  • Run the install script in upgrade mode, so it can make adjustments to the system needed for the new version:

/opt/bastion/bin/admin/install --upgrade

Note that if you're using an infrastructure automation tool such as Puppet, Ansible, Chef, and don't want the update script to touch some files that you manage yourself, you can use --managed-upgrade instead of --upgrade. See the --help for a more fine-grained upgrade path if needed.

Version-specific upgrade instructions

v3.16.99-rc3 - 2024/09/25

This release drops support for Ubuntu 16.04 and CentOS 7. If you're still using these EOL OS releases (which is obviously discouraged), proper functioning of The Bastion is no longer tested or guaranteed. It also adds official support for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and OpenSUSE Leap 15.6, these were already working but are now part of the integration tests.

This release adds support of wildcards (also called "shell-style globbing characters"), namely ? and *, when using the --user option for plugins such as groupAddServer, groupDelServer, groupAddGuestAccess, groupDelGuestAccess, accountAddPersonalAccess, accountDelPersonalAccess, selfAddPersonalAccess, selfDelPersonalAccess.

We also deprecate all the --sftp, --scpdown, --scpup options that are now replaced by a more generic --protocol option, which supports sftp, scpdown ``, ``scpup and now also rsync as parameters. The use of rsync is similar to sftp and scp, and is detailed here: rsync.

Last but not least, the sntrup761x25519-sha512@openssh.com KEX algorithm is now enabled by default on shipped versions of sshd_config and ssh_config. If you're upgrading, these files won't be touched, so if you want to add support, you'll need to modify them manually by prepending sntrup761x25519-sha512@openssh.com to the KexAlgorithms line. Verify that the OpenSSH version shipped by your OS does support it (run ssh -Q kex).

v3.16.01 - 2024/04/17

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.16.00 - 2024/04/10

This version adds support for Secure Keys (FIDO2) for ingress authentication. It requires at least OpenSSH 8.2 installed on the server hosting The Bastion, as support for FIDO2 was added in this version. Of the currently supported OS versions, the following are known to have a recent-enough version:

  • Debian 11

  • Debian 12

  • Ubuntu 20.04

  • Ubuntu 22.04

  • OpenSUSE Leap 15.5

  • Rocky Linux 9

Note that if you are upgrading, you'll need to enable the new ingress algorithms in the /etc/bastion/bastion.conf file, under the allowedIngressSshAlgorithms option. You may want to add ecdsa-sk and ed25519-sk to the list if you want to support the FIDO2-backed versions of these two algorithms. You may also refer to the distributed default configuration file in etc/bastion/bastion.conf.dist, which enables them by default.

v3.15.00 - 2024/03/22

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.14.16 - 2024/02/20

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.14.15 - 2023/11/08

This release fixes the CVE-2023-45140 with severity 4.8 (CVSS V3). Please refer to its page for impact and mitigation details.

The changes introduced to fix this vulnerability imply that if you're using the scp or sftp plugins, you'll need to update your wrappers using the new versions provided by this release. The old helpers will still work, but only for remote hosts that don't require MFA.

To get the new wrappers for your account on a given bastion, just call --osh scp or --osh sftp without specifying any host, which will give you your script, and examples of use. As you'll notice, the new scripts are no longer helpers (that were to be used through scp -S and sftp -S), but wrappers, that will call scp and sftp themselves.

As outlined above, the old helpers will still work for the foreseeable future, but as they're not able to request MFA when this is configured for a remote host, they'll simply fail for such hosts on an updated version of the bastion.

If you have some accounts that use automated accesses through the bastion and use scp or sftp on hosts that have JIT MFA configured through their group, you'll need to set these accounts as immune to JIT MFA, which can be done through accountModify's --mfa-password-required bypass and/or accountModify --mfa-totp-required bypass, as has always been the case for classic SSH access.

An HMAC shared secret is automatically generated when this release is deployed, this secret must be shared by all the instances of the same cluster. Hence, you should start by deploying this release on the primary node, which will generate the secret automatically during the standard upgrading procedure, so that this node can push the shared-secret to the other nodes. The other nodes don't have to be upgraded beforehand, they'll just not use the secret until they're upgraded to this version, and JIT MFA for scp and sftp will not work through them until this is the case.

Once the primary node is upgraded, you should ensure the new file containing the HMAC shared secret is part of the synchronization list. If you did not customize your synchronization list, you can apply the new one over the old one directly:

cat /opt/bastion/etc/bastion/osh-sync-watcher.rsyncfilter.dist > /etc/bastion/osh-sync-watcher.rsyncfilter

Then, you need to restart the synchronization daemon, so that it takes into consideration the new file (containing the shared secret) to push to the other nodes. This is usually done this way:

systemctl restart osh-sync-watcher

You can verify on the other nodes that the /etc/bastion/mfa-token.conf file is now present.

v3.14.00 - 2023/09/19

A new helper is required to support the so-called "type 8" and "type 9" password hash types, used on some network devices. This helper is optional, and these hashes types will simply not be generated if the helper is missing. The plugins concerned by this change are selfGeneratePassword, selfListPasswords, accountGeneratePassword, accountListPasswords, groupGeneratePassword, groupListPasswords.

New installations will get this helper installed automatically. When upgrading, if you'd like to install this helper, you'll need to install it by running the following command as root:

/opt/bastion/bin/admin/install-mkhash-helper.sh -a

This will detect your OS and either install a .deb file, an .rpm file, or a static binary.

If you want to ensure that the helper has installed correctly, you can call it manually for testing purposes:

echo test | the-bastion-mkhash-helper
{"Type8":"$8$EpvF1cVVzoEQFE$L3ZBWzfH9MTPo4WLX29Jd8LTM5sKlfEjtRZ//XMys2U","Type9":"$9$yRlXzt0T7WBs3E$YdKk8WMvLvAVcbglx.bMZoRlwBa6l5EhwLhBh1o0u4g","PasswordLen":4}

If you're not generating passwords for use with network devices using type 8 or type 9 hash types, installation of this helper is not required.

v3.13.01 - 2023/08/22

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.13.00 - 2023/07/28

Plugins output is now recorded using ttyrec, as the connections are, instead of being stored in sqlite format within the home folder of the account. This helps avoiding the sqlite databases growing too much in size when accounts are using osh commands very intensively.

v3.12.00 - 2023/06/27

Support for Debian 9 has been dropped. This doesn't mean that the code will suddenly stop working under this version, but that tests no longer include this OS. Please consider upgrading to a more recent OS, as ensuring the underlying OS is up to date and still supported is paramount to the security of The Bastion (or any other software).

Support of Debian "Bookworm" 12 is now official, as this is now Debian stable.

v3.11.02 - 2023/04/18

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.11.01 - 2023/03/27

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.11.00 - 2023/03/23

The upgrade path from the preceding version is straightforward, however there is a change that you might want to be aware of before hitting the upgrade button:

The previously implicitly assumed --port-any and --user-any options to the (self|account)(Add|Del)PersonalAccess commands, when either --user or --port were omitted, now require to be stated explicitly, to be consistent with the behaviour of group(Add|Del)Server, which always required it. Note that using this mechanism always emitted a deprecation warning, since the first publicly released version, encouraging the explicit use of --user-any and/or --port-any when this was desired. Now, omitting these options will simply return an error, as this has always been the case with group(Add|Del)Server.

Example of previous behaviour:

$ bssh --osh selfAddPersonalAccess --host 127.0.0.5 --force
╭──ac777d06bec9───────────────────────────────────────────the-bastion-3.10.00───
│ ▶ adding personal access to a server on your account
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│ ❗ You didn't specify --user or --user-any, defaulting to --user-any, this will no longer be implicit in future versions
│ ❗ You didn't specify --port or --port-any, defaulting to --port-any, this will no longer be implicit in future versions
│ Forcing add as asked, we didn't test the SSH connection, maybe it won't work!
│ Access to 127.0.0.5 was added to account jdoe
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────</selfAddPersonalAccess>───

Example of new behaviour:

$ bssh --osh selfAddPersonalAccess --host 127.0.0.5 --force
╭──ac777d06bec9───────────────────────────────────────────the-bastion-3.11.00───
│ ▶ adding personal access to a server on your account
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│ Add a personal server access on your account
│
│ Usage: --osh selfAddPersonalAccess --host HOST [OPTIONS]
│
│   --host IP|HOST|IP/MASK   Server to add access to
│   --user USER              Remote login to use, if you want to allow any login, use --user-any
│   --user-any               Allow access with any remote login
│   --port PORT              Remote SSH port to use, if you want to allow any port, use --port-any
│   --port-any               Allow access to all remote ports
│   --scpup                  Allow SCP upload, you--bastion-->server (omit --user in this case)
│   --scpdown                Allow SCP download, you<--bastion--server (omit --user in this case)
│   --sftp                   Allow usage of the SFTP subsystem, you<--bastion-->server (omit --user in this case)
│   --force                  Add the access without checking that the public SSH key is properly installed remotely
│   --force-key FINGERPRINT  Only use the key with the specified fingerprint to connect to the server (cf selfListEgressKeys)
│   --force-password HASH    Only use the password with the specified hash to connect to the server (cf selfListPasswords)
│   --ttl SECONDS|DURATION   Specify a number of seconds (or a duration string, such as "1d7h8m") after which the access will automatically expire
│   --comment "'ANY TEXT'"   Add a comment alongside this server. Quote it twice as shown if you're under a shell.
│
│ ⛔ No user specified, if you want to add this server with any user, use --user-any
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────</selfAddPersonalAccess>───

v3.10.00 - 2023/02/17

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.09.02 - 2022/11/15

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.09.01 - 2022/10/10

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.09.00 - 2022/09/21

This version has changes around the satellite system scripts that should be reviewed:

  • The osh-encrypt-rsync.pl script now also handles the account's access log and sql logs, in addition to the ttyrec files. A number of new options have been added to this script's config file, these options have sane defaults but you might still want to review those, namely encrypt_and_move_user_logs_delay_days and encrypt_and_move_user_sqlites_delay_days.

  • As a result of the previous feature, the compress-old-logs.sh script has been retired.

  • A new script, osh-cleanup-guest-key-access.pl, has been added. It is enabled by default, though it can be disabled if you have a good reason to do so. Please refer to its documentation for more information.

  • All scripts that are automatically run by cron and reside under the bin/cron subfolder now have their own configuration file in /etc/bastion, even for simple scripts that only have two configuration knobs: their logging facility and whether they should be enabled or not. It is now recommended to use these configuration knobs to disable the scripts you don't want to see running, instead of removing their corresponding file in the /etc/cron.d folder, as any future update of the bastion would install them back.

  • The logging format has been standardized across these scripts, to ensure the newly included NRPE probes can detect errors in the scripts more easily. By default the logs are going through syslog, using the local6 facility, which ends up in the /var/log/bastion/bastion-scripts.log folder if you're using our stock syslog-ng configuration. The NRPE probes are available in the contrib/nrpe directory.

Additionally, NRPE probes have been added, and should be used to monitor your bastion instances / clusters. More information is available in the NRPE probes readme file.

Last but not least, CentOS 8 support has been dropped (whereas RockyLinux 8 will remain supported), and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS support has been added.

v3.08.01 - 2022/01/19

The upgrade path from the preceding version is straightforward, however you might want to know that there is a new satellite script: osh-remove-empty-folders.sh, run by cron and enabled by default, whose job is to garbage-collect empty folders that may be piling up in busy users' homes, under their ttyrec folder.

You can find more information in the documentation, the script is enabled by default because it can do no harm.

v3.08.00 - 2022/01/04

This version replaces usage of GnuPG 1.x by GnuPG 2.x for the backup/encrypt/rsync satellite scripts, namely:

  • bin/cron/osh-backup-acl-keys.sh

  • bin/cron/osh-encrypt-rsync.pl

These are optionally used to help you backup your system, and encrypt/move out ttyrec files. If you don't use these scripts and never configured them as seen in the Advanced Installation section, then you have nothing to do.

The script setup-gpg.sh will now create an Ed25519 key by default, instead of a 4K RSA key. This type of key is usually seen as more secure (elliptic curve cryptography), and faster than RSA keys. If you have already configured your system, then the above scripts will continue using the previously generated RSA key, unless you generate a new key and reference it in the scripts configuration files.

If you want to generate new Ed25519 keys instead of using your preexisting RSA keys, you may proceed to the Ed25519 section below.

Otherwise, on the first run, GnuPG 2.x should transparently import the 1.x keyring. To verify that it worked correctly, you may want to try:

/opt/bastion/bin/cron/osh-encrypt-rsync.pl --config-test

If you see Config test passed, and you're okay using your preexisting 4K RSA key, then you may stop here.

If the test fails, and you know that before upgrading, this script worked correctly, then you might need to manually import the GnuPG 1.x public keys:

gpg1 --armor --export | gpg --import

Then, try again:

/opt/bastion/bin/cron/osh-encrypt-rsync.pl --config-test

If you don't see any errors here, you're done.

If you still see errors, then you might need to manually import the private key:

gpg1 --armor --export-secret-keys | gpg --import

You may get asked for a password for the bastion secret key, which should be found in /etc/bastion/osh-encrypt-rsync.conf.d/50-gpg-bastion-key.conf if you previously used the script to generate it.

A last config test should now work:

/opt/bastion/bin/cron/osh-encrypt-rsync.pl --config-test

If you prefer to generate Ed25519 keys instead, then you can proceed to the next section.

Ed25519

If you want to replace your RSA key by an Ed25519 one (which is optional), then you don't need to import the GnuPG 1.x keys as outlined above but you may run instead:

/opt/bastion/bin/admin/setup-gpg.sh generate --overwrite

Once the key has been generated, you may also want to generate a new admin key, by following this section of the Advanced Installation documentation. Note that you'll need to use the --overwrite parameter when importing:

/opt/bastion/bin/admin/setup-gpg.sh import --overwrite

Once done, a config test should work:

/opt/bastion/bin/cron/osh-encrypt-rsync.pl --config-test

v3.07.00 - 2021/12/13

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.06.00 - 2021/10/15

The sshd_config templates have been modified to reflect the changes needed to use the new --pubkey-auth-optional parameter of accountModify (#237). If you want to use it, don't forget to review your sshd_config and modify it accordingly: the templates can be found in etc/ssh/.

Note that misconfiguring sshd and pam together could at worst entirely disable sshd authentication. If you have a custom configuration, different from the templates we provide, please double-check that such corner case is not possible by design. A good way to ensure this is to review the pam configuration and ensure that there is no execution flow that pushes a pam_success value to the pam stack without requiring any form of authentication.

v3.05.01 - 2021/09/22

In the configuration of the osh-backup-acl-keys script, a signing key can now be specified so that the backups are signed by the bastion key in addition to being encrypted to the admin(s) key(s). By default, the behaviour is the same as before: encrypt but don't sign.

v3.05.00 - 2021/09/14

The maximum length of accounts is now 28 characters up from 18 characters previously. If you have setup a HA cluster with several bastion instances synchronized together, note that accounts longer than 18 characters will not be deemed as valid on not-yet upgraded instances of a cluster.

v3.04.00 - 2021/07/02

The upgrade path from the preceding version is straightforward, however there are a few changes that you might want to be aware of before hitting the upgrade button:

  • Some EOL OSes have been dropped: Debian 8, Ubuntu 14.04, OpenSUSE 15.0 and 15.1. This means that while the software might still work, theses OSes are no longer part of the tests and might break in any future upgrade.

  • The default logging level of the HTTPS Proxy has been decreased. If you want to keep full requests and responses logging, check the log_request_response and log_request_response_max_size configuration options.

v3.03.01 - 2021/03/25

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.03.00 - 2021/02/22

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.02.00 - 2021/02/01

The upgrade path from the preceding version is straightforward, however there are a few changes that you might want to be aware of before hitting the upgrade button:

The main configuration file now supports proper booleans

For a lot of configuration options, previously you would specify "1" to enable a feature, and "0" to disable it. This has been changed to use proper true and false json values in /etc/bastion/bastion.conf. Of course, backward compatibility with "0" and "1" will always be kept, so no breakage is to be expected for this version or future ones even if you keep your configuration untouched.

Logs have been enhanced

All connections and plugin executions emit two logs, an open and a close log. We now add all the details of the connection to the close logs, those that were previously only available in the corresponding open log. This way, it is no longer required to correlate both logs with their uniqid to have all the data: the close log should suffice. The open log is still there if for some reason the close log can't be emitted (kill -9, system crash, etc.), or if the open and the close log are several hours, days or months appart.

An additional field duration has been added to the close logs, this represents the number of seconds (with millisecond precision) the connection lasted.

Two new fields globalsql and accountsql have been added to the open-type logs. These will contain either ok if we successfully logged to the corresponding log database, no if it is disabled, or error $aDetailedMessage if we got an error trying to insert the row. The close-type log also has the new accountsql_close field, but misses the globalsql_close field as we never update the global database on this event. On the close log, we can also have the value missing, indicating that we couldn't update the access log row in the database, as the corresponding open log couldn't insert it.

The ttyrecsize log field for the close-type logs has been removed, as it was never completely implemented, and contains bogus data if ttyrec log rotation occurs. It has also been removed from the sqlite log databases.

The open and close events are now pushed to our own log files, in addition to syslog, if logging to those files is enabled (see enableGlobalAccessLog and enableAccountAccessLog), previously the close events were only pushed to syslog.

The /home/osh.log file is no longer used for enableGlobalAccessLog, the global log is instead written to /home/logkeeper/global-log-YYYYMM.log.

The global sql file, enabled with enableGlobalSqlLog, is now split by year-month instead of by year, to /home/logkeeper/global-log-YYYYMM.sqlite.

v3.01.03 - 2020/12/15

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.01.02 - 2020/12/08

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.01.01 - 2020/12/04

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.01.00 - 2020/11/20

A new bastion.conf option was introduced: interactiveModeByDefault. If not present in your config file, its value defaults to 1 (true), which changes the behavior of The Bastion when a user connects without specifying any command. When this happens, it'll now display the help then drop the user into interactive mode (if this mode is enabled), instead of displaying the help and aborting with an error message. Set it to 0 (false) if you want to keep the previous behavior.

An SELinux module has been added in this version, to ensure TOTP MFA works correctly under systems where SELinux is on enforcing mode. This module will be installed automatically whenever SELinux is detected on the system. If you don't want to use this module, specify --no-install-selinux-module on your /opt/bastion/bin/admin/install upgrade call (please refer to the generic upgrade instructions for more details).

v3.00.02 - 2020/11/16

No specific upgrade instructions.

v3.00.01 - 2020/11/06

If you previously installed ttyrec using the now deprecated build-and-install-ttyrec.sh script, you might want to know that since this version, the script has been replaced by install-ttyrec.sh, which no longer builds in-place, but prefers downloading and installing prebuild rpm or deb packages.

If you previously built and installed ttyrec manually, and want to use the new packages instead, you might want to manually uninstall your previously built ttyrec program (remove the binaries that were installed in /usr/local/bin), and call install-ttyrec.sh -a to download and install the proper package instead.

This is not mandatory and doesn't change anything from the software point of view.

v3.00.00 - 2020/10/30

Initial public version, no specific upgrade instructions.