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Remote support

note

Enterprise subscription required

This feature is available only if the firewall has a valid Enterprise subscription.

The Enterprise subscription allows you to access the Nethesis remote support.

The remote support session will connect the firewall to a WindMill instance hosted by Nethesis at sos.nethesis.it. The firewall must be able to connect to the above host on port 1194 UDP. If port 1194 is closed, the system will try to fallback on port 443 TCP.

Session management​

The remote support must be started and stopped by the firewall administrator.

Starting a session​

To start a session:

  • access the Subscription page and go to the Remote support section
  • click the Start session button
  • copy the Session ID and share it with the support team
  • the session will be active for 24 hours by default

The system will display:

  • The current session status (active/inactive)
  • The session expiration time
  • The remaining time until expiration

You can view this information at any time in the Remote support section of the Subscription page.

Session expiration​

Remote support sessions have the following expiration behavior:

  • Default session: expires after 24 hours
  • Extended session: expires after 7 days from the extension time

The system continuously monitors session expiration:

  • a cron job runs every 10 minutes to check for expired sessions
  • when a session expires, it is automatically stopped
  • session expiration events are logged to the system log

Terminating a session​

To manually terminate an active session before it expires:

  • access the Subscription page and go to the Remote support section
  • click the End session button
  • the remote support connection will be immediately closed

Command line interface​

The don command requires root privileges and logs all operations to the system log.

Start a session:

don start

This will start a new remote support session with a 24-hour expiration.

Check session status:

don status

This displays the current session information including:

  • Server ID
  • Session ID
  • Time remaining until expiration

Extend an active session:

don extend
info

Session extension is only available via command line. This feature extends the session from the default 24 hours to 7 days starting since the current time.

Stop a session:

don stop

This immediately terminates the remote support session and cleans up all resources.

Check for expired sessions:

don expire

This command is automatically run by cron every hour to check if the session has expired. If the session has expired, it will be automatically stopped.

Log examples:

Mar 27 09:24:37 NethSec don: Remote support session started
Mar 27 09:24:54 NethSec don: Remote support session extended by 7 days
Mar 27 09:25:04 NethSec don: Remote support session stopped